Sorry for the delay in blogging. I know it has been a while, but somethings are worth the wait! In this edition of “Where in the world is Jake O.” we are going to be exploring some of the madness that the city of Valencia calls Las Fallas.
First of all, what even is it? Fallas is a city wide festival that officially lasts four days in the middle of March, but some events started at the beginning of the month! The tradition began many years ago; when people in this part of Spain would do their spring cleaning, all of the village or neighborhood would throw their trash into one big pile and then burn it. Now, instead of burning trash, they burn giant statues (like the photo above, more on that later). This year the city was celebrating their 75th annual event, though the traditions go back much further, and also this year they were candidates being considered by UNESCO to become a world heritage event, so they definitely did not hold anything back!
Each day from Monday, Feb. 29th until Saturday, March 18th they would hold the “Mascleta” in one of the main city plazas. At two o’clock on the dot, the fireworks would begin, and while it certainly was a sight to see, the most important part of the event was the sound. If you were standing right in the plaza, it was so loud because the noise would echo off the buildings, but even if you were several kilometers away you could still hear it! As it neared the conclusion at 2:05, the booming would occur in a more rapid succession, until you were hit with a tidal wave of sound, that shook not only your chest but also (seemingly) everyone and everything around you. Not something I am going to forget for a while, but my ears will thank me that it’s over for now!
Similarly, each Saturday during March there were fireworks, and then during the actual week of the festival they occurred every night! I thought the first ones I saw were some of the best I have ever seen, in quality, variety, and duration, and throughout the week they just kept getting better. In addition to all the fireworks, there were constantly firecrackers and poppers exploding in the street all throughout the week, and if you didn’t know it was festival you might have thought there was a war going on!
I would be remiss to not include the food of Las Fallas as well. The most popular of course would be the churros with hot chocolate. While the churros would be your standard churros (though always better when made fresh and bought by the dozen), the hot chocolate in Spain is unlike any that I have ever had before in my life. It is incredibly thick and chocolatey, in fact I am fairly certain than at least 80 percent of it is just chocolate. Tough to drink at first because it was so unlike what I’m used to, but it is much better when you dip your churro in it, and I did get used to it after a while. The other most popular dessert is called a buñelo, which is like a fried donut made with pumpkin, and was equally delicious.
So back to the large statues… Each neighborhood has a group of “Falleros” that meets weekly all throughout the year to plan the festivities, both with the traditional garb, the feasting, and the statues that they make. Kind of like an American Legion lodge of sorts. As soon as the previous fallas passes, they start brainstorming what to do the following year, and have artists create this giant statues (some over 30 feet tall) to display in the middle of the street. I have heard the some of the most expensive can range from $200,000-$300,000, which is incredible considering that they are only displayed for about a week and then burned. But the final evening in which they are burned, called “La Crema,” is a sight to behold! Each neighborhood which had a falla (which would be perhaps every six blocks) would all light off fireworks and then firecrackers to start the burning of their falla statue. For the most part, all of these happen about the same time around the city, but fortunately there are not enough firefighters to go around (who are very much needed as many times they must hose down the nearby buildings to prevent fires) so there is a bit of a delay. The last event for the whole festival is the fireworks and then burning of the official municipal falla in the city square, and I have never seen so many people crowded into one place or been so squished, and we weren’t even close! I bet that’s how people in Times Square for New Year’s Eve feel, although fortunately we were only like that for half an hour, not a whole day of waiting! There were also lots of parties in the streets; every few blocks you could hear music from a stage with a local DJ or band. I was most fortunate that my host family’s apartment is just far enough away from the madness that when I finally was ready to go to bed, there usually wasn’t any loud blaring noises right outside my window.
Fallas was a crazy event in which the city swelled with people from many different countries, and was a lot of fun spending it with my friends from America, Spain, England, and Germany! I have quite a few fond memories from this event, and perhaps some day I will be able to return!