Fiery Las Fallas Festival a bang-up time in Spain
BY HEDY WEISS Aug 27, 2010
The giant "falla" statue that stood in Valencia's City Hall plaza this year offered a cartoonish look at domestic life. Like all of the 500-plus fallas, it was set on fire.
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Updated: November 11, 2010 2:34PM
VALENCIA, Spain - In March, I headed on a trip to Valencia - Spain's third largest city, after Madrid and Barcelona - fully determined to escape my round-the-clock addiction to the theater.
But wouldn't you know it: I arrived in the history-rich Mediterranean hub just in time for the climactic week of the city's annual Las Fallas festival, quite possibly the most wildly dramatic, elaborately choreographed, grandly orchestrated and literally explosive example of urban performance I've ever experienced.
What happens when an entire city, along with hordes of international visitors, mobilizes into a combination sculpture workshop, performance art stage, massive parade-ground, halftime show, paella-making center, bullfighting exhibition and daredevil demonstration of pyrotechnics- Think Mardi Gras, Carnival and the Rose Bowl all rolled into one - but much, much louder and without a single visible incident of drunkenness or rowdy behavior, despite the massive crowd that's attracted to this remarkable blend of the sacred and the profane.
Rooted in a tradition dating back to the Middle Ages, Las Fallas (from the Latin for "little torches") is believed to have begun as a spring cleaning rite for carpenters. On the eve before the feast of St. Joseph, carpenters would set fire to their excess materials and the boards that held the candles that lit their workshops through the winter. The wooden lamps were dressed up like fanciful doll figures and dubbed ninots. Starting around the mid-19th century, these ninots became bigger and more complex.
Today, the ninots have morphed into mere decorative elements appended to each of the enormous 500 or so papier mache, polystyrene and soft cork monuments referred to as fallas.
These gaily colored satirical sculptures, grandiose and semi-kitschy in style (think R. Crumb's cartoons crossed with Disney, plus a little help from Michelangelo) are created throughout the year in special workshops, each underwritten by a particular neighborhood association.
This year's fallas, erected in both the giant plazas and narrow sidestreets of Valencia, dealt with classic and topical matters - from sex, family and a vision of paradise, to the decadence behind the global economic debacle. The latter sculpture, "Fat Cat," was my favorite. It featured a house of cards crafted from euros and brilliant riffs on President Obama (clinging to a life preserver), French President Nicolas Sarkozy (sitting on wife Carla Bruni's lap), Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (playing President Dmitry Medvedev like a fiddle) and even Spain's own prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero (heading to kindergarten to learn about government finance).
On the final night of the festival, March 19, the explosives-rigged fallas are set ablaze, as tradition demands. The naughty statues get turned to dust in a sort of mass catharsis that also serves as a reminder that, for a couple of weeks each March, Valencia probably is one of the world's largest arsenals of explosives outside of a war zone.
The climactic finale is only a small part of the cacophonous snap, crackle and pop.
At 2 p.m. each day during the week leading up to March 19, massive crowds gravitate toward City Hall Square for 10-minute mascletas, ear-shattering pyrotechnics displays designed to generate the loudest possible noise (bring earplugs). Magically, by the time the dense cloud of smoke has cleared, the crowd has calmly begun to disperse and return to normal. But be warned: Firecrackers set off by tiny kids under the wholly relaxed supervision of parents can detonate at any corner.
More noise, as well as some of the most breathtaking fireworks displays you will ever witness, begin at midnight on each of the final four days of Las Fallas. One unforgettable show seemed to recreate the Big Bang and the evolution of all living forms.
Part of the beauty of Las Fallas is the way it intersects the sort of irreverent political satire you might find in the Onion with the baroque rituals of the Catholic church.
The festival's sacred aspect, the Flower Offering, is no less dazzling than the fireworks and flammable effigies. It consists of a monumental parade that spans two days and involves 150,000 men, women and children, all in traditional costumes.
Emotion-filled women wear heavy silk brocade dresses, with their hair coiffed in tight plaits festooned with ornate gold combs. They carry bouquets of red, white and pink flowers that they deposit at the base of the Virgin of the Defenseless - a 46-foot-tall wooden grid-like figure standing in a square behind the city's cathedral. Accompanying each group of flower-bearers is a first-rate marching band (everyone in Valencia seems to have had musical training), as well as hordes of onlookers. A team of workers climb the grid and carefully pack the flowers into openings to create the elaborate gown and robe of the Virgin.
And if the Flower Offering isn't enough, you can head to the trendy residential neighborhood of Almirante Cadarso and catch the goofily theatrical Parade of Moors and Christians (think Cecil B. DeMille, complete with camels, horses, harem girls and wild-eyed warriors). It's a hoot, and it might even put you in the mood for the far more savage encounters in Valencia's city-center bullring, a facility kept busy during the Fallas festival.
I had a real crisis of conscience about seeing my first live bullfight. But I recalled Voltaire's maxim - "once a philosopher, twice a pervert" - and decided to go.
It was simultaneously horrible and fascinating, and though I rooted for the bulls, they clearly were doomed. (Spain's Catalan region has since voted to ban bullfights, but the primal ritual will continue elsewhere.)
Valencia is a wonderful city to visit even without Las Fallas madness. I would happily return for the springtime Festival of Contemporary Dance, or for the opera season at Valencia-bred architect Santiago Calatrava's Palace of the Arts in the ultra-modern City of Arts and Sciences. Or I could just continue eating at such memorable restaurants as Vinatea in the Hotel Ayre Astoria Palace, where I had a divine "black" squid paella, or Cafe Montana, serving superb tapas in Cabanyal, the picturesque fisherman's district.
Yet to avoid Las Fallas is to miss something unique. I only wish its anthem was that song by the Doors. Can you imagine the crowd singing, "Come on baby, light my fire / Try to set the night on fire"-
Information for this article was gathered on a research trip sponsored by the Tourist Office of Spain.
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