Spectre and the scene that inspired a tradition in Mexico.
The next big leap after the promotion of tourism came from the entertainment industry.
In March 2015, the production of the new 007 movie, Spectre, chose the Historic Center of Mexico City to film the sequence that opens the film.
For five minutes, James Bond (Daniel Craig) sneaks between giant skeletons and a crowd with painted faces that festively walk through the streets of the center of the capital.
The fictional festival, presented on screen as a typical Day of the Dead parade, jumped from fiction to reality after a year: in October 2016, the capital’s Tourism Secretariat announced the first Day of the Dead parade.
The mass event, openly inspired by the scene from Spectre, brought together 250,000 people among floats and models made for the filming of the movie.
Since then, Paseo de la Reforma has been the setting for a carnival broadcast on open television every year.
According to the capital’s government, the edition of the parade held in October 2023 attracted more than a million attendees.
