A Beginner's Guide to Las Fallas de Valencia

A Beginner's Guide to Las Fallas de Valencia

Before you attend Les Falles de València (that isn’t a typo, it’s in Valenciano this time instead of Spanish) you need to ask yourself a few questions. Are you agoraphobic? Afraid of crowds? Bothered by loud explosions? Adverse to overeating? Reluctant to stay out until dawn wandering the streets from one huge block party (called verbenas) to the next? These are all legitimate excuses for avoiding Valencia during Las Fallas (pronounced fa-yas), the city’s most important festival of the year and the biggest celebration I have ever witnessed first-hand.

I usually mock lists about places you must see or things you have to do; as if life can be reduced to a check-list and when you cross off that last item you can throw yourself on a sword or something. I remember seeing an article in a men's magazine a few years back that had a list of 60 things every man must do in his life written compiled by famous people. About 50 of the things on the list you could scratch off with a credit card and about two weeks of vacation time. Silly, amusement park stuff like driving an Indy car, rafting the Grand Canyon, drinking an expensive wine, going to the Final Four (honestly, a basketball tournament?), having a threesome (This was from a best-selling writer. Thanks for your wisdom.), playing golf at the Old Course in Scotland (Play Golf? Over my dead body.) and many more fatuous entries.

There were a few things on the list that I thought were sensible and noble aspirations for any man or woman: Serve your country (Chuck Yeager—I knew there was a reason I liked him), learn a foreign language, learn a martial art, plant a tree (Ted Nugent’s selection—you surprise me sometimes, Ted. You freaking freak.), get in amazing shape, or simply give something back to your community (NBA player Dikembe Mutombo). For the most part the article amounted to little more than a shopping list. So I'm not about to tell anyone that Fallas is something they must see.

No, I have never really been a big fan of events of almost any sort, preferring to avoid the crowds and the exaggerated claims of the organizers and friends who insist that I simply must see this or that. I didn’t have much choice in this matter seeing how—in a fairly literal manner—I lived right in the middle of Las Fallas. I can safely say that Las Fallas is something that you simply have to see to believe, although I will stop short of saying that you must see it. However, if you have a friend who is still living in Valencia next year and you don’t get over here for Las Fallas, you are a truly world-class fool.

If you believe the popular myths here in Valencia, it all started back in the Middle Ages when carpenters used to hang up planks of wood called parots in the winter to support their candles when they were working. At the onset of spring these pieces of wood would be burned, as a way of celebrating the end of the dark winter working days and to welcome the spring equinox. After a while, they began to put clothing on these scraps of wood, and then people started to make parodies of well-known local personalities. These became the forerunners of what are now known as fallas, the enormous cardboard, wood, polyurethane, Styrofoam, cork, plaster and paper maché figures that identify the festival today. Somewhere back in time, the Catholic Church decided to get involved and pretty much kidnap the festival by making it coincide with the celebration of the festival of Saint Josep, the patron saint of the carpenters. I don't like to cite history because it's mostly unreliable and anecdotal and it makes me feel like a plagiarist.

Las Fallas is a huge event taking weeks and weeks to set up, and the official program marks the beginning with a very inauspicious crowning ceremony for the hostess of the festival. The real fun begins on March 15 and lasts until the 19th but there are many events leading up to the opening day. Just setting up the infrastructure around town to prepare for Fallas seems to put everyone in the mood for the crazy party to come. Of everyone that I know in who lives Valencia, whether they are locals, foreigners, or Spaniards transplanted from other parts of the country, people either seem to love Fallas of hate it. I'm still in the “love it” camp.

The Mascletà: A Celebration of Crowds and Noise
The craziest thing about Valencia’s Fallas festival, at least for this outsider, is the daily ritual of the Mascletà. This is a daytime percussion fireworks display that happens every afternoon during Fallas beginning precisely at 2 p.m. and lasting only a couple of minutes. They begin on March 1st. They are held at the Plaza del Ayuntamiento and every single day there are tens of thousands of people who show up to have their collective senses of hearing assaulted and they all do it with great pleasure. This is during the middle of the afternoon so there are few rockets lighting up the night sky; there’s just lots of really loud explosions. The louder the better as far as the locals are concerned. The craziest part about the Mascletà is that I have grown to love it as well. I make try to make it down to the plaza every single day for my dose of noise. You get sort of addicted to the crowds and noise like you get addicted to eating spicy foods; it hurts a little at first and then it's fun.

