SPAIN | Valencia, Spain Travel Guide
Saturday, April 27, 2024
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Las Fallas
C/ del Ninot 24
Valencia
The Levante
Spain
96 347 65 85
Type: Cultural Interest
Addmission Fee: 1.80 Euro
Hours: Mon.-Fri. 10:00 am-2:00 pm and 4:00-7:00 pm, Sat. 10:00 am-2:00 pm
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Valencia
The Levante
Spain
96 347 65 85
Type: Cultural Interest
Addmission Fee: 1.80 Euro
Hours: Mon.-Fri. 10:00 am-2:00 pm and 4:00-7:00 pm, Sat. 10:00 am-2:00 pm
Comments ( 0 )
Rating (0 Votes)
During four days in March Valencia is literally a city on fire. Of pagan origins, the festivities of Las Fallas in Valencia began to take their current shape in the 15th century when city carpenters cleaned out their workshops in the spring and lit great bonfires in the city in celebration of their patron Saint Joseph. With time, the rough piles were embellished to the point that they now attain monumental proportions and number over 700 in any given year.
The competitors, usually artists from the local School of Arts and Crafts or School of Fine Arts, spend the entire year fabricating the elaborate papier-mâché and polyurethane ninots (caricatures) to be placed with fantastical background settings. These originated from the parots, wooden candleholders that the city carpenters once adorned with clothes or masks and lit with their own bonfires. A single falla can cost well over $100,000 to create; they are modeled first in clay, then in plaster and finally with cardboard or plaster over a wooden frame.
The goal is a mix of attractiveness, humor, ingenuity and, ultimately, flammability. The polished finish, vibrant colors and acute attention to detail of the fallas is awesome. A skilled graphic artist would have a hard time creating such lively characters with high-tech computer equipment. The celebrations begin on March 15th, the day known to locals as la plantá, when the fallas are installed in the streets by their creators. At 2 pm in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento the first mascletá is set off.
These insanely loud, smoky fireworks exhibitions draw huge crowds to mark the official beginning of the day’s festivities and they’re repeated at the same time and location each subsequent day of the fallas. The mascletá fireworks are but a precursor to the larger nighttime fireworks exhibitions held over the Turla riverbed. When the noise dies down and the crowds and smoke clear, revelers pass the afternoon wandering the streets, munching on churros con chocolate bought at the numerous temporary stands.
At almost every turn they will encounter a different falla, some that debauch politics, others that celebrate culture or nothing at all except zaniness. Over 300 bands march through the streets, bullfights are held in the Plaza de Toros and floral offerings are made in the Plaza de la Virgen and the basilica of Our Lady of the Forsaken. With nightfall, fireworks displays light up the sky, reaching their crescendo on the 18th, the nit del foc (night of fire).
At midnight on the 19th the cremá begins; torches are set to the beautiful monuments and flames consume the product of a year-long effort in a fiery spectacle. The Museo Fallero occupies a former leper hospice in Benicalap, a quarter of the city known as the Ciudad Fallera. In this neighborhood work on the fallas carries on throughout the year.
Since 1934 it has housed a collection of ninots indultats, the fallas caricatures that have been saved from burning by popular vote. There are also photography and poster exhibitions that detail the history of Las Fallas.
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