Valencia – Las Fallas

Burn, Boris, Burn!

Las Fallas is a big festival, we booked the campsite for this months ago. It takes over the centre of the city, the third biggest city in Spain has most roads closed. Social groups build fallas, papier mache and wood statues sometimes as high as three storey buildings, in a square. The best one gets a prize and then they burn them on the last night of the festival. 800 fallas are spread around the city in 400 locations, normally a small square or cross roads. The fire brigade hose down the surroundings while the fires burn. Big marquees are built in the roads that house the social groups who have a jolly good time.

Not only do they spend hours labouring on the fallas they also spend hours on the costumes they wear and parade around the city in. Some of the dresses can cost tens of thousands of euros!

The commissions parade around the town sometimes in formal parades, and sometimes informal parades. Many times you turn a corner and find a band with their “queens” dancing, although you get plenty of warning that they are around a corner as spanish bands do not do pianissimo. You will also start to either love or hate the tune “Valencia”. You will certainly know it by the end. What amazes me is on the big parades you often have multiple parades merging on a square and the band keeps playing Valencia, along side the band who has just entered the square, also playing Valencia, but of course at a slightly part of the tune.

The big parade at this is the offering. This coincides with St Josephs day. The commissions dressed in colourful outfits, bear flowers to the statue of the Virgin Mary, As each person hands over their flowers they kiss the bunch. The flowers are then thrown to the men on the status and put in place. This status is as tall as the church. Apparently the cape of Mary changes design each year and over a million flowers are used. It takes two days to attach all the flowers to the Virgin.

Fireworks are the norm and the Mascletà are at lunch time each day. This is a firework show, but don’t think English nice pretty fireworks, think earth tremorring, bone shaking bangs. As many bangs as you can fit into 10 mins. You do get firework shows in the early hours of the morning as well, and in between the kids let off fire crackers all day long. The kids from about 3 upwards walk around with little wooden boxes of what I would call bangers. They let them off everywhere. In the crowds, down the side of buildings, in the parks. You start to totally ignore the bangs.

I have talked about fireworks, parades and the tune Valencia in separate paragraphs, the final days sees the firework parade, people dancing (not in big dresses) with fireworks to the tune Valencia, with sparks spraying into the crowds as the dances dance up to the crowd.

If I do this festival again I am stopping in an hotel in the centre. It would have been better if you can go back to your room and have a rest before the 1:30am fireworks! We had a 30 minute tube ride into the city. The weather was very poor which was a shame, but my ear drums survived, I think, and I would recommend coming at least once.

My brother wrote a blog on las fallas which has slightly more facts than mine here.

Yes we did choose to watch the fallas that had a ninot of Boris Johnson burn, seemed like a fitting end.