Las Fallas

From the 15th through the 19th of March there is a festival in Valencia called Las Fallas. Las Fallas means “the failures”. The people in Valencia spend an entire year constructing these monuments out of wood and papier-mâché. They are built with the help of architects and are planned out for an entire year. They are sort of like three dimensional caricatures.The festival was created to celebrate San Jose, the patron saint of carpentry and the virgin de los desamparados. There is a floral offering to her on the 17th and 18th and the people make her dress out of flowers. Oh and did I mention that they are called failures because one wins and all of the others are burnt on the 19th? Well that’s how is goes.

So obviously this weekend we had to go and check this thing out. All over the city there were Fallas, each neighborhood makes one. We went on the 18th during the day to see all of the festivities. There is one part called La Mascletá that happens everyday at 2 pm, they have thousands of firecrackers and they go off in a rhythm, it is a competition and whoever makes the best one wins… something. I don’t know what they win, but the freakin’ win. The women also dress up in special outfits in hopes of becoming the Fallera Mayor y Mayor Infantil. The Fallera Mayor tells them to begin La Mascletá. We returned on the 19th La Cremá to see all of them be burnt to the ground. The most interesting and amazing thing is that about 2 million other people came to do the same thing. They also sell firecrackers all over so people just blow them up all over the place, in your face, in a dumpster, in the street. They scare you and hurt people and of course I had to buy some. Just for the fun of it. They sold bandannas everywhere and I didn’t quite understand it until I was standing directly in front of a three story high falla that was on fire and needed something to cover my face from the heat and smoke. It was all coming together but we were also on our way back to the bus at that point so unfortunately… I learned my lesson a bit too late. PS. they don’t set any of them on fire until midnight so we took buses home at 3:30 am. It was a lot of fun and something I had been looking forward to since senior year in high school, I’m happy to say it was worth it.

I also forgot to mention that when they light the fallas on fire it involves a rope of firecrackers that is lit by the Fallera of the neighborhood. So it is a quite explosive start to the evening, my ears were just about on fire the whole time.