Spanish Soccer 101

Spanish Soccer 101

Leo Messi is so good that he often makes his opponents look foolish. In his final goal tonight against Málaga—to complete yet another hat trick—he ran down 70% of the pitch and shot past the goalie with what was all but an impossible angle. The people in the bar where I was watching the game positively burst out laughing, as if Messi had hit the goalie in the face with a pie. You half-expect to hear that Harlem Globetrotter music every time he touches that ball.

I was already a pretty big fan of soccer before I moved to Spain. A big reason I have followed the sport is because I was lucky enough to attend a Real Madrid match when I came to Spain for a visit a few years ago. The 2006 World Cup finals in Germany were extremely popular in Seattle where I was living at the time. I would go to a bar and watch the games as early as six in the morning among crowds as big, boisterous, and beer-fueled as anything you see on a Saturday night. I also knew that a little knowledge of the sport goes a long way as far as having something to talk about with strangers in a Spanish café or bar. More importantly, moving to Spain meant I had to give up being a baseball fan; I had to find something to fill the void in my life.

The Spanish first division, ominously referred to as "La Liga" here, contains 20 teams, with every large city in the country fielding at least one team in this competition. The second league is made up of 22 lesser clubs. Each year the bottom three squads in the first division are sent down to the second and the top three in the second are promoted. Valencia currently has two teams: Valencia Club de Fútbol and Levante Unión Deportiva. Valencia has been in the first division for most of its history while Levante bobs up and down.

The 20 First Division teams play each other two times, once at home and once away for a total of 40 games in the season. Teams are awarded three points for a win, one point for a tie, and nothing for a loss. The League champion is the team with the most points after the final game. If there is a tie at the end of the season the winner is decided on a goal differential. The odds against this are fairly staggering so it never happens, except my first season in Spain when Madrid was declared the winner on goals after the very last game of the year. Besides league play there is the internal league yearly competition called the Copa del Rey. Then there is the UEFA (Union of European Football Associations) Champions League tournament which pits the best European clubs against each other in an annual playoff.

The Spanish football season starts at the end August and ends sometime in May. There are usually international games in June, July and August, so I suppose that soccer is a yearlong sport. It’s kind of like our baseball, football, and basketball rolled into one super sport. It’s not that people here don’t take other sports seriously—basketball is very popular in Spain—it’s just that soccer has a special place in their hearts—probably where religion used to be before people here pretty much gave up on it. There aren’t many new cathedrals going up in Spain these days, now they build huge new sports stadiums. Teams in the Spanish Liga play one game a week, unless they play two games because of some other competition. Matches are on Sunday unless they are on Saturday. Extra games are on Tuesday or Thursdays, or any other day of the week. Football is as essential as oxygen for lots of people here so they need to breathe it in on a regular basis.

I remember on a visit to Spain some years ago I noticed that there was a soccer daily newspaper in Madrid devoted to Real Madrid, one of the most famous football teams in the world. I thought that a daily paper dedicated to soccer was a bit excessive. How much news could there be if there are only one or two games a week for each team? I thought that a daily paper for soccer was excessive until I realized that there is a daily paper for soccer FOR EVERY TEAM! I’m sorry, was I shouting? Some teams have more than one newspaper devoted to them.

I like sports as much as the next slob but this just seemed a little crazy to me. At least it did at first. Now I realize that one daily newspaper for each club is just about enough, that is if you supplement this with the regular newspaper’s coverage of soccer. Some cities have two soccer dailies. Did I forget to mention that? Of course, you also have to watch the constant television broadcasts of soccer news. How else are you going to see a replay of that great goal last night? I guess that following scores and different European leagues on the internet just goes without saying. If you aren't doing this then you are living like an animal.

I am lucky enough to be living in a city that has a really good team. They have won the La Liga six times. They have won the Copa del Rey seven times. Valencia finished as the runners up in the Champions League in 2000 and 2001. After I arrived in Valencia they made it to the quarter finals of the Champions League in 2007 before finally bowing out to Chelsea. The following year Valencia was back in the Champions League playoffs along with three other Spanish teams: Real Madrid, Barcelona, and Sevilla. The next year Valencia was invited into the UEFA Cup (sort of a step below the Champions League) because they won the Spanish Copa del Rey. If this isn’t enough soccer worship for anyone’s taste you have to remember that every two years there is also the European Cup finals or the World Cup.

