SAN FERNANDO—Ten barangays here have joined the 108-year-old celebration of colors and lights called Giant Lantern Festival of 2016.
Jim Jimenez, chairman of the executive committee of this year’s festival said the villages who joined are Sto.Nino, Del Pilar, San Nicolas, Sta.Lucia, San Juan, Dolores, Calulut, Telabastagan, Sindalan, and San Jose.
Jimenez said exhibitors will receive a subsidy of P120,000 from Giant Lantern Foundation chairman Wilfrito Mah and P100,000 from Gov. Lilia Pineda, respectively. The additional costs will be shouldered by participating barangays.
The unit cost of participating in the traditional festival of color and lights range from P800,000 to P1 million with three to five months of delicate preparations and production process specially the electrical installations.
Jimenez said Pineda warned all each participating barangay that no lanterns should be produced by another barangay so that technology will be transferred to its residents.
Each lantern must measure about 20 feet and use 7,500 to 13,400 colorful bulbs, and all entries will vye for the prizes on Christmas eve on the huge battleground at the Robinsons mall here.
Powered by a big generator, each giant lantern will be placed on top of a six-by-six truck and exhibit its dancing lights for almost an hour to the tune of music.
Jimenez said three exhibitors will be declared winners by a panel of judges in the categories. The winning lanterns will be displayed on Christmas Eve in the city proper, Metro Manila and later abroad.
The over all supervisor of this year festival of lights and color is engineer Marni Castro.
The defending champion of the contest is Barangay Dolores. The city has 35 barangays. The festival was started by Francisco Estanislao of Sta. Lucia in 1909.
The Giant Lantern Festival is one of the few tourism attractions of the city together with the Via Crucis during Lenten season.
Mah said they are developing the train station used by the Japanese Imperial Army to ferry American, Filipino and Australian soldiers from Bataan to Tarlac during the Death March in the Second World War.
Located in Barangay Sto.Nino, the train site will be renovated into a park with a regular night market, stalls for delicious Pampanga food, souvenirs items and other amenities, he added.
The train station is now becoming a popular educational tour site for students because it displays several historical relics from the Spanish occupation up to the last world war.