Valencianos joke that the Mascletà is the only thing in town that is always on time. Indeed, you can set your watch to the warning rocket that is sent up ten minutes prior to the main show. The square starts filling up more than an hour before the blast off as people jockey for the best places to hear the explosions. There is a big area in the middle of the square with a 20 foot fence around it where they set off all of the rockets. Anywhere close by is considered a valued piece of real-estate. On the most popular days there can be as many as 100,000 spectators on hand, all for a bunch of explosions that last less than ten minutes.

How loud is it? Newcomers are cautioned to keep their mouths open during the explosions as this is supposed to keep your ear canals open so that you won’t burst an eardrum. I’m no ear, nose, and throat specialist but I figure it’s better to be safe than deaf. I look up at the rockets in slack-jawed marvel. I do know for a fact that the explosions are so powerful that you can feel the sound waves vibrating your clothing. It’s almost like getting a massage if you are standing close enough to the action. At the end of each show there is a tremendous flourish and the noise is so devastating that I can’t help but to burst out in crazed laughter every time that I go. I can’t explain it but there is something joyous in being completely overwhelmed by the thunderous explosions. It's not uncommon to see people crying with tears of joy. Not me, mind you, but other people.

It all ends incredibly abruptly and there is a huge ovation from the mob. Everyone almost immediately thereafter does an about-face and goes on to do whatever it is they are going to do. For most Valencianos this is when they have their big, midday meal so getting a table in a restaurant is like being in a 100 meter dash with 100,000 hungry Spaniards.

The best thing about the Mascletà is that it adds a lot of life to an already very vibrant city. There is an electricity generated by crowds of people. Crowds aren’t in any shortage during Fallas. The whole festival is more or less predicated on the assumption that there will be tremendous crowds everywhere in Valencia during these first few weeks of March. The Mascletà is sort of the daily christening of the festival but instead of breaking a bottle of champagne they set off a few thousand pounds of explosives.

Las Fallas
The festival revolves around the construction of large, cartoon-like satirical structures called fallas. The themes of the fallas are supposed to be critical in nature and often address issues like government corruption, waiting lists for hospital stays, local politicians, and a favorite my first year in Valencia, the money being spent to host the America’s Cup sailboat races. Each neighborhood builds its own falla which vary in size from modest little ones that are about the size of a mini-van, to enormous structures six stories high. The fallas are the center of each neighborhood’s celebration and the parties surrounding them also vary in size and intensity. The size of the falla does not dictate the size of the block party hosted by the neighborhood, however. My block had a modest falla depicting the female mayor of Valencia but the four nights of block parties were completely outrageous. This street, loaded with night clubs, has a reputation for heavy nightlife.

The fallas really do need to be seen because photographs do them no justice. It is impossible to get a sense of the scale of some of these creations from pictures because they are jammed into narrow streets or tiny plazas. Although they are all different, they all adhere to pastel colors and use the same materials; they are variations on a theme. By the evening of March 15th all of the structures must be finished and ready for judging. From this point on, hordes of people wander the streets admiring the works and taking pictures. I suggest you do this on a bicycle in order to cover more ground, at least if you start out early in the morning. By about noon it is impossible to get around in the city center on a bike as there are hoards of pedestrians. There are something like 800 fallas in all as each casal faller, or community, constructs a children's falla and a larger one.

The parodies brought out in the fallas are mostly inside jokes. I have looked at hundreds and hundreds of fallas and only once in a while do I truly understand their meaning. First of all, the inscriptions are written in a rather poetic Valenciano and they usually deal with local politics. It would probably takes years and years of residency to begin to understand the often subtle nature of the jokes built into the fallas, not that understanding them is essential to enjoying their beauty and creativity.

Els Castells
Things really start to heat up on the evening of the 15th. Each evening at 01:00 am (or is it 01:30?) for four nights there are fireworks displays set off from the center of the Turia Gardens, the main park which runs from one end of the city to the other. I have never been a big fan of fireworks but I have to say that these are very impressive. The most impressive thing is the huge crowds that fill the park for miles up and down the empty river bed that. Up to 1,000,000 spectators make their way towards the park to find a good vantage point to see the show.

