Las Fallas - Valencia

If you are in Valencia from 15th to the 19th of March each year, you will undoubtedly have gone there for the sole purpose of witnessing one of the most incredible festivals in a country where incredible festivals are the norm rather than the exception.

But, however prepared for Las Fallas you think you are, you will still be surprised by the sheer craziness of it all.

St Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters, is the official focus for the festival. It all started back in the Middle Ages when carpenters used to hang up planks of wood called parots in the winter to support their candles when they were working. At the onset of spring these pieces of wood would be burned, as a way of celebrating the end of dark winter working days. After a while, they began to put clothing on the parot, and then started to try to make it identifiable with a well-known local personality. These became the forerunners of the contemporary ninots, the enormous cardboard, wood, polyurethane, Styrofoam, cork, plaster and papier maché figures of today. The authorities later decided to link the burning of the parots with Saint Joseph’s Day – to try to stop it getting out of control!.

Nowadays, each neighbourhood has an organised committee, the casal faller, who raise the necessary finances for constructing the ninots. There is even an area of the city, ciutat fallera, where whole groups of workers and designers spend months creating all the incredible towering tableaux. The ninots, which are placed at key places throughout the city, are nowadays often cruel satirical lampoons of well-known Spanish and international celebrities or politicians.

If you decide to go to Valencia, prepare for an early start. Every day of the Fallas begins with a startling wake-up call, La Despertà, at the ridiculous time of 8 a.m. You’ll just love being woken by brass bands marching down the streets accompanied by those preposterously loud firecrackers; which themselves activate car and shop alarms – just to make sure you’re ready for a day’s fun.

All day, you’ll see processions and hear explosions and then at 2 in the afternoons, La Mascletà, begins – when there are organised pyrotechnical explosions all over the city, especially in the Plaza Ayuntamiento. You will think they are earth-shattering; but they’re just an appetizer for what will come later.

On each night there is a firework display in the old river bed and they escalate in degrees of spectacle until the final night, 19th March, the Night of Fire – La Nit de Foc. This is the famous event when the enormous creations are destroyed. Neighbourhoods will have their own falla infantile for the children at about 10 in the evening and then, at around midnight, the neighbourhood fallas will begin. The final, grandest fire, in the main square, Plaza Ayuntamiento, won’t get under way until 1 am at the earliest. The ninots will all have been stuffed full with fireworks, the street lights switched off and the bomberos will be in position when the 20 to 30 foot models, which took months of painstaking construction, will be razed to the ground. Each year, one ninot is spared the ordeal – as a result of a public vote: the rest suffer a spectacular fate.

However loud you think this is going to be – you’ll be wrong. There is no way of beginning to describe the amount of noise generated. Pregnant women are forbidden from attending and each year people are injured or faint. It is true that you should keep your mouth open to allow the sound to escape and not echo around your head – or something like that – but be prepared to feel the ground shake beneath your feet and your head to spin uncontrollably. This is an adrenaline rush with few equals and a completely unique experience.

And please don’t think you can rest up during the day to prepare yourself for the evening’s bombardments. After you’ve been unceremoniously startled awake at 8 o’clock, the whole of Valencia is one enormous street party, with various parades, pageants, beauty shows, paella competitions and bullfights all over the city.

Hotels in Valencia and the surrounding areas sell out many months before the Fallas festivals so be sure to book your Valencia hotel well in advance.

Our final tip – make sure you don’t ever book to go back to work on March 21st: you’ll need at least two days rest and relaxation before you can even think about it!