Las Fallas: Spain’s festival of fire
Is Las Fallas the world’s loudest, most apocalyptic festival? Telegraph Travel goes to Valencia in Spain to find out.
A pall of gunpowder smoke envelops Valencia town hall square and I am not sure if my eardrums will make it. Somehow the volume moves up a notch, from epic to cataclysmic, as a new wave of explosions rips low across the plaza. I consider fleeing indoors then opt for a more valiant approach, sidling behind a turret in a futile bid for protection from the wall of decibels crashing around me.
The smoke thickens around the centrepiece of the square, a giant, rainbow-coloured effigy destined for a fiery demise at the culmination of this Las Fallas festival. Another choreographed blast is triggered. A grey fug now cloaks everything before me apart from the bat-shaped gargoyle etched into my temporary shield, the sandstone turret, before, finally, the explosions reach a crescendo.
As smoke drifts away the crowd surges forward, clamouring their approval for the orchestrators of this extraordinary symphony of noise. The pyro-technicians respond by jogging a lap of honour amid the strewn debris of exploded fireworks.
This is how it is every day at 2pm for the mascletà fireworks during this festival in the port city of Valencia. And this display of pyrotechnical might is merely the professional tip of a universal pastime. Mothers delve into handbags and hand out bangers to children like they are boiled sweets; well-dressed families go for a leisurely afternoon detonating extremely loud firecrackers; I even see a dog-owning couple let off a series of deafening blasts, their pet not even deigning to lift its nose.
Visitors also become inured to the relentless noise, explosions punctuating conversations like pauses for breath. The fireworks, however, never quite lose their power to shock, as I discover on a cycle tour along the city’s Turia Gardens. Sleep deprived after the night’s festivities, we pedal gently along the old riverbed – until an enormous blast reverberates underneath a bridge, jolting us from our reverie.
There seems only one thing to do. A quick stop at a kiosk and I am armed with bombas de humo (smoke bombs), camelia flowers and volcanoes. That evening, we ignite a camelia flower in a city street, retreating as a fizz of green sparks whirls into life. Then we are shown the Valencian way, as the camelia flower is booted at us by a group of young women. We string together about four passes in an impromptu game of fireworks football before the sparks fizzle out.
Later that night, the festival reaches its apocalyptic climax. The fallas effigies, made by neighbourhood groups known as casales falleros, are set ablaze. Thought to be from a tradition started by 18th-century carpenters, who burned work stands when brighter spring days meant they were no longer needed to carry oil lamps, the bonfires rage on a grander scale each year. A year’s work goes into making the effigies, as the falleros try to outdo each other. Specialised artists design and mould the figures in polyurethane, which often bear a striking resemblance to 3D Pixar characters. The larger ones – in the Special Category – can be more than three storeys high, and, controversially in Spain’s straitened economic climes, cost hundreds of thousands of euros to make (this year’s most expensive cost €600,000).
The Valencian council contributes a quarter of this, a generosity which artists reward, naturally, by lampooning local government personalities mercilessly. Figures within these monuments, known as ninots, often have a ribald, satirical edge – Nicolas Sarkozy climbing on top of the Eiffel Tower to kiss his wife, for example. Valencia’s mayor is another popular target. Laugh at your own risk, however. Nobody escapes – pop stars and tennis players are sent up, journalists are mocked, and tourists are gently teased in garish 20m-tall creations.
Then, in this night of towering challenges for the local fire service, all this creativity and invention is razed to the ground, bilging black fumes into the sky. Only the most popular of the small ninots is spared, saved for posterity in the city’s Fallas Museum.
The last to burn is the monumental public-funded centrepiece in the town hall square, a menagerie of caricatures depicting all the people of the festival, from artists to firemen and drunks. Crowds throng to witness this finale. A vendor looks stony faced but resigned as half a dozen trespassers enjoy the views from the roof of her snack stall; a senora shrieks with glee as she watches a young man hoist his girlfriend up by her belt-straps to join him in the crux of a tree.
The crowd whistles, impatient for the valedictory flourish of fireworks and flames. Then, as the effigy crumples in the blaze, the softer, sombre sound of a traditional Valencian refrain drifts across the square.
One giant figure still stands the next morning, a floral statue of the city’s patron Virgen de los Desamparodos (Lady of the Forsaken), stuffed with cream and ruby carnations left earlier in the week by a procession of falleros in ornate traditional dress. I wander away from sightseers admiring the floral bouquets, and find myself unexpectedly alone in a backstreet. Silence remains as elusive as ever, however, as the throb of an industrial street cleaner echoes down the alley and the cathedral bells chime noon in Valencia old town.
- The Fallas Festival runs from March 15 to 19 each year. More information on the festival and the city of Valencia can be found at www.turisvalencia.es.