These fireworks are called “castells” in Valenciano or “castles” in English. Valencianos will also use the Spanish “castillo” to refer to the fireworks, although other Spanish speakers call them “fuegos atificiales.” And Valencianos do like their fireworks. Both at the mascletà and at the castell Valencianos expect to be assaulted by light and noise

Verbenas: Block Parties
After the final flourish of the fireworks display (and it better be huge), the crowds descend upon their respective street parties which last (at least officially) until 4 a.m. These can range from modest affairs that look like a family cookout to DJ dance parties to enormous blow-outs with multiple sound stages for live music performances. Take your pick because there are hundreds of them going on simultaneously throughout the city and everyone is invited.

Part Bin Laden, Part Bart Simpson
There have been at least five processions (pasacalles) that have passed below my window in just the last half hour and more are coming. Each procession has its own band and is made up of Falleras, people dressed in traditional Valencia clothing of the Fallas. There have also been about a thousand explosions—both big and ear-shattering—in the last 30 minutes. One of my favorite things about Fallas is seeing all of the little kids dressed up for the event. Some are all decked out in colorful and elaborate traditional clothing that can cost hundreds and hundreds of Euros, others wear a traditional pañuelo, or handkerchief, and a smock. The kids are really cute but I can’t forget that they are also the enemy.

Yes, I am scared to death of the kids during Fallas because they are given carte blanche to blow the crap out of everything. Even the smallest of children are armed with little caps that explode when thrown. Rug rats in the 8-12 year range are outright terrorists during Fallas and should be avoided whenever possible. They are armed to the teeth with fireworks. If I see a group of little snot-nosed punks on a street corner during the festival, I will cross the street quicker than if I saw a group of Crips and Bloods having a shoot-out.

I was hanging out at one of my favorite bars in the neighborhood called La Flor de Ruzafa watching as they were constructing the Falla in the middle of the street. The Fallas are made of wood, Styrofoam, and beer, evidently. I had a great view of the whole process as I stood at the walk-up window. There was also a group of little kids lighting off firecrackers. I guess that is all part of the atmosphere. I felt like I was at a cross between the Carnival in Rio and the Green Line in Beirut.

The little terrorists must have run out of firecrackers because they stopped and I doubt it was because they got bored of blowing up shit, I know I wouldn't if I were their age. I wasn’t allowed to so much as light a match as a kid, let alone play with firecrackers. I don’t know if I am more annoyed by the noise or more consumed by jealously because these little kids get to do things I could have only dreamed about at their age. Firecrackers weren’t even legal where I lived so even if my parents weren’t worried about me blowing off a vital part of my body, I probably couldn’t have scored any explosives. The little, pre-adolescent al Qaeda kids were kicking around near the bar and the Falla construction site looking for something to do. This was at about 2 a.m., which during Fallas is a perfectly normal time for kids to be out, unsupervised, in the street.

I was talked into playing futbolín (foosball) with my sworn enemies. I got paired up with the leader of their little terrorist cell. It turned out the young Bin Laden and I dominated the table for quite some time until the others made us break up our winning team. The good news is that bars stay open really, really late during the festival so I didn’t have to choose between futbolín and last call.

Despertà The Wake Up
Getting in past four in the morning shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll just shut the blinds in my bedroom making it pitch black and get seven hours of uninterrupted sleep. Another tradition in Las Fallas is that no one is supposed to sleep…ever! At 7 a.m. Friday they do something called the despertà, or wake-up call in English, or assholes with fireworks is also an acceptable translation. People walk through the streets lighting off incredibly loud firecrackers. In fact, firecrackers are one of the overriding themes of the festival and you will be assaulted, day and night, by explosions both small and deafening during the entire festival. If you are lucky you will only have to sleep through firecrackers, if you aren't lucky a live brass band will make its way down your street bright and early.

Because of the noise, sleeping is all but impossible so you may as well just get up, go outside, and enjoy the fine weather. Every morning the city looks as if it was destroyed the night before. The little courtyard park outside my door was the setting for a party for hundreds of people the night before and is now filled with empty bottles, plastic cups, and every other item needed for an all-night bash. There is a wall around the Aragon Metro station that is about chest high, just the right height for a bar. The was a huge block party right across the street and the morning after the first party the wall was completely covered with the detritus from the thousands of people who came to see a rock group called Pato Daniel perform. The city looks as hung-over as you feel. You go out and get a cup of coffee or two while the cleaning crew army arrives to scour the neighborhood from top to bottom. By 11 am you are ready to start all over again and so is Valencia.

