Out of season? Mijas revives Three Kings to boost tourism

As well as promising safety and tight vigilance to protect tourists and locals against the Coronavirus, destinations all over the country need to remind those living outside them that they can't live without them – not just overcoming reluctance, but creating a real need that cannot be ignored.

Everywhere's at it, but some campaigns are tending to stand out more than others: Like the Costa del Sol town of Mijas, which has brought Christmas to the south coast despite temperatures set to soar to around 40ºC this weekend.

If you've ever been in Spain around the time of Twelfth Night, or the evening of January 5, you're likely to have witnessed a Three Kings' parade – in fact, the visit by the Wise Men from the East who brought Baby Jesus his gold, frankincense and myrrh and who, in Spain, bring presents for children is even bigger and more eagerly-anticipated than Santa Claus' rounds on Christmas Eve; indeed, many of the more 'traditional' Spanish families do not even 'do' Santa Claus and children grow up with no real knowledge of him as a festive figure.

Mijas sought to bring the Three Kings out of their 11-month retirement, and had a group of children writing their present wish-lists to them back in April, even though they would have to wait until July to see these gifts arrive.

Speaking off-camera, 10 kids asked the Magi to bring them back the seven 'pillars' of Costa del Sol tourism: Sunshine and beaches, whitewashed Andalucían villages, golf, cuisine, arts and crafts, sports, and nature.

The children filmed their 'wishes' from home in various creative ways, and the council's favourite 10 were chosen for the final cut.

“We're really pleased with how this idea has been taken up. The kids have been dancing, dressing up, singing and laughing, and all this has made us enormously happy during the delicate moments we've been living through – on the one hand, we've seen how they've managed to entertain themselves during lockdown, and on the other, how they succeeded in making a different, original campaign idea reality,” says tourism councillor José Carlos Martín.

And the Three Kings are expected to deliver – they already did on the video.

Martín says every effort has been made to turn Mijas into 'one of the region's safest destinations', with a vast range of outdoor activity – such as mountain and coastal walks and golf courses – suitable for any budget, plus managing numbers of people on beaches using drones, 'exhaustive' cleaning of port-a-loos on the sands after 'every use', exclusive beaches for the over-65s, hand-sanitiser dispensers, and municipal workers keeping tabs on social distancing.

As well as all the 'typical' Costa del Sol attractions such as the trademark whitewashed villages, beaches and golf courses, Mijas is pushing more local carrots such as its cuisine, its handicrafts, its natural rural environment and its sports activities, by promoting restaurants and other traders in the town.

Martín said the children of Mijas, in addition to their excellent contribution to the summer 2020 tourism campaign, have 'behaved marvellously' during lockdown, when they were literally unable to leave their homes.

Adults were able to go to the supermarket, pharmacy or for other essential errands, but as only one person was allowed to do these, unless they were single parents or their partners worked outside the home in a key industry, the children could not go with them.

Unless the kids were old enough to do the shopping or pick up prescriptions entirely by themselves, they had no 'excuse' to leave the house – and with communal gardens, parks and pools on urbanisations or terraces in apartment blocks out of bounds, children who not living in a house with a private pool, garden or terrace only ever saw the four inside walls of their homes for over two months.

They were unable to see their friends, and all their schooling was online – but Spanish authorities have repeatedly thanked society's youngest members for their immense sacrifice, which has helped contain the Coronavirus.

Outbreaks in 15 of Spain's 17 autonomously-governed regions have been reported in the last two weeks, but these are localised and closely monitored with any suspect cases and their contacts immediately tested.

According to head of the national centre for disease control and health emergencies, Fernando Simón, around 60% of cases detected recently are asymptomatic.

This is good news and bad news: Asymptomatic Covid-19 patients do not know they are infected, meaning they can spread the virus to potentially hundreds of others; on the other hand, it means only four in 10 are actually ill with it, so there is no danger to life to the other six in 10.

Photograph by Mijas town hall