Certamen Mundial del Jamón «Popi»

Eleven editions, over half a million visitors and the title of Event of Tourist Interest of Andalusia: the contest was already big on the street. What it needed was a digital home to match, with its own name and in the languages of the people who come.

We treated the website like a night on the promenade: you arrive, you smell the ham, the music starts and, if you want to know more, the whole story is there.

We designed the logo for the next edition, the twelfth: an outlined «12» that writes itself in a single stroke, starting with the flag of the 1, while CERTAMEN MUNDIAL, JAMÓN, POPI and CIUDAD DE ESTEPONA come in letter by letter. It was born as a vector, ready for the poster, the screen and any size.

Around the logo we built the website's language. Neue Haas Grotesk Display, the logo's typeface, everywhere, with huge staggered headlines. A near-black background with layered surfaces, like the promenade at night; pure white; the brand red as an accent and a warm amber for calls to action. Light backgrounds are neutral greys, so the contest's real photography (stage, cutters, crowds, fireworks and concerts) always takes centre stage.

The hero shows Popi up close, holding a slice of ham, beside the vector «12». On mobile the layout rearranges so the portrait and the contest's name sit together without overlapping.

The staggered headlines light up word by word as you scroll, like the promenade lights at dusk. The figures count up on their own: 11 editions, 80 days of contest, 65 exhibitors, over 200 professional cutters and more than 500,000 visitors in 2026. Next to the opening headline, the recap video of the latest edition plays when it comes into view and is only requested from the server when needed. And the price takes the lead: a giant «€5», because that is what brings people in.

Past editions is a timeline from 2014 to 2026. Each year has its huge number, which fills in as you read its chapter, with dates, days, concert nights, posters and highlights. From the four days of 2014 to the ten nights of 2026, the contest adds up to 80 days of ham by the sea.

The press archive gathers 161 references from 28 outlets between 2013 and 2026, 13 of them with an English version: news, press releases, videos and guides, from Estepona Televisión to the Junta de Andalucía's Official Gazette. They can be filtered by edition, type of outlet and language, and each piece links to its original source or to its Internet Archive capture.

The website speaks Spanish, English, German and French, each language with its own routes (/en/editions/, /de/ausgaben/, /fr/presse/…) and copy written for the people reading it. We fixed the terminology for each language, from *trancheur* in French to *Schinkenschneider* in German, so the cutter's craft sounds just as good everywhere.

The language switcher is always within reach, in the mobile menu too, and every page links to its sister versions so search engines serve the right one in each country.

The website is built as a static site with Next.js and served from Cloudflare's edge: fast anywhere in the world, with no servers to maintain. Images travel as WebP in several sizes, fonts are subset and the video only loads when it is about to be watched.

Accessibility was part of the design from the start, aiming for WCAG 2.1 AA: checked contrast, keyboard navigation, pause controls on the video and a complete version for people who prefer less motion. And no third-party cookies: social content is linked, not embedded.

The new domain launched ready for Google to understand it from day one. Organisation, site and page structured data; hreflang across the four languages; and a sitemap with 12 pages and 248 images.

We also thought about AI assistants: an open robots.txt and an llms.txt with the contest's key information, so any answer about Estepona's ham starts from the official source. Search Console registration and verification, plus a strategy of links from official websites to the new domain, complete the picture.

The website brings what happens on the promenade to mobile and desktop: Popi's portrait, the five-euro plate, the music of every night and eleven Augusts of history. Browse it live at mundialjamonpopi.com.