Thursday March 15, 2007
While the firecrackers and mascleta have been going on since March 1, the official beginning to fallas was Thursday. The first of los castillos (the fireworks display) was held down in the riverbed. The fascinating thing about el castillo is that every night is a different pyrotechnician who will try to outdo what had been done previously. The first one to go on March 15 is the one who sets the bar as each successor will try to one up him and then the next guy and so forth.
Thursday night’s castillo relied heavily on masclets, these are sometimes called dry fireworks. This simply means that they are giant firecrackers that make a flashing pop, but don’t release a colorful display. This guy would send masclets up with the fireworks so that there was a mixture of noise and color.
We had located ourselves directly on the other side of the riverbed from where they were being fired off. It was amazing to watch as the night sky exploded right overhead. I could look directly up and watch as they showered down above me. It got a little unnerving when one cinder didn’t burn out on its way down and landed a few yards away from where we were standing. Marta at this point had the foresight to seek shelter underneath a nearby overhanging balcony, I was too caught up in the moment to have paid any attention. The display ended with an eruption of masclets that left my ears ringing and my stomach lurching.
The show lasted roughly 20 minutes. By 12.30 a group of us got comfortable in the corner of a little Irish pub in the neighborhood and commenced to the next few hours of drinking…so it began.
Friday March 16, 2007
I was startled awake at 8.00 in the morning by a loud explosion outside on the street below. Before I had time to put my head together another came from the other side of the house. These large explosions were followed by smaller ones and were soon layered upon with the sounds of horns blasting and drums beating, accompanying the chants and singing of a crowd moving through the streets. Below the foreground noise I could hear and feel a constant rumble. It was if I was sitting on volcano that was about to go off. The rumbling continued after the more localized noise had moved farther up the street and began to fade into the distance. The rumbling did not, it remained. I later realized that the foreground noise was the falleros of Benimamet as they moved through the town’s streets. The continuous rumbling that I felt below me, was the larger and more populated falleros of Valencia, Paterna and Burjossot surrounding me from every other direction. It took me too long to put all of this together. Justifiably, I had only been working on 3 hours of sleep, nor had the beverages from the night before properly worked their way through my system.
By the time we had been able to track down a cab that previous night we got home around 4.30 Friday morning. I was asleep by 5 and up again by 8. La Desperta had begun. “The Wake-up call” as it is translated, is exactly that. The falleros and falleras have a responsibility to wake everyone up on their way home at 8 in the morning. Depending on how many groups of falleros and falleras are in the area depends on how long La Desperta continues outside your bedroom window. Benimamet, thankfully, only has a half hour’s worth.
It is said that this tradition had was started by Franco. Valencia was a stronghold of Republican support, (the opposition to Franco) so during and after the Spanish Civil War, fallas, for obvious reasons, were not held. It wasn’t until several years later as Franco was trying to reunify the country that the festivities were being encouraged. However, Franco was also weary of any activity that seemed to promote Communitat over Country. Fallas belonging to Valencia and only Valencia was one such activity. His agreement to allow the celebration to go on was that everyone was expected to get up and go to work the next morning. No matter how late they had been out the night before, shops and businesses were to be open and ready the next morning. This is said to be the beginning of La Desperta.
Saturday March 17, 2007
I was woken again by La Desperta, this time on 3 ½ hour of sleep (getting older). This time however, I was only awake long enough to realize that it was happening and went right back to sleep.
To bring you up to date, I had mentioned in a previous post from February that I had been told to expect 1,000,000 more people in Valencia on top of the 800,000 that already live here. The grand total of 1,800,000 people in a city built for much less than half of that was a close proximate. According to recent numbers it was 1,000,000 foreigners that came to Valencia for fallas. That is 1,800,000 people made up of Valencianos and people who have flown in from other countries. This figure does not include the people that come from other parts of Spain: Madrid, Cataluna, Basque Country, Andalucia, Alicante, Castellon, etc. As stated earlier Valencia is the only part of Spain that has fallas. This year Castellon’s annual Magdelena festival happened to be on the same weekend, so that might have kept a few hundred people at bay, but not enough for any relief to the city. From Friday night onwards the city of Valencia was filled beyond any possible explanation.
photos taken from: http://www.levante-emv.co
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