At Candlelight in Valencia, the room is filled with light and an intimate atmosphere that envelops you. But how many candles does it take to make everything look like this? 5,000, 15,000, or 30,000 candles; always thousands, depending on the size of the space. It’s not a fixed number, but a reference point, and you notice it as soon as you walk in: the light doesn’t come from a single source; it fills the entire room and surrounds the stage and the sides.
What seems simple takes time and effort. Before the music begins, there’s a process you don’t see: a team arrives hours early, walks through the venue, and places the candles to mark aisles, access areas, and the stage surroundings. And now… it’s time to see how it’s done.
Because that sea of candles doesn’t appear out of nowhere: each concert determines its layout based on the venue’s capacity, the stage, and the aisles, and the scale sets the pace for the setup. The result is clean; the process, meticulous.
This is where Candlelight begins (even if you can’t see it)
First, unpacking: the boxes are opened, candles come out by the dozen, and they are placed on side tables and on the floor. Next, placement: rows along the aisles, candles surrounding the musicians, and spots in corners and along edges to add depth without blocking access. Finally, the lighting: one by one, row by row, until the room is illuminated with a warm, uniform glow.
At the Ateneo Mercantil de Valencia, the warm light completely transforms the atmosphere and makes the space feel different, as if it were a different place altogether. To give you an idea: if you lined up 15,000 candles one after another, they would stretch from one end of the Plaza del Ayuntamientoto the other about five times.
When the concert ends, the takedown begins: the candles are extinguished, carefully collected, stored in their boxes, and the hall returns to normal. The next time, the whole process starts over from scratch: unpacking, setting up, and lighting.
Now you know what goes on behind the scenes at Candlelight in Valencia, so the next time you walk in, you might see it differently: as something that begins long before the music starts.
