Fallas, the world’s biggest bonfire

Every year in March, the Spanish city of Valencia is taken over by a huge festival that stretches back centuries and involves hundreds of thousands of revellers, giant papier-mâché effigies and Europe’s biggest bonfire display.

Even in a country known for its distinctively colourful and riotous celebrations, the Fallas of Valencia is a festival that evokes a particularly magical ambience accompanied by a visual experience that has no equal in Europe.

In the week leading up to 19 March, and coinciding with the festival of Saint Joseph, the celebrations centre around beautiful papier-mâché dolls and firework displays that culminate in a gigantic bonfire as every neighbourhood in Valencia and surrounding towns competes to provide the greatest spectacle.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the word fallas is derived from the Latin for ‘torch’. The festival is said to have its origins in the Middle Ages, when artisans burned the leftover wood, candles and other scraps of their trade in large bonfires that soon captured the imagination of children and adults alike. The Spanish being a people who enjoy their feasts, this originally functional practice soon grew into a lively tradition in which the rubble was used to create fantastical figures.

Soon neighbouring parts of town had entered into a fierce competition to produce the finest paper artwork and, ultimately, the most impressive bonfire with which to see off the winter and welcome the warm rays of spring. As a result, both the festivities and the actual fallas – the grand papier-mâché statues – grew in scale until this finally became one of the largest annual events in both Spain and Europe.

A grand party
The amazing spectacle that greets visitors and is eagerly anticipated by locals every March is the culmination of a whole year’s work. Throughout the year, every single neighbourhood – over 500 in all – organises itself into a special fallas committee that oversees the creation of beautifully worked fallas statues and co-ordinates both the spectacular firework displays and the burning of the statues that marks the highpoint of the five-day celebrations.

The city is woken up with brass bands, a prelude to fireworks displays that herald the beginning of impressive processions of statues that range up to two storeys high. The latter depict anything from historic and imaginary figures to satirical caricatures of politicians, celebrities, sportsmen and anyone else who has caught the public’s attention over the past year. These magnificent constructions have spurred a lively artisan industry that harks back to the early origins of the fallas.

The celebrations take place in every suburb and neighbourhood simultaneously, yet the greatest firework displays are held from the 15th to the 18th in ascending order of grandeur in the city’s riverbed. After having been paraded around and admired throughout the various districts of Valencia, the statues whose slow movements down the streets resemble a procession of visitors from a fairytale land, are collected in squares for La Cremà – the spectacular burning of the fallas statues at midnight on the 19th.

While the authorities and the fire brigade in particular ensure crowds are kept a safe distance away and the burning is done under controlled conditions, the visual effect and ambience remains as special as ever. Thousands flock to the main town square, where the party atmosphere continues well into the early hours, while in local districts of the city the festivities take on a somewhat more intimate form. In all, though, fallas is a festivity as lively, magical and typical of Valencia as it is unique.

New post on at Tuesday, 16 March, 2010, 10:15 am and is archived in Art, Culture, Lifestyle, News about Spain, Places of Interest. Subscribe to answers with RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.