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| Fallas Festival. Monumental |
Valencia
welcomes the spring with its Fallas Festival. Monumental, yet transitory
cardboard statues are carefully built over the course of months, to then be
devoured by fire in a unique spectacle.
Las Fallas is Valencia's most international
festival. In the week of 19 March, the city fills with gigantic cardboard
monuments, called ninots, for a competition that is marked by art, ingenuity
and good taste. The origin of the celebration goes back to the carpenter's
parot: these were wooden lamps used to light their workshops in winter, which
they would burn out in the street on the night before the feast of San José. At first they
would make them look like human forms by decorating them with old clothes and
fabric. In the mid-19th century, however, they began to increase in size and
height and to improve their forms, becoming huge decorative statues.
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| Fallas Festival. Monumental |
Although the most important acts are held during the week of
the 19th, Valencia
is busy preparing the festive atmosphere from 1 March with the mascletás, noisy
firework displays that take place every day at 2pm in Town Hall Square. When the night of the
15th March finally arrives, it is time for the traditional plantà of the
fallas. People work all night to erect more than 700 statues in the city's
streets and squares. Some even start setting up days before - these huge
statues can reach up to 20 metres in height. On the morning of 16th, Valencia dawns
with its streets inhabited by caricatures and satirical representations that
criticise politicians, celebrities and the most relevant events in the news,
with a great sense of humour.
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| Fallas Festival. Monumental |
You can enjoy these impressive scenes for the following days
until the cremà, on the night of 19/20, when they are set alight amidst a
fascinating spectacle of light, music and fireworks. All are burnt except one
ninot which, elected by a popular vote, is saved from the flames to form part
of the collection at the Fallero
Museum. Another of the
most exciting moments of the Fallas is the floral offering to the Virgin Mary.
When the Fallas organisations parade on 17 and 18 March in honour of the
Virgin, they create a mountain of flowers 14 metres high. Open-air
celebrations, parades, bullfights, competitions and other activities complete
the festive programme.
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