Everywhere at Once
Because Las Fallas is broken down very democratically into dozens and dozens of local celebrations, it is impossible to see everything that is worth seeing. Everywhere you go there are parades and processions, music and dancing, food and beverages, and crowds. I was standing in line at the Mercado de Algirós, minding my own business when a procession of men and women in traditional garb marched by accompanied by a brass band. Something you don’t see every day—except during Las Fallas.

You can make it to most of the main events if you hurry. You should probably make it to the flower procession in the Plaza de la Virgen in which women in traditional Valencian dress bring in wreaths of flowers that are used to create a five story depiction of the Madonna and child.

Don’t you people have homes?
Valencia’s population more than doubles in size during Las Fallas with the majority of the tourists coming from Japan, followed closely by Britain and Italy. The hotels are booked far in advance but from all of the people on the streets at all hours of the day you wonder if anyone actually spends any time in their hotel room. The headline in one of the local newspapers asked, “¿Nadie tiene casa?” This loosely translates as, “Don’t you people have homes?” For the last four days of the festival all automobile traffic is banned in the center historic district of town. Even without cars I had to walk my bicycle through the huge crowds flowing through the streets like a swift current.

The trains that service the surrounding areas of Valencia, called cercanías, are full to the point of bursting, causing breakdowns and delays. The same is true for the subway and bus systems. I had to take the metro at 6 a.m. one morning and I’ve never been on a train with more people before, and never with so many people drunk or hung-over—but to their credit they all seemed happy.

Eat, Drink, and then Drink Some More
The traditional thing to do in Valencia, and especially during Fallas, is to drink a glass of horchata, a smooth milkshake made from tiger nuts (I’ve never heard of them either). There are horchata stands everywhere and usually right next to a stand selling buñuelos and churros which are fried pastries covered with sugar. These stands all pop up like mushrooms during the festival and then promptly disappear, probably off to find another celebration in another city. I wish they were around all year. With their brilliant neon lights they look more like garish carnival rides than food stands.

Almost all of the block parties have their own concession stands which sell food and drink but at rather inflated prices. In spite of the high prices there never seem to be enough places selling drinks, especially the hour or so before the nightly fireworks. Everyone gets a cocktail and heads towards the park. One popular drink that I noticed was a big seller all over town was the cubalitro which is a play on words for Cuba libre which is a rum and coke but in the super-size liter variety. When you order the bartender will ask you when to stop pouring the rum. I wasn’t paying attention when I bought one and the gal put in so much rum that I didn’t know if she was being flirtatious or it was an assassination attempt.

Most of the younger kids just bring their own booze and mixers to the block parties. They set up little mini bars close to the action and avoid the high prices and waiting in line. For all of the alcohol that is consumed you don’t seem to notice many intoxicated people, at least not obnoxiously drunk, but I didn’t look in any mirrors when I was out. During the 2009 Fallas festival there were 72 arrests for drunk driving which seems incredibly few considering how the city is literally awash in alcohol. Maybe the police were busy in other matters and those 72 arrests were just the people who turned themselves in for driving while intoxicated.

La Cremà: Now that’s what I call an exit!
I have mocked the phrase, “All good things come to an end,” but I will say that some good things come to a better end than others. The last official act of Las Fallas is the burning of all of these beautiful creations that have been the object of admiration these past five days or so. This is called the Cremà in Valenciano. It seems almost tragic to commit these masterpieces to the torch. There was a picture in the paper of a group of young girls in their Fallas costumes all crying as their beloved falla went up in a tower of fire. It also seems like an incredibly fitting way to close this wild celebration. What a better way to mark the end of the festival than to reduce the objects of the celebration to ashes?

I was able to watch the demise of my neighborhood’s falla from the comfort of my apartment. It wasn’t until almost 1 a.m. on the final evening when it began with an impressive fireworks display made even more impressive by the fact that my street is a claustrophobic narrow canyon. The falla is doused with lighter fluid and a string of fireworks is then lit which acts as a fuse. Soon the depiction of the mayor of Valencia was engulfed in flames and a huge billow of smoke made the clear night completely black. I was thankful that I was watching from a closed window in my back bedroom.

