Valencia en Fallas

I wasn't sure what exactly to ex­pect when I was told of Valencia's annual spring celebration of Fal­las. My Valencian friends told me I was going to love all of the all-night parties and gave me in-depth lists of every last thing I had to see: the fireworks in the daytime and the nighttime, the offering of flowers to the Virgin Mary, the parades and the sculptures. This would require lots of walking and planning. Oth­ers told me they didn't really like Fallas. The city becomes "llena de gente," (Spanish for crowded), and it would be especially so this year because the festival fell on a week­end. Older people warned me to be­ware of thieves and be careful of all of the fireworks because it is easy to lose a finger.

Fantastic, cartoonish sculptures were constructed in the streets - these were the Fallas (Torches in English). Each Falla represents a community, a neighborhood of Fal­leros and Falleras, who pay money every week in order to have their Falla built, and to construct a tent in which they have parties and meals together. Thanks to our friend Mar­cos, who is a Fallero, Ashton and I actually got to visit one of these. We danced into the early hours of the morning on Sunday night, and we had an amazing time.

The goal is to go around and visit all of the Fallas to see all of these sculptures, but there are hundreds, ranging from building sized tributes to Leonardo da Vinci to tiny chick­ens atop wooden eggs, like the one that graced our neighborhood. At the end of Fallas, at midnight, all of the sculptures are burned; this is a sort of celebration of spring, and the out with the old, in with the new mentality that comes with it.

Fallas has its origins in carpentry; locals have explained to me that after a long winter of working in­side, carpenters would bring their scrap materials out into the street, build something out of them and burn them as a sort of spring clean­ing practice. Over the years, this evolved into a city-wide party that lasts for almost a week.

One of the most important words I learned during Fallas was "petar­do" which is Spanish for firecracker. They are everywhere during Fal­las. Everyone seems to be throwing them all over the place.

Unlike in many places in the United States, fireworks are very common and accepted here. Children play with them in the streets in a way that would make the majority of American mothers faint. My friend Zach, who studies at the Institute with Ashton, and I were especially excited about this. Fireworks are il­legal in his state, so he went to the local store and bought a ridiculous amount of them. We blew up orang­es under bridges in the middle of the city with firecrackers that could have blown our entire arms off, and no one even gave us a second look. It was glorious.

The Fireworks shows during Fal­las put every Fourth of July celebra­tion I have ever seen to shame. Dur­ing the day, they have the mascletá, daytime fireworks, so loud the lo­cals tell you that you have to "abrir la boca," or open your mouth, so your eardrums don't pop. There were also shows every night of Fal­las. There were fireworks of every color, size and shape. They seemed like they would go on forever and took up the entire sky. They were unbelievably beautiful.

Another amazing thing about Fal­las is the food. On every street cor­ner, there was a stand where one could purchase buñuelos, basically a type of pumpkin flavored donut, and churros of every description. There were regular churros to dip in chocolate, churros full of choco­late or covered in chocolate, dulce de leche churros, and cream-filled sprinkle-covered churros. I tried them all, and I justified this as a cul­tural exercise. I know we have chur­ros in the United States, but these cannot be compared to the ones I ate during Fallas. This might sound elitist, but it's true - no other pastry can compare to the Spanish churro.

I also enjoyed bocadillos, Spanish subs made of baguette-like bread, with jamón, delicious Spanish ham, and horchata, an interesting bev­erage made from tiger nuts with a taste that reminds me a little of Mylanta, but not in a bad way.

On Monday night, it was very important to watch a Falla burn. Everyone had their favorites, and mine was a very detailed sculpture of a lady riding an Indian elephant. As Ashton, Zach and I watched the beautiful elephant go up rapidly in flames, I couldn't help feeling a lit­tle sad. I realized then that my time here in Valencia is beyond its mid­point; like the Fallas, I'm only here for a short time.

But I didn't have too much time to ponder this, because as the Falla went up in flames, parts of it started raining down on the crowd; it was pretty dangerous. We were caught up in an enormous wave of people who were trying to avoid injury. Just as the Falla disappeared behind a wall of smoke, it started to rain. The timing was unbelievably perfect. We were soaking wet by the time we got back to our apartment at around three in the morning, and we were also still covered in ash. But we were happy.

Marcos told Ashton and I we should come back for Fallas again next year (Spaniards tend to think we're rich since we are studying in a foreign country). I know that won't be possible, but I would like nothing more than to be able to celebrate the arrival of spring like that every year. There really is nothing else in the world like Valencia during Fallas.