Places The Spanish Village of Juzcar That Went Blue For Smurfs

Up until 2011, the village of Juzcar in Spain was your typical whitewashed Spanish village. That was until 2010 when the PR company promoting Smurfs convinced the entire village to paint their buildings blue.

It took twelve local painters 4,000 liters of paint to cover every single building in the village. This included houses, church, cemetery and town hall, all painted blue ready for the launch of the movie ‘Smurfs 3D’.

The movie premiere took place in, you guessed it, the village of Juzcar. Chosen because the village is well known for its fungi which grows in the surrounding hills (the Smurfs love mushrooms).

Released in June 2011, despite being beaten to the top of the Box Office charts by Cowboys & Aliens, Smurfs 3D went on to take $563.7 million. More than five times what it cost to make the movie.

Although Sony vowed to restore the village to its former whitewashed look, six months after the premiere, the residents voted to keep the colour, which had brought more than 80,000 tourists to the village of Júzcar.

People began coming from all over the world to explore the village and its surroundings, an average of 250 per day. What was once a sleepy village with very little tourism, except for hikers, was now a bustling tourist destination.

The Smurf Village of Juzcar

While the village remains blue to this day, sadly Juzcar lost the authority to market itself as “Smurf Town” in 2017. All smurf related products have had to be removed. However, the village still remains blue and still gets far more tourism than it ever had before.

Below are some photos of Juzcar before the Smurfs were removed from the village in 2017.