With the aim of raising awareness about climate change and energy consumption, cities around the world came together on Saturday, March 23, to celebrate Earth Hour, an event that has been gaining followers since its creation in 2007.
This initiative, promoted by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in Australia, aims to send a powerful visual message about the urgency of acting on the climate crisis by turning off the lights of monuments and emblematic buildings for sixty minutes.
In this way, at 8:30 p.m. local time in each region, the main monuments and streets of many cities were plunged into darkness, thus demonstrating a global commitment to the sustainable future of the planet.
In Spain, emblematic monuments such as the Alhambra in Granada, the Cathedral of Malaga, the Triana Bridge and the Torre del Oro in Seville, Madrid’s Royal Palace and the Puerta de Alcalá or the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona joined the blackout for La Hora of the Planet.
At the international level, there was also a great participation. In New York the Empire State Building went out, in Paris the Eiffel Tower, the London Eye in London, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Acropolis in Athens and the Colosseum in Rome, among many other monuments.
Earth Hour goes beyond a symbolic gesture of turning off the lights; It is a wake-up call to fight the climate crisis that affects not only biodiversity, but also the health of the world’s population.
According to a report by Ecologists in Action, 96% of the Spanish population breathed air contaminated by ozone in 2023, an alarming figure that highlights the importance of days like this to promote changes in energy management and consumption.