Just like in the United States, bars here are often heavily saturated with sports, if by sports you mean soccer, and if by saturated you mean that people just won’t shut up about it. Just like soccer in Spain takes on the roll of our three main sports of baseball, football and basketball, bars in Spain double as restaurants and coffee shops. Just like the Spanish football season lasts almost all year, people go to bars early in the morning until late at night. More than likely, the bar will have a television tuned to sports news or an actual game, if one is being played somewhere on the planet. The bar tops are littered with football newspapers and regular papers usually opened to the sports section.

I go to a bar at least once a day at the absolute minimum; I have to have one professional cup of coffee every afternoon. Quite often I go more than once a day depending on how much coffee, wine, beer, or food I decide to consume when I am out of the house. This is why I first decided to become fluent in Spanish football conversation. Talking about football is the great equalizer; it’s the great ice breaker, even if my Spanish language skills aren’t always up to the task. Talking about sports is sort of like the knucklehead’s version of Esperanto, the universal language. An offhand remark about football goes a long way in establishing my credentials as a local in the places I frequent. A casual reference to a player in the league who is currently tearing up the nets helps to gloss over any errors I make in grammar or diction.

It would be difficult to overstate just how seriously football is taken in Spain. I saw a halftime commercial during one game that showed a man in the shower. They showed his bare ass as he was washing up (It’s hard to believe Americans went ballistic over a woman’s breast). He gets out of the shower and slips, hitting his head really hard on the sink. They show him lifeless on the floor of the bathroom when suddenly his eyes open and he gets up. They cut to a caption that says, “This isn’t a good time to die,” and then you are reminded that there are only 14 days until the Barça-Real Madrid match was to be held. No one in the bar laughed at this commercial but me. Then I realized that maybe it wasn’t supposed to be funny and perhaps I should start taking my Spanish Professional League soccer a little more seriously. This same station was urged to pull another similar commercial that showed a man apparently dying in a traffic accident and then getting back on his feet as if nothing had happened. I remember they had television spots warning that the Real Madrid – Barcelona FC match was only 100 days away, 89 days away, and so on.

Europeans are almost always surprised to find an American interested in their sport. I tell them that things are changing in the U.S. And lots of people follow the sport. I read an account of a group of American fans behaving rather badly before one of the World Cup games in Germany back in 2006. A fan from another country said that was the way football fans are supposed to act and he had an increased respect for the Americans. I think we Americans can do hooliganism as good as the next country.

Som Campeons*

*(We are champions!) A text message I was sent in Valenciano after Spain defeated Germany to win the Eurocopa in June of 2008.

Pase lo Que Pase, España Siempre (Whatever happens, Spain Forever)

-From the start I thought that this motto for the Spanish national football team was rather defeatist.

By default I became a Spanish football fan the day I arrived here in Valencia a little over one and a half years ago. I adopted Valencia Club de Fútbol and the Spanish national team as my own, with all of the ups and downs that come with being a sports fan. While I have been satisfied with the modest success of Valencia CF, the Spanish national team had been on an absolute terror since I moved to Valencia. Spain won its qualifying group to enter the 2008 Eurocopa finals held in Switzerland and Austria. The Spanish team, known as La Selección, carries a heavy contingent of Valencia CF stars. Once in the tournament, held every four years between the World Cup, Spain managed to win easily all three of their games in the group stage, with Valencia CF forward, David Villa, scoring a hat trick in the first match against Russia. In the semi-final round Spain was paired with the current World Cup champions, Italy.

Spain had not defeated the Italian team in competitive international play in 88 years. The game ended in a 0-0 draw and neither team scored during the 30 minutes of extra time. It would go into penalty kicks in which the two teams alternate taking five kicks from the penalty mark. Whoever leads after five kicks wins, if it is still a draw, the first team to lead wins. Spain and Valencia CF have not had the best of luck when games end in penalties. In the 2000-2001 Champions League final, Valencia CF lost in penalty kicks to FC Bayern Munich, a bitter defeat still felt here. Spain lost to England on penalty kicks in the quarter-finals of the 1996 Eurocopa. In the 2002 World Cup, Spain lost to Korea on penalties in the quarter-finals (although they beat Ireland on penalties to get to that game). Italy, on the other hand, is known for coming out ahead in penalty shoot-outs and had beat France on penalties to win the 2006 World Cup title.