You’ll have to speak up, I live in Valencia
The locals go way overboard when it comes to firecrackers during the Fallas festival. There are explosions, big and small, all day and all night. They recently changed the law, under European Union pressure, to limit the sale of firecrackers to kids over 12 years old—not that anyone cares what the law says. You see kids of all ages setting off firecrackers and other explosive devices on every street corner. It’s probably a little like living in Baghdad. I’m thinking about buying an AK47 to shoot off in what I call a Gaza salute. I think that you have to be at least 15 to shoot off an AK47.

Perhaps I will hold out for a rocket propelled grenade launcher as I don’t want to be out-done by any of the little brats, some of whom are packing some pretty serious explosives. My motto has always been, “Fight fire with fire...and then some.” Although I can find no moral reasons against it, there are probably some legal restrictions against actually shooting the little terrorists who set off fireworks all day long in the courtyard under my balcony starting at about 9 a.m. after I’ve been out practically all night. It’s not like I’d be shooting to kill; I just want to shoot the firecrackers out of their little, elfin hands.

It just seems like a recipe for disaster to allow young kids to shoot off explosives with no adult supervision. I wasn’t even allowed to light a match as a kid, let alone play with something perfectly capable of blowing something else up. It just isn’t fair. I suppose that I should be grateful because I was crazy enough as a child that if I had the license to kill like these little punks, I’m sure that I’d be short a finger or a major appendage or two. Perhaps this loss of little fingers explains why the Spanish type slower and buy fewer rings than all other Europeans. It’s true.

I half expect to see infants in strollers throwing firecrackers as they do tend to start young here. I’m rather gun-shy of these little half-pint hoodlums. It’s not like I’m afraid of a single kid but there are thousands of them out in the streets during Fallas. I wisely keep my mouth shut but I just want to scream out from my balcony, “Yo, al Qaeda. Go watch cartoons and give the illegal immigrants a break." Don’t they have video games in Spain? Firecrackers have even usurped soccer for the attention of the rug rats. I have seen kids throwing firecrackers while kicking a ball around but I haven’t seen anyone playing soccer without an explosive accompaniment since Fallas began.

I guess the lack of sleep and the constant bombardment have made me a little grumpy. I tried wearing earplugs which didn’t help. I started listening to loud rock music through my headphones. Self-induced deafness is one way to combat the noise but I will probably just tough this out and deal with being shell-shocked.

The Hangover
It is absolutely amazing to me that there isn’t a complete breakdown in the social order with massive crowds intersecting with a seemingly endless supply of alcohol. In fact, there were only 124 arrests during the celebrations in 2009. There are virtually no restrictions on drinking in public and about the only problem you may notice is that there aren’t nearly enough public restrooms to go around. The city only provided 350 port-o-pots with individual street parties supplying another 250—not very many considering that a million visitors come very year, not to mention the other million residents of Valencia.

One small example of the anti-establishment mayhem that goes on during Fallas happened on the last night when we were waiting for one of the big Fallas to burn in the Ruzafa neighborhood. We arrived a bit early to stake out our place and there were already quite a few people waiting. There was a fire ladder truck on hand as there are at all of the larger Fallas. There weren’t any firemen in sight and a crowd had descended on the truck and was using is as a viewing stand. There were empty beer and wine bottles covering the truck and little kids were climbing all over it. I found this to be hilarious but the Spaniards didn’t think anything of it. When the firemen were ready to take back control of their vehicle they weren’t even jerks about it. They just politely asked everyone to get down and they pulled the truck into position in front of the burning structure.

The whole point of the level of intensity with which Valencianos celebrate Fallas is that when it is finally finished everyone is completely relieved that it is over. It is almost impossible to have any regrets, at least if you were going along with the program over overindulgence. The day after the final night of festivities you wake up to a completely changed city. No more fireworks, no more all-night parties, goodbye rivers of booze, adios stuffing yourself on buñuelos, it’s back to the real world again and you have never been so glad to return. One more day of Fallas just may have killed you. It was fun while it lasted but one more day of fun would be way too much.

The cleanup begins even as the last embers of the Fallas have been extinguished. During the entire length of the festival there is an army of city workers cleaning up after each night of revelry. Some 1,300 workers scour the streets day in, day out picking up something like 7,500 tons of trash. It takes a few days to clean everything up and take down all of the lights and other infrastructure. This is about the same amount of time it will take you to recover and finally feel rested after a couple weeks of anarchy.