Fallas is an old tradition, held every year in the city over 5 days in the middle of March. The idea behind the festival is that years ago, people used to clear out their houses come March as a sort of spring clean, to get rid of all their old belongings and furniture ready for the new season ahead. Each 'barrio' or district would collect everyones furniture and use it to create some sort of sculpture which would be put on show for everyone to enjoy, before being burnt.
Over the years, this festival has become more and more popular, bringing in tourists from all over the globe.. and now the sculptures or 'Fallas' aren't made out of old wood...
This Falla was voted the best Falla in the city for 2013 and cost around 300,000 euros to build! To visit it, you have to pay a small fee of 1 or 2 euros
Nowadays, each falla is designed to depict a story or scene, with most of them having some reference to something currently in the news or to do with politics. Sometimes they can have a fairly ironic or satirical message behind them
Many Fallas made references to the economic problems facing Spain at the moment
Me with Angela Merkel, German Chancellor, depicted here to be 'killing' countries like Greece and Italy
Each Falla has a Fallera or Queen who is the head and representative of the falla from her barrio. Probably her family contributed a lot of money to the building of the Falla, which is why she gets to be the 'face' of her area's Falla for this years festival
During the weekend, there are massive processions, where all the falleras meet and walk through the streets of Valencia in beautiful dresses, where they present flowers from their district to the statue of the Virgin Mary in the one of Valencia's old plazas
Fallas is a very noisy occasion (of course, it's Spain!) with people lighting fireworks (in the day as well as the night) and bangers in every street. Biggest of all though, was the firework display held in the plaza del ayuntamiento (town hall square) every afternoon at 2pm. The display was so loud, it was deafening and the brilliant blue sky would turn grey and white in a mass of smoke!!
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