The Spanish have had many bitter defeats over the years and I don't think that any of my friends thought for a minute that Spain had a chance in the Eurocopa. I think they were too afraid to admit to any optimism, at least not out loud. When the game went into penalty kicks my Spanish friends became practically despondent. I reminded them that the Boston Red Sox baseball team finally won a World Series after 86 years.

Gianluigi Buffon, who plays for Juventus in the professional season, is considered by many to be the best in the world. Iker Casillas, the superstar goalkeeper for Real Madrid, is also thought to be one of the better players at this position. Buffon had blocked a penalty kick in Italy's game with Romania to keep their tournament hopes alive. If you were a betting type person the odds seemed stacked against Spain. In an earlier semi-final match the Croatian squad had come completely unraveled when it went into a penalty shoot-out with Turkey. You could see fear and resignation written all over the face of the first Croat player to make his attempt which he missed badly. David Villa was the first player to take a kick. He approached the ball with a confidence bordering on arrogance. He made his shot easily. In the end, Iker Casillas was able to save two goals to Buffon's one and Spain would move on to take on Russia in the semi-finals.

Spain had already trounced Russia 4-1 in the group stage but Russia looked like a completely different team coming off their victory over Holland, one of the heavy favorites to win it all. Not only did Spain beat Russia again but they gave them another hiding, 3-0. Now Spain had to play Germany in the final match to be held in Vienna. I had already mentioned that I was going to host the final at my place for all of the football hooligans in my circle. Sitting at a bar after Spain's victory over Russia, someone mentioned that we should drive to Madrid on Sunday to watch the final at the Plaza de Colón where tens of thousands of fans had been watching all the previous games. Big crowds aren't really my thing but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to see a bit Madrid again. Besides, I was just about the biggest Spanish supporter of all the people I have met here so far. I was also the most optimistic about their chances from the very beginning since I wasn't saddled with the years of heartbreak like the average Spanish fan.

Madrid Bound

The drive between Valencia and Madrid isn't the most spectacular three hours of driving, but the views seem to go on for thousands of square miles in some parts. There is the odd castle, the occasional village cathedral, and lots and lots of agriculture—mostly olive trees and vineyards, although it seems impossibly dry and hot for grapes. You definitely know that you are driving through Spain as this section of road looks like every travel poster you have ever seen for La Mancha. I got a big kick out of my friend's GPS system that talked to him in a rather sexy Spanish female voice. I wonder if they use the comforting voice of a woman so as not to offend the normal male's obdurate refusal to admit when we are lost. I wonder if she's single?

Through a friend's recommendation we stayed at Hostal Naranco on Calle de la Puebla 6, 2° near the Gran Vía metro. We paid 16€ each for two huge rooms with bathrooms. I have paid over 100€ for a similar room. I had never stayed in a hostel before and I just always thought that they were crappy and only patronized by junkies.

Evidently, this section of Madrid is a gay neighborhood. I didn't really notice. The night after the game, the comedy television news program Intermedio did interviews with gay dudes about who they thought was the best looking player on the Spanish team and one of the guys they spoke with was standing about a block from our hostel. “It's a small world, gay people are everywhere, get used to it,” I think is the message here.

But we weren't here for the room (or a tolerance workshop) so we ditched our stuff and started off towards the Plaza de Colón. We had been delayed by a horrific traffic jam just outside of Valencia so we arrived only about two and a half hours before the game. This meant that we only had time for a quick bite to eat while we jumped into the flow of people heading towards Plaza de Colón. The mob consisted of almost equal parts drunken boys screaming football chants and great-looking young women—and a few odd foreigners, one of whom was wearing his Spanish team jersey.

We got to the square an hour before the game and immediately decided that it would be a shitty spot to watch the match, that's if you could even get close enough to one of the big screens to see anything. The viewing spots were woefully inadequate to accommodate the huge crowds that had been showing up to watch all the games. There were no screens outside of the interior of the square where most of the fans were smashed together. We decided to fall back and find a bar nearby—easier said than done as this area is just about the least bar-friendly neighborhood I have ever seen in Spain. If you want to buy a Gucci bag or an Armani suit you are in luck, just don't try to buy a beer.

We finally found a place and it was more crowded, smoky, and suffocating that the Plaza. Two people in our group were steadfast in their desire to watch the game from the square so we headed back. Along the way we stopped into a completely overwhelmed convenience store that looked like it was being looted by people wearing Spanish national colors. The mob was actually well-behaved and the checkout lines were orderly and fast. The problem was there wasn't any cold beer. Nothing like a piss-warm beer on a hot summer evening, I always say. People weren't even waiting to get to the cash register before they consumed their purchases. I popped a warm beer and toasted the coming Spanish victory.

