Valencia during Fallas
Valencia has started its fiestas and welcomes everyone with open arms and encourages all to join in the feast: The Fallas. From the end of February, Valencia starts its fiestas with the so-called ‘Crida’, which is the call to action, followed by the Ninot Parade, the splendid Parade of the Kingdom, the “Song of the Kindling Wood” and the Ninot or figurine exhibition. The official fiestas are the 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th of March but the city is already living the spirit of the fiestas with fireworks every midday. The Fallas are a feast to which people from all walks of life can contribute. No one, even if they try, can come to Valencia during this time of year and stay on the sidelines. The catafalques are there in the street. The parades never end, whether the falleros happen to be marching to collect their prizes, offering flowers, coming to the deafening midday sound fireworks sessions, seeing fireworks at night, or listening to outdoor concerts in the streets. Food and drink are everywhere, with typical pastry stands on every corner. The noise is sometimes too much for people used to quieter quarters, but there is no doubt about it.
The Fallas festivities are the expression of a unique kind of art using large wooden structures covered with painted papier-maché. Recently, however, other materials are also coming into use. This festival is also a satirical and ironic vision of local, provincial, national and even international problems and themes. The Fallas criticize almost everything and everyone imaginable, although they do so with tongue in cheek. Over 370 full-scale fallas and 368 children’s fallas are mounted throughout the city, and some of these reach extravagant heights, although they do not usually exceed 20 metres.
Fallas is the culmination of the work and efforts of an entire year. The whole city mobilizes itself and contributes to the Fallas, which also enjoy the institutional support of the City Council. The authorities set up their own falla and help to give the festivity an exceptionally attractive air. It is no exaggeration to say that almost every street corner has its own falla and fallas commission. During the festivities, Valencian women wear their best traditional clothes and parade through the streets in colourful pageantry under their fallas standards to the sound of regional music.
At midday, each falla stages its own sound fireworks display, harmonizing the booming sounds of rockets with the smell of gunpowder. At night there are spectacular fireworks displays that brighten up the nighttime sky. In the Fallas casales (places where fallas celebrators gather) there is no time for sleep. It is fiesta time for five whole days.
On the night of the 19th, Valencians burn down their creations, saving only what is known as the “Ninot Indultat”, or the “reprieved figurine”, which becomes a museum piece. The children’s fallas are burnt at ten in the evening, with the exception of the first prize in the children’s category, which is set alight at ten thirty, and the city council children’s falla, which goes up in flames at eleven. At twelve o’clock midnight, preceded by a grand fireworks display, the large fallas are set to the torch
The entire city is filled with flaming fallas. At twelve thirty the first prize Falla is burnt and at one o’clock at night the Falla in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento is set alight, symbolically finishing for another whole year this semi-pagan, semi-patriotic, semi-religious fiesta that stirs the hearts of the Valencians.
Origins of the Fallas
As for the origins of the Fallas, they seem to be connected with the pagan celebration of the spring equinox. It is said that in olden days craftsmen toiling throughout the wintertime would extend their working hours by using a light perched on a stand which they called a ?parot’, something like a large candelabrum with various arms or wooden appendages. When spring came, they would celebrate the lengthening of the days that made their ?parot’s superfluous by taking them out of doors and burning them in the street on the eve of St Joseph’s day. Logically, this custom was initiated by the carpenters of the city.
Today we know that since 1497 carpenters have been celebrating this Patron Saint’s day with a feast. There is a curious document still preserved from the 15th century which refers to “the day on which the joiners burn the pole.” Later on, the stand was adorned with old garments, much like a scarecrow, and was burnt in a bonfire along with odds and ends and leftovers from the workshop. After this, the stand was given a human visage intended to mock a well-known personality in the neighbourhood. Thus the Ninot, or doll-like effigy, was born. It soon became a fundamental element in the Fallas feast, no longer used on its own, but accompanied by a whole pageantry of figures.
Another important advance was made with the appearance of the “subject” or “theme” of the Falla, generally something satirical or critical, expressed in humorous verse, although perhaps bearing on historical fact or some aspect of local life. These rudimentary representations gave birth to the ‘llibret’ or explanatory book written in the Valencian vernacular. After propping the figurines on full-scale pedestals in the 18th century, the creation of the Fallas festival was almost complete.
The name of the ‘fallas’ was not originally given to the figurines or to the entire monument itself, but rather to the fire which was supposed to consume the whole construction. The scholar Carreres i Zacarés discovered a quote on the fallas dedicated to San Vicente: in 1596 one Pedro Toralba was paid the sum of 74 pounds, one shilling and 6 pence for the possible use of his grills on which he burnt the fallas which are made on the feast day of the Glorious Saint Vicente Ferrer.”
The fallas dedicated to St Joseph quickly obtained the overall applause of the modest working neighbourhood, but was snubbed by the upper class, and the more puritanical. Thus, the journalist José Ombuena in his book on “The Fallas of Valencia” took note of a complaint made by a devout Christian.
This reproof appeared in the “Newspaper of Valencia” in 1792, and included the answer given by the same periodical to a certain vexed priest called Traggia: “Sufficient reason you have as the good Christian you are to be full of sorrow when you observe our streets and plazas full of pyres and figurines all ridiculously dressed, entertaining the great majority of the populace, who on days such as these fully forget their obligations and lose much of their otherwise productive workdays.”
Not many years later, in 1808, the Frenchman Alexandre de Laborde became acquainted with the Fallas of Valencia and described them in his book “Itineraire descriptif de la Espagne” in the following manner: “Every year on the 18th of March, the eve of St. Joseph’s Day, cabinetmakers and carpenters come out onto the streets, each in front of his own workshop, to build truly theatrical representations of life-size figurines, covered with the clothes of the character they wish to represent. They are built with very light wooden structures, a mask forms their faces, their clothes, headdress and adornments are of paper - quite often done with great ability.
These figurines are set up on a huge pyre which is usually well hidden, and surrounded up to its full height by a thicket of mock adornments all artistically positioned.” He also mentions that fine sights could be seen: “at nightfall these figurines were set alight, and in an instant the entire representation goes up in flames. These representations are called the Fallas de San José…”
The importance of the feast was described as follows: “People press thick against one another, persons of a higher position mingle with the masses; people come from miles around and forget all they may have on their minds however important their affairs may be.” It seems that fallas were adorned in those days with all kinds of erotic paraphernalia, with much symbolism using the shapes of fruits and vegetables, in addition to extending criticisms of all their neighbours and the town authorities.
Useful Information
Las Fallas
(15 - 16 - 17 - 18 & 19 March)
