This past Friday through early Monday morning our group went
to a festival in Valencia called Las Fallas. We stayed in Gandia, a good walks
away from the beautiful beach, and at night would take the bus or train into
Valencia.
Las Fallas weekend is the most incredible weekend I’ve had
in Spain. The experience is completely unexplainable it’s that incredible. I
was even thinking about not writing anything about it because in no way shape or
form can I do it justice by writing about it, but I will do my best.
This picture is of my favorite falla. This is just a small part of the entire piece, but it was absolutely beautiful. Everything was a flower/fairy and the amount of detail was immense.
For a year, artists work on and build their “falla”. ‘Falla’
in Catalan, language of Valencians, means fire. The big fallas are anywhere from six to eight stories high,
and the small ones more or less than ten feet tall.They depict anything from children’s fables to politics. There are a lot
of hidden images, and such as sexual innuendos, in the artwork as well as many
other things, and are made of a paper mache type material. When you find a big falla it takes a good amount of time to take
everything in. For one, there are tons of people trying to work their way
around it, and also there’s just so much beauty and details you need a few
moments just to take in the outline. The festival is for Saint Joseph, as all
festivals in Spain are for some saint, but none of the fallas I saw had
anything to do with St. Joseph/religion.
The atmosphere is what makes it so incredible. Overall it’s
one giant party but it is really divided into two invisible parties, one for
the people from Valencia, and the second for everyone else. Millions of people
come here from all over the world and Spain, and everyone is so friendly. The
cool thing about this festival is that it’s for everyone. The young and the
old, families, teens, everyone are enjoying themselves. Everyone in Valencia
takes part in it some how. Parades were constantly going on. Women, men,
children, and babies were always walking down the street in some sort of
traditional looking clothing, each holding one flower which was placed at the
body of the Virgin Mary statue at the end, making a huge skirt of flowers
around it. Besides that, there were these devilish looking costumes people wore
running around with fire and sparkler things and occasionally spraying the
audience with sparks, people on stilts, large animal things, and much more.
Every second, not exaggerating, some sort of firework, sparkler, or bomb noise
was going off. As one of my friends put it, it was as if it were an end of the
world party. My hearing probably didn’t fully recover till a day after I got
back to Granada.
For the week of the even, the entire city is closed for Las Fallas. Neon lights are on every corner and light show displays occurred
in many places. One of my favorite places I saw was the Eifel Tower. You could
see this light display so many blocks in advance because it was so bright. It
was absolutely beautiful. They played classical music and had the lights in
synch with it while me and my friends were right under it.
Las Fallas would not be Las Fallas if it were not for the
incredible amount of fire that’s made during this festival. Many times I kept
thinking how something like this would never and could never happen in the US.
For one thing, we have fire regulations that apparently aren’t as strict here,
second the police would be going crazy with the amount of people drinking in
the street and amount of people in one area period. Never once did I see a
fight or tiff between people because everyone’s enjoying themselves and the
fallas.
The major event of the weekend is the burning of all the
fallas. I may have seen 30 fallas in the course of three longs nights. Over 700
burned. The burning started around 10:30 for the small ones, then the larger
ones around midnight or 1:00am. The falla that won first place goes to a
museum, but all the rest burn. I was in the center of a huge plaza, packed with
so many people before the start of burning of the large fallas. Somehow, my friends and I stumbled into other people from our
UNH group, which is crazy because there were an incredible amount of people
packed into the center of this area and had we tried to find them it would have been impossible. We met all the people around us and there were
people from Spain, England, Holland, Ireland, the US and many more. We had
views, not close, but views all the same, of three fallas, which means three
very awesome firework shows. Before every falla was lit, no matter big or
small, a firework display went off. These were the best fireworks I have ever
seen in my life. They had it down to a slow rhythm at first that only got
faster and faster it was insane. I couldn’t stop thinking about gigantic sum of
money it took to buy all of the fireworks.
Finally, they light the falla by first wrapping a huge rope
with firecrackers on it around the falla, then it lights and there’s a one
hundred feet tall fire. The sky filled with black smoke and eventually huge
chunks of ash was falling on our heads.
stories high
The emotions that run through the crowd are very mixed. Some
people are cheering and shouting, but also there are people in silence and even
crying. My friend saw a group of young teenagers crying together as the falla
was lit. IThe fact that artists have worked for a year on a masterpiece then
set it on fire themselves is intense.
It’s tradition and they know it will be set on fire, but nonetheless I’m
sure it’s still very painful for them. Besides that, another reason to cry over
it is it’s very beautiful. The falla, the burning of the falla, the atmosphere,
is all very beautiful.
This is a very general description of what Las Fallas are
like/are. My professor said before the trip that if it’s not on your bucket
list already, it should be. Had I known about Las Fallas before, it definitely
would’ve been on it. It baffles me when so many people in Granada haven’t been
to Valencia for Las Fallas. It’s a good drive away, but it’s worth every
second. There isn’t one moment that stands out more than the rest. The whole
experience in my mind lasted over a week, not three days. It’s definitely one
of those “had to be there” events, but I would encourage anyone who ever
thought of visiting Spain to go to Las Fallas. I loved every single minute of
it, and am so grateful I can study abroad, let alone in such a great country.
Under the firework to the left it the burning falla. It's mostly black from all the smoke, but in comparison to the building behind it you can see that it's absolutely huge. The photo was also taken from far away.
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