We muscled our way into the outer ring of the Square and I was able to see half of the screen from one direction and the other half on the opposite side. The game began with a huge roar from the crowd. It was on!

I got a kick out of everything people had brought to the square to eat and drink. Every sort of beer, wine, liquor combination was on hand. Lots of kids were drinking huge, one liter cups of sangria. The young guys standing right behind us had a bag of cheese doodles as big as a pillow. It looked like a comedy prop right out of Pee Wee's Playhouse. At one point they seemed to have tired of this snack option and when I turned around I saw that someone had stepped on it, ripping the bag open at the bottom. When I looked at it a bit later I noticed that a box of cheap sangria had turned over, mixing with the cheese doodles making a mess that would soon dwarf the Exxon Valdes oil spill. One of the guys in our group stepped in the goo and he looked every bit as pathetic as those poor, oil-drenched sea birds along the Alaska coast. The Brits call cheese doodles cheezy-what-its, which sounds pretty funny but not as funny as seeing a Brit's shoe completely covered in crappy sangria and cheezy-what-its.

From where we were standing our view of the screen was being blocked constantly by people waving flags or a girl getting up on someone's shoulders. This inspired improvisational chants from those whose views were being blocked. ¡Hijo de puta, que te caes por el culo! (Hey asshole, please fall on your ass). It was hilarious when the person on the receiving end of the chant finally realized they were the target. They would turn around and then meekly slide out of view. At one point two young guys climbed up on a hedge and completely blocked everyone's view in our section. They seemed resistant to the chants so I took it upon myself to wade on up and ask them to please get down.

I asked them very politely if they could move. They basically told me to fuck off and this was their spot. Without losing my temper I explained that they were blocking the view of about 100 people behind them yet they still held their ground, or perch, on the hedge. One of them began to raise his voice to me and I called him an asshole (gilipolla). I told them that I was going back to where I was standing and if I had to come back to tell them to get down, I wouldn't be talking any more, if they knew what I meant. I think they did. Sometimes people just need someone to remind them of their manners. I started heading back to my group and they got down after a short, face-saving interval. I was the hero of the mob. That is until Torres scored his brilliant, run-completely-around-your-defender-and beat-Lehman-to-the-ball goal.

The crowd reacted like no other crowd I have ever been a part of. Everyone who could shook up a beer and sprayed it into the air which I thought was really immature and inconsiderate until I did it myself, and then I thought it was pretty funny. Everyone was drenched and loving it. Torres, who had a marvelous year at Liverpool scoring 29 goals, had yet to really come alive in this Eurocopa. I had been telling everyone to watch out for him because he was going to bust loose in this final. Luckily, he didn't need to bust loose. Spain was able to keep Germany scoreless and his one goal was enough. In six games Spain had only been scored on twice. While Spain's Iker Casillas is now considered the best goalkeeper in the game, he could have sat in a lawn chair for most of the Eurocopa because the rest of the Spanish defense was absolutely stifling.

The after-game revelry was riotous spontaneity, pure and simple. If there was a fountain, people swan in it; if there was a statue, people climbed it; if there was a bar, people entered, used the bathroom, ordered a quick shot, and left (OK, at least we did that a couple of times). Our group had an informal competition to see who could instigate the most football chants among the mob. My deep tenor chant of EEEEEE-KEEER (Iker Casilllas) never failed to get people going. A popular chant in the mob was “Yo soy español, español, español (I am Spanish).” I didn't really feel comfortable with that one as my citizenship status is merely honorary at this point. Chanting that I am an illegal alien who happens to be a fanatic supporter of the Spanish national squad just doesn't have a nice ring to it in Spanish.

Madrid will probably never be this insane ever again, even when they win the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. What happened in Madrid was the release of several decades of pessimism, defeatism, and self-doubt. What brought Spain out of this funk was a team of players too young to have any doubt about their abilities. Spanish fans maintained a sense of very guarded optimism after the first victory in the Eurocopa. Spain had disappointed too many times in the past for people to get too carried away. The players were another story. From the start they displayed a sense of confidence and belief in the team that carried them all the way to the end, and perhaps further if you are looking at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Of Threats and Lessons Learned

People in Spain are very passionate about soccer. This seems like a rather cliché observation coming from an American who has spent so little time in this country. It seems like something someone would say who was seriously lacking in creativity and original thought. I’m saying it not because I lack creativity or original ideas; I’m saying it as a defense against charges that I threatened an 11 year old boy with violence while watching a football match on television. I have a few other remarks for the jury, or the judge, or whoever you speak to in a Spanish courtroom (I hope I never need to learn this the hard way).

