Compromís asks to light up Sagunto Castle to boost night-time tourism
Compromís, a Valencian left-wing party, has filed a motion for this Thursday's 3 September council plenary asking to restore monumental lighting on Sagunto Castle, to boost its tourist and cultural appeal.
Compromís, a Valencian left-wing party, has filed a motion for the ordinary council plenary that Sagunto City Council will hold this Thursday, 3 September, starting at 5pm. The motion asks the council to restore monumental lighting on Sagunto Castle. The party argues that a night-lighting system on the fortress would boost its tourist and cultural appeal, especially for visits outside daytime hours.
The proposal is one item on the session's agenda, alongside other motions covering social discounts on water bills, extending summer rural-maintenance work crews, and studying a municipal bike-rental service. Residents can follow the plenary live on the City Council's YouTube channel and social media, or attend in person in the council chamber.
Sagunto Castle (a fortified hilltop site above the old town) is not a single building but a fortification stretching along the whole ridge of the hill, roughly 800 metres from one end to the other. Internally, the fortress is also organised into seven separate, self-contained enclosures — Almenara, Armas, Conejera, Ciudadela, Dos de Mayo, San Fernando and Estudiantes — each with its own stretch of walls and access points. That double scale, both long and compartmentalised, explains why any monumental-lighting project is far more than installing a few spotlights: it requires studying the entire length of the walls and deciding which enclosures and stretches to prioritise, since lighting the whole complex at once would push up the cost considerably.
The monument also holds the highest level of heritage protection in Spain: it was declared a Monumento histórico-artístico (historic-artistic monument) in 1931, a category equivalent today to Bien de Interés Cultural (BIC — Spain's top heritage-protection listing). That means any work on its lighting will need approval from heritage authorities, a step that usually extends the timeline for this kind of project, since the electrical fittings and mountings cannot damage the historic stonework of the walls.
Night-time lighting of monuments is not just about aesthetics: in towns with similar heritage sites, it is often used to extend the hours visitors can enjoy the surroundings without depending on the site itself staying open. For the Sagunto Centro district (the historic old town), the idea taps into a recurring request from shopkeepers and cultural groups: making better use of the castle, currently associated mostly with daytime visits and the Ludi Saguntini festival at the nearby Roman Theatre, to also generate tourism and economic activity on spring and summer nights, when bars and restaurants in the old town keep longer hours. Supporters argue a lit-up castle would be visible from much of the city and Puerto de Sagunto (the coastal district), adding a photogenic draw for comarca visitors and a night-time landmark on Sagunto's skyline.
As for how it moves forward: a motion like this is not automatically binding. It is a proposal that one council group — in this case Compromís — puts to the rest of the council. At Thursday's session, every group gets a turn to speak, and the motion then goes to a vote; it passes if a majority of councillors present back it. Passing it does not mean the works start right away — it commits the governing team to studying how to carry it out, which for protected sites like the castle usually means a technical and financial study first, then heritage-authority paperwork, and only at the end a tender for the actual works.
If the motion passes on Thursday, the next step would be for the governing team to commission that technical and financial study before setting any construction timeline, given the number of enclosures to cover and the site's heritage protection. According to elperiodic.com, with additional background from Wikipedia on Sagunto Castle.