How do you compare something to which there is no comparison? For instance, I know what fireworks and firecrackers are, but the prior knowledge that gives me an image of those does absolutely no justice to what fireworks and firecrackers are capable of being. Every day from March 1st to March 19th at 2.00 pm, the city lets off mascletas in the town center in front of the town hall. Every day at 2.00, hundreds sometimes thousands gather around the strings of firecrackers that explode with the ferocity and force of…
You see, this is where I trail off. What do they explode with the force of? I have nothing to compare it to. Fallas is like nothing that I had ever experienced. Instead I can only explain how the old lady next to me warned me not to close my mouth or the force would burst my eardrums. `…They explode with the force of ‘burst eardrums’´ (?) It doesn’t work, but you get the point that these things are seriously loud.
On or around March 1, various parts of the city of Valencia are closed to traffic as giant several storied-high papier mache sculptures adorn the streets and plazas. These sculptures are the fallas themselves. Artists spend an entire year creating and preparing these for their 5 day viewings. They are generally made to spoof global or local politics. Every year the city government sponsors a falla that is placed in front of the town hall. This is considered the grand falla of the celebrations. It is excluded from the contests that are held to determine which are the best fallas and is the last one to burn. Its incineration signals the end of fallas for that year. Last year I was fortunate enough to see the creation of the government sponsored falla, “Imagine”. “Imagine” was created by Ramon Espinosa, the father of a friend. His sculpture is on record as the largest falla ever created. It depicted a woman holding her newborn child towards hope and prosperity with evil and corruption at her back. His design had been inspired by both John Lennon’s song of the same title as well as the paintings of Gustav Klimt.
What is the most amazing part of this experience to me is the fact that these artists spend an entire year working tirelessly on these sculptures to see them burned to the ground in a pile of ash and cinders during La Crema on March 19th. On March 20th the artists go back to work to prepare for the next year. The history of this tradition goes back hundreds of years. March 19th is Dia de San Jose (St. Joseph´s Day). San Jose is the patron saint of carpenters and on this day the carpenters would do a little spring cleaning of their shops by bringing out all of their old scraps and useless bits which they would pile up and burn. Somewhere along the way someone got creative and molded those useless pieces into an effigy of sorts. From there it became an art form and developed into what it is today.
‘Los Castillos’ are essentially seven nights of fireworks displays. You have to understand that these aren’t quite the same as sitting on the bank of the Cedar River and watching the show from May’s Island choreographed to Lee Greenwood’s “Proud to be an American”. While the synchronicity to Mr. Greenwood’s timeless ostracizing call to unnecessary arms is nothing short of… (there it is again, how do I compare levels of mediocrity in saccharine-sticky patriotic country songs?) Last year I tried desperately to capture it all on camera and finally gave up when I realized I was only capturing a fraction of the show. Los Castillos are set off from the original gates to the city, Las Torres Serranos, near the riverbed. The show lasts about 30 minutes and the colors that dance through the sky for those 30 minutes seem to disrupt any natural harmony in the heavens. I remember watching what appeared to be the sky being ripped apart above me, thinking that this is what the Apocalypse might look like. At times the smoke from the recently discharged explosions got so thick that there were just blasts of indistinguishable color erupting from behind the black shroud.
As if the din of Armageddon erupting in every direction wasn’t enough to keep you awake, every morning between 6 and 8 is what is called la despertá, which translates roughly as the wake-up call. It is this portion of the festivities that exits solely to make sure that if you did nod off for a quick nap, it won’t last long. Local falleros and falleras (the official celebrants of the festival) on their way home from the previous night´s festivities bring along a brass band and march up and down the streets with the horns and drums taking the lead while they toss off a few more firecrackers.
I have been told that Valencia did a major international push behind this year’s festival. America’s Cup will begin in the port of Valencia in April and go until July. The city sees this as their opportunity to put itself on the map. It has been estimated that close to one million people (these figures have been supplied to me by a group of 10th grade students, so do what you will with them) will come to visit Valencia for fallas this year, this is 1 million extra people being crammed into a city that is built to hold 800,000. The anticipation swells as I see them setting up the central plaza for the mascleta. But damn, that’s a lot of people.
http://www.fallasfromvalencia.com/
http://www.fallas.com/
1 comment:
looks like you have the pictures figured out!
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