Leaving Spain with a bang!

We are about to leave Spain to travel east for summer 2018.  Our plans are to cross to the Balearics, round Corsica and Sardinia then on to Sicily before sailing into the Adriatic, but we can’t leave Spain without telling you how much fun we had in Valencia at the festival of Las Fallas.

In case you didn't know, Greg loves fireworks! Well, he read about the festival two years ago and was so excited by the idea, he had our spot in the marina in Valencia booked before we had even left the UK. We thought it would be massively booked up but surprise, surprise - Las Fallas must be one of the world’s best kept secrets. We can’t understand why it isn’t more well-known and those who joined us this year were equally surprised.

Lots of visitors came over for the festival and we were really pleased to spend time with Ela and Piotr Bochinski, Ren and Paul Chodakowski, Miranda and Ed, Sue Johne and Miriam Wood, plus Tom and Kate from yacht Nightfall. Greg’s birthday happily coincided with the event and we enjoyed some celebratory drinks with friends as a result.

If you have never been to it, we would recommend you put it on your to-do list.  It is the most amazing festival we have ever been to.

So what is Las Fallas and why is it so great?

The festival lasts from the 1^st to the 19^th March every year, but the key events are really between the 15^th and the 19^th of March. It is the Festival of St Joseph and essentially celebrates the coming of the new (spring) and the burning of the old (winter). So it’s a combination of a massive flower festival and outrageous pyrotechnics.

It’s a massive party - there are free outdoor DJs and bands with street parties everywhere; bars spilling over into the street, loads of stalls and street food sellers.  The city is obsessed with fireworks and firecrackers, so there are pop up shops selling fireworks and there are endless sparks and bangs taking place at random.  

Greg trying to decide which fireworks to buy!

Greg politely turning down some stylish sunglasses

Even small children are lugging huge boxes of fireworks and setting off firecrackers all over the streets (mostly with no parents in sight!).  Ren speculated that children in Valencia are as comfortable playing with fire as children in St Anton are on skis.  Even their pets lie around sleeping whilst mayhem goes on around them.  

The Mascleta

Every day from the 1st of March until the 19th March at 2pm in the main square (Plaza Ayuntamiento) there is a choreographed spectacle of firecrackers and booming bangs. Each day a different company competes for the best and loudest display.  The winners get to do the final Mascleta on the 19^th. 

Although it sounds a bit odd, there is great excitement and anticipation and its definitely worth getting there early to get a place where your ears can be sufficiently assaulted! The noise at the climax is literally ground-shaking, you can't help but smile!

The Ninots

Every district in the city has a Fallas club and a local committee; they fund-raise all year to fund the building of their Ninot. An exhibition of models of the Ninots can be seen at the Science Park, where you are invited to vote for the one you like best. The most popular one is the only one which is not burnt.  

Some of the Ninots are as tall as the buildings

The Ninots are works of art, sometimes costing up to 100,000 Euros

The Ninots start being built around the 15^th and have to be completed by dawn of the 16^th.  There is much partying going on overnight as the Ninots take shape.  Many are built worryingly close to buildings and the fire brigade is on hand for many of them to hose down the nearby buildings.

Ed and Miranda on the Ninot trail. There are approx 800 across the city

On the final night of the 19^th, to get rid of the Ninots all of them apart from the winning Ninot are burned across the city. We saw one burning so close to the surrounding apartments that the fire brigade had to douse the buildings to stop them catching fire.

Spectacular Ninot in Plaza Ayuntamiento

Ninot burning

The Fire Parade - Cavalcada dela Foc

At 7pm on the 19^th there is also a parade celebrating fire which was also exciting and worth visiting. We got a good viewing spot right next to the barrier so saw all of the floats, fire-eaters and human fireworks very close up!  You can hear Ren and I screaming in the background of this video!

Flowers for the Virgin

On the 17^th and 18^th there is a beautiful procession of people in Spanish traditional dress, bringing flowers to the square called Plaza de la Virgin. The final flower is laid by the Fallas queen at midnight on the 18.^th The square is filled with amazing flowers and a flower sculpture is built bloom by bloom over the 2 days. Definitely worth visiting.

The framework to hold the flowers is built in the days before

Thousands of people in traditional costume bring flowers. you can see men  attaching each stem to the frame behind

The finished framework representing a cloak for the Virgin

Walls of flowers in the square

This video tries to capture the scale of the floral displays

Firework displays

There are late night firework displays for four days.  The first one is on the 15^th in Plaza Ajumenta and then the next three are in the old river bed (the green artery) between the Bridge of Flowers and the Exposition Bridge.  Although these start very late; midnight on the 15^th and 16th, 1am on the 17^th and then 1.30am on the 18^th, they are well worth staying up for.

Again health and safety is not a high priority….you can cycle right past the firework area until quite close to the time of the event! 

So now all is calming down and we are getting ourselves ready to leave. We already have a few dates booked up with people planning to visit us in June in Croatia and October in Corfu which we are really looking forward to. But there are plenty of other available weeks if you fancy coming along this summer.