Success story · Zaragoza City Council

Zaragoza Virtual Flower Offering

51 million

people around the world followed Zaragoza's most moving tradition

Case summary

A digital twin of the Plaza del Pilar that takes the traditional Flower Offering ceremony into the virtual world, officially recognised by the European Commission.

The Flower Offering is the most symbolic and emotional act of the Fiestas del Pilar, the largest traditional celebration in Zaragoza. In 2020, during the lockdown due to Covid-19, the City Council of Zaragoza and Zaragoza Cultura decided not to cancel the tradition: they decided to bring it to the virtual world. Thus was born the Virtual Flower Offering, a digital twin of Plaza del Pilar accessible from anywhere in the world, where Zaragoza residents and people from more than 90 countries can create their avatar, customize their bouquet and bring their flowers, wishes and messages to the Virgin of Pilar. A project that has evolved over several editions and has marked a turning point in the digitalization of intangible heritage.

Client

Zaragoza City Council

Sector

Tourism

Service

Digital twin

+51 million

People reached.

+545.000

Visits to the virtual space.

4:42 min

Average visit duration.

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01 The challenge

Keeping the tradition alive when the world stood still

In March 2020, the Covid-19 state of emergency cast doubt on October's Fiestas del Pilar and, with them, the most symbolic event of all: the Flower Offering to the Virgen del Pilar, in which people from Zaragoza and visitors from all over the world bring flowers, petitions and messages to the city's patron saint. Zaragoza City Council faced an unprecedented challenge: how to keep alive a tradition deeply rooted in the city's identity when gathering physically was impossible. The challenge wasn't technical, it was emotional: preserving the emotion of the Offering in a completely new format.

02 The solution

A digital twin of the Plaza del Pilar with avatars and offerings

The solution is the Virtual Flower Offering, a digital twin of the Plaza del Pilar that precisely recreates the 32,000 square metres of the square and lets any user, from anywhere in the world, experience the traditional ceremony in immersive format. The experience is accessible directly from the browser, with no downloads, and evolves edition by edition: the first focused on the offering as an emotional act; the second added the #RetoOfrenda video game and the city's NFTs; the third, a multiplayer space with personalised avatars where those making offerings can interact with each other, play mini-games and discover Zaragoza's tourist spots.

Next step

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Key learnings

What this case teaches the sector.

Tradition and technology aren't opposites, they reinforce each other

A significant part of the cultural sector still sees digitalisation as a threat to the authenticity of traditions. The Virtual Flower Offering shows the opposite: when the design respects the emotion of the original ceremony, technology amplifies the tradition's reach and preserves it for the next generations.

Only the public sector can be the locomotive of digital culture

No private company was going to take on the risk of digitalising a traditional Spanish ceremony at this scale for the first time. As Zaragoza's Deputy Mayor puts it, "public administrations have to be locomotives in many sectors, and culture is a clear example". The subsequent European recognition confirms that bet.

A well-designed virtual space enhances the in-person ceremony

The most valuable metrics of this project aren't the millions of people reached, but the tears of users who felt transported to the Plaza del Pilar from the other side of the world. When a virtual environment manages to genuinely move people, it stops being technology and becomes culture.

The annual event becomes a continuous tourism asset

A virtual twin of a city doesn't live only during the days of the traditional event. For the rest of the year, Turismo Zaragoza shares the space with international agencies and specialist media so they can experience the Flower Offering first-hand. The one-off tradition becomes a permanent sales and positioning tool.

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