Las Fallas

Mar 18, 2011

Las Fallas is the most famous of Valencia's fiestas (and there are a few)! The event is timed to mark the arrival of Spring and makes the national news as the programme of activity builds to its conclusion on March 19, St Joseph's Day.  There are smaller replicas in our local towns but for the first time we visited Valencia during Las Fallas to see the processions and the statues on the streets.

In each competing neighbourhood there is a Fallas House which is the focal point for the creation of the "fallas" the wierd and wonderful statues created out of papier mache that are erected on wooden stages.  The bigger ones are 20-25 metres high and each tries to send a message, often ridiculing local or national politicians.  Most are pretty hard to fathom but the one chosen as the winner this year has an environmental theme is the work of the Falla Convento Jerusalem based near the main railway station.  They won last year too and their budget is thought to be around a million euros.  The money comes from fundraising dinners (paella of course) held throughout the year and from sponsorship and a massive amount of work goes into creating these monuments. 

On 15-16 March the hundreds of fallas are erected in position on the streets (causing widespread street closures) and the parties and noise begins in earnest for this is the annual opportunity to do what Valencians love most - making an unbelievable amount of noise and setting fire to as much as possible.  The fate of the fallas, after all that work during the year, is the same for all.  They burn on the night of 19 March in a massive party.  The winner and the one in the main square burn last - in the early hours of the morning.  The children's versions also get burned, earlier in the evening, with a few tears from the kids who have obviously become attached to their falla over the previous weeks and months.  The party goes on for days with bull-fighting and daily controlled explosions of fireworks which each group trying to out-do the others in terms of volume.  We observed the burning of the fallas on the TV from the safety of our lounge but could hear the fireworks from Denia (18 km away) with our windows closed. 

Before that final day each neighbourhood parades through the street in traditional costumes accompanied by their own brass band playing traditional music.  Each neighbourhood chooses a young woman to be their "Fallera Mayor", a sort of carnival queen, and one of those is selected from all across the city to light the blue touch paper from the town square balcony on the last night when everything burns.  We saw people of all ages in an endless procession as the Fallera women carry flowers to the centre of town where a huge falla depicting the patron of the city, the Virgen de los Desemperados (the Virgin of the Foresaken) is built on a wooden frame and the flowers brought from all corners of the city become part of her dress.

The 12 pictures in the attached album will give you an idea of what the processions, costumes and falla statues look like.  As is appropriate for a fiesta designed to usher in the Spring, the event was blessed with beautiful warm sunshine.  Let's hope it stays for a while!