I realize that it is perfectly acceptable in Spain to bring your children to a bar. The Spanish make little distinction between bars and restaurants; they are both places for everyone to enjoy. I realize that it is not unusual for young children to stay up to watch a soccer match on television that begins at 10:00 p.m. on a school night (At least I believe that it is a school night. You never know here with the hundreds of holidays on the calendar). I don’t mind if an 11 year old boy watching a match with his father expresses a lot of opinions about the players, even when most of these opinions are unfavorable and often insulting, at least to me. With all of this understood, there are still rules to follow when you watch a match in a public place and the sooner this little loudmouth learns these rules the better.

The game was between Real Madrid and Betis (a team from Sevilla). I’ve noticed that most people in Valencia are Barcelona fans; at least they are when our own club isn’t playing. Tonight, in this bar, everyone seemed to be rooting for Madrid, including the opinionated juvenile delinquent up too late on a probable school night but who can tell in Spain where people take off work with some of the flimsiest excuses you are ever going to hear. The youth in question showed his support in a sort of New York manner: by criticizing every player on the Real Madrid squad: Guti is slow, Casillas is a lousy goalkeeper, Sergio Ramos can’t pass, and on and on. Everyone has a right to their own opinion. Spain is a free country, at least I think that it is. Is Spain a free country? We say it all the time in America but I’m not really sure exactly what that even means.

I do know that there are limits to freedom. I don’t think that it is acceptable behavior in any bar in Spain to insult one of the best players for the Spanish national team and the full-time ace forward for Real Madrid, Raul. It’s just not done. You don’t scream “fire” in a crowded theater and you don’t talk trash about Raul. This is why I told the little punk next to me that he was going to get a serious beating if he ever got down to insulting Raul in his inventory of criticism for the Real Madrid team. His father seemed to agree with me as he threw his hands in the air in a gesture that means, “What are you gonna do?” This gesture translates into any language. I don’t know what you’re going to do, dad, but I’m going to give your kid a vicious beating if he starts in on Raul. I’d be doing it for his own good. I wouldn’t expect that a Canadian kid would have lived to see his first zit if he talked smack about Wayne Gretzky, Muslim kids don’t mock the Prophet, and this little runt needed to learn that in Spain, if you have anything bad to say about Raul, you keep it to yourself. Everyone at the bar seemed to agree with me on this.

I don’t think any Spanish court would convict me on this crime of threatening a minor, especially since Raul scored the first goal of the game on a penalty kick.

Top Excuses for Weaseling Out of Work to Watch Football

First of all, try not to over-think this too much by feigning some illness you read about in a Stephen King novel. Just like back when you were in school it’s better to stick with the tried and true classics. Remember to make the call from home and not in a crowded bar with a bunch of drunks belting out a teary national anthem. 

People tell me to DVR it but it’s not as if a guy who still has four payments to make on his toaster is going to have a modern television. It’s not like watching the matches in a bar is really being economical as my last World Cup bar bill would have been enough to send one of my non-existent children to Yale for four years…and that was just during the group phase. A friend says he’ll watch the game at work on his iPhone which I don’t think is too cool seeing how he drives a school bus—they only job he could get because he’s on probation.

So if you’re looking for an excuse to duck out of work just rely on one of these timeless originals:

1) Diarrhea. This is always a conversation stopper and I guarantee if you use this excuse there won’t be any follow up questions. The only response you’re likely to hear is “Eew!” before they hang up on you.I'm fully aware that the mere mention of diarrhea is childish but do you want to watch football or do you want to be a grown up and go to work?

2) Dead Grandparent. This one is also bullet-proof even if you’ve used it a few times because people don’t know how many grandparents you have in our divorce-prone society.

3) Had to take child to the emergency room. A great one if you have kids but it will elicit a lot of unwanted attention in the form of condolences about your precious baby when you just want to concentrate on the damn game and forget about the little monster for 90 minutes. Seriously, is that asking too much out of life?

4) Play dumb. “What? I had to work today?” Works best if you actually are stupid.

5) Car trouble. For hippies replace “car” with “recumbent bicycle.”

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.