Every March, Spring and Fallas seem to arrive together in my home city of Valencia, Spain. From March 12 to March 19, the city stops its daily business to celebrate this festival. In a ceremony called la plantà, the setting, 700 colorful statues are mounted throughout the city, in every square and street crossing.

Fallas is the name of the festival, but it’s also the name of these statues, real works of art, built each year for the occasion. There are 368 children’s fallas and 370 full-scale fallas. These can stand as tall as 90 feet, and they portray popular characters, like celebrities and politicians, usually in very humorous situations. The children’s fallas represent cartoon characters.

 

The origins of the festival

The tradition of Fallas goes back to the fifteenth century. Back then there was no electricity, so during the winter, carpenters used tall, wooden stands to hold candles for lighting to work by. As spring approached and the days grew longer, they didn’t need the stands and candles anymore. So on March 19, during the feast of their patron saint, Saint Joseph, they would take these stands and burn them on the streets, together with other odds and ends from their workshops. Over the years, these bonfires became the fallas we know today. They’re not made just of wood anymore, but of papier-maché, cardboard, and other materials as well, and then painted.

 

Falleros, Falleras and Casals

Nowadays, each falla is commissioned by a casal. Casals are fraternity-like associations with their own clubhouses. They act as social clubs where their members gather to socialize and to hold fundraisers during the year to fund the cost of their two fallas (one full scale and one children’s). Fallas are expensive works of art, and some cost upwards of $1million! It’s hard to believe that, on March 19, the feast day of Saint Joseph, they will be set on fire, in a ceremony called la cremá, the burning, which is the culmination of the week-long celebration, marking the end of the festivities. The next day, the streets will be completely cleaned, and work will start on next year’s fallas. 

But casals are more than that. They’re the gathering place of falleros and falleras (the men, women and children that dress in the traditional outfit and participate in the festival), where they’ll eat, dance and socialize during the festival. Also, every year, each casal appoints a queen and a child-queen (called fallera mayor). Thirteen of these ladies will then be democratically chosen to form the court of honor, and a Fallera Mayor de Valencia will be chosen among them. Together with the mayor and the governor, they will preside over every event this week.

 

The festival of fire and lights

During the week-long festival, pyrotechnics are heard or seen every minute of the day. La despertà, or awakening, are firecrackers and rockets set off early in the morning by each neighborhood, that make you jump out of bed. Falleros and falleras dress in their traditional Valencian outfits. The falleras, the girls, hair, is split into three sections, which are then braided and rolled into buns, two over the ears and one above the neckline. When that long process is done, it’s time to put on the dress, made of rich, bright and colorful brocade, the design of which has changed little over the centuries. Falleros, the men, wear embroidered pants and brocade vests over a bell-shaped shirt, crochetted tights and alpargatas, aspadrilles.

Every day at 2 PM, everyone congregates in City Hall Square, Valencia’s main square and a crossing of major streets, where the most special falla, appropriately named falla de la Plaza del Ayuntamiento, City Hall Square Falla, stands tall. There, during the following five to ten minutes, the biggest show of noise from gunpowder-set firecrackers, takes place. It might sound weird to the foreigner, but it is an exhilarating experience. It is called la mascletá, and it’s a pyrotechnic show where the whistles, bangs and thunder build up in a crescendo of noise and smoke. The blaring of the explosions come in different combinations of rhythm and intensity, in a feast for the ears, more than the eyes.

And every night, castillos, or fireworks shows, are shot from each of the 700 fallas, illuminating Valencia’s sky.

 

 

Religious and Secular traditions

A very important aspect of the Fallas festival is the processions of falleros and falleras with an offering of flowers to the Virgen de los Desamparados (Our Lady of the Forsaken), matroness of the city, represented by a giant size statue in Plaza de la Virgen (Our Lady’s Square), whose wooden body structure will be completely covered with flowers by the end of the festival, in a design that changes every year, and revevals itself as the flowers are added to the wooden structure.

Other diversions that take place in Valencia during Fallas include some 170 food festivals, the non-stop music of over 300 marching bands, and bullfights every evening. Like in every popular festival, street food is a must, and in Valencia it includes buñuelos, sweet fritters, and churros, both dipped in thick hot chocolate, as well as paella of course, and embutidos, cured meat and sausages.

 

 

Note: Most of the photos of Fallas spread throughout this page are from my sisters, Susana, Paula and Marta, and my nephew Mauro, who keep me posted (no pun intended!) during Fallas. The rest are from my school friend Isabelle Marque-Pucheu, who now lives in France, but who, like me, has never lost her roots to our homeland.