FALLLASSSS

Lights on a street not too far from my house.

Please notice the Large machine at the bottom and how it is dwarfed by the Falla. Ps. We saw this one burn. It was awesome.

Please notice the people at the bottom. She is gigantic.

Fallas

Observations:

-Old ladies are vicious and use elbows.

-Strollers should be used to carry children, not run over other people.

-Spinning, uncontrollable fireworks should not be given to children. Or drunk boys/men.

-Children shouldn’t have fireworks. Period. Ever.

-People should have more sense than to throw fireworks into a crowd.

So Las Fallas is the big festival in Valencia during the week of the March 14-March 19. However, Fallas starts before that. They have events throughout the year and fireworks at 2 in the main Plaza a week before fallas.

Fallas is fire in some variation of Spanish, Valenciano, and Latin. So everything revolves around fire, which is probably not the smartest of festival themes in an urban area.

Nevertheless, Las Fallas was truly a once in a lifetime cultural experience. There is nothing like Fallas anywhere else in the world.

Description:

*note: falla means about 20 different things during Fallas.

Each neighborhood (not in the sense we think of, its only a couple of streets clumped together) or “falla” has a “falla” or sculpture/art/large piece of artistic building. The fallas (sculptures) are huge- usually the size of an intersection/plaza and 4-6 stories tall. They are HUGE. Each has a message, some are political, many are about the current economic times, others just celebrate Fallas or other cultures. Each falla (neighborhood and sculpture) has a “ninot” or a smaller falla (sculpture)

They start building the fallas the Monday after Fallas ends. So they take about a year to design and build. This is the artists full time job. The most expensive falla this year cost about 600,000 ($900,000 US).

The artist gets help from the falla (neighborhood) and sometimes construction companies to help build the falla (sculpture) in its location. They start building the weekend before Fallas.

Throughout the week, the falleras, like debs but can be any age, offer flowers to a HUGE wooden Mary. In Plaza de la Virgen (Virgin), there are multiple stories tall wooden slat structures to hold flowers as well as the virgin Mary. At the end of the week the Mary has a huge gorgeous dress made of colorful flowers.

On Friday, yesterday, they burned them. Burned them straight to the ground until they are nothing more than a pile of ash. It’s very bittersweet for the artist- he/she worked for a year on a project just to have it burned but it’s also gratifying that their art served its purpose.

Firefighters have to be at each falla when it burns to contain it and make sure it doesn’t burn down the buildings that are about 5 feet away. Firefighters from all over (and not just Spain, we saw firefighters from Andorra) come and help burn the fallas.

Each fire is started by the falla (neigh.) shooting fireworks in the air symbolizing that falla is about to burn. Then they connect fireworks to the falla and start those. The fireworks then catch the falla on fire.

The heat is so intense and the fire so.. fierce. I took a million videos because the fires were so captivating. I felt like I could have stood there all night.

Sorry this took so long to get up, Fallas was intense and I needed some recovery time.

Love,

Lizzy

Video of a Falla Burning. They start the fire with fireworks. Notice on the left side the streaming water. That's a firefighter watering down a building so it won't burn. Also, this is in an intersection of a neighborhood.