The Falles or Fallas is a traditional celebration held in commemoration of Saint Joseph in the city of Valencia, in Spain. The term Falles refers to both the celebration and the monuments created during the celebration. A number of towns in the Valencian Community have similar celebrations inspired by the original one in Valencia. Each neighbourhood of the city has an organized group of people, the Casal faller, that works all year long holding fundraising parties and dinners, usually featuring the famous dish, paella, a specialty of the region. Each casal faller produces a construction known as a falla which is eventually burnt. A casal faller is also known as a comissió fallera. The name of the festival is thus the plural of the Valencian word falla. The word s derivation is as follows:
Falles and ninots
Formerly, much time would be spent by the Casal faller preparing the ninots (Valencian for puppets or dolls). During the four days leading up to 19 March, each group takes its ninot out for a grand parade, and then mounts it, each on its own elaborate firecracker-filled cardboard and paper-mâché artistic monument in a street of the given neighbourhood. This whole assembly is a falla.
The ninots and their falles are constructed according to an agreed upon theme that has traditionally been, and continues to be, a satirical jab at anything or anyone who draws the attention of the critical eyes of the falleros—the celebrants themselves. In modern times, the whole two week long festival has spawned a huge local industry, to the point that an entire suburban area has been designated the City of Falles – Ciutat fallera. Here, crews of artists and artisans, sculptors, painters, and many others all spend months producing elaborate constructions of paper and wax, wood and styrofoam tableaux towering up to five stories, composed of fanciful figures in outrageous poses arranged in gravity-defying architecture. Each of them is produced at the direction of one of the many individual neighbourhood Casals fallers who vie with each other to attract the best artists, and then to create the most outrageous monument to their target. There are more than 500 different falles in Valencia, including those of other towns in the Valencian Community.
During Falles, many people wear their casal faller dress in regional and historical costumes from different eras of Valencia s history; the dolçaina and tabalet (a kind of Valencian drum) are frequently heard, as most of the different casals fallers have their own traditional bands.
Although the Falles is a very traditional event and many participants dress in medieval clothing, the ninots for 2005 included such modern characters as Shrek and George W. Bush, and the 2012 Falles included characters like Barack Obama and Lady Gaga.
Events during Falles
The five days and nights of Falles are a continuous party. There are a multitude of processions: historical, religious, and comedic. Crowds in the restaurants spill out into the streets. Explosions can be heard all day long and sporadically through the night. Foreigners may be surprised to see everyone from small children to elderly gentlemen throwing fireworks and noisemakers in the streets, which are littered with pyrotechnical debris. The timing of the events is fixed and they fall on the same date every year, though there has been discussion about holding some events on the weekend preceding the Falles, to take greater advantage of the tourist potential of the festival[2] or changing the end date in years where it is due to occur in midweek.
La Despertà
Each day of Falles begins at 8:00 am with La Despertà ("the wake-up call"). Brass bands appear from the casals and begin to march down every street playing lively music. Close behind them are the fallers, throwing large firecrackers in the street as they go.
La Mascletà
The Mascletà, an explosive barrage of coordinated firecracker and fireworks displays, takes place in each neighbourhood at 2:00 pm every day of the festival; the main event is the municipal Mascletà in the Plaça de l Ajuntament where the pyrotechnicians compete for the honor of providing the final Mascletà of the fiestas (on 19 March). At 2:00 pm the clock chimes and the Fallera Mayor (dressed in her fallera finery) will call from the balcony of City Hall, Senyor pirotècnic, pot començar la mascletà! ("Mr. Pyrotechnic, you may commence the Mascletà!"), and the Mascletà begins.
The Mascletà is almost unique to the Valencian Community, hugely popular with the Valencian people and found in very few other places in the world. Smaller neighbourhoods often hold their own mascletà for saint s days, weddings and other celebrations.
La Plantà
The day of the 15th all of the falles infantils are to be finished being constructed and later that night all of the falles majors (major Falles) are to be completed. If not, they face disqualification.
L'Ofrena de flors
In this event, the flower offering, each falla casal takes an offering of flowers to Holy Mary. This occurs all day during 17-18 March. A statue of Holy Mary and its large pedestal are then covered with all the flowers.
Els Castells and La Nit del Foc
On the nights of the 15, 16, 17, and 18th there are firework displays in the old riverbed in Valencia. Each night is progressively grander and the last is called La Nit del Foc (the Night of Fire).
The Fire Parade
On the final evening of Falles, at 7pm on March 19th, take place a parade along Colon street and Porta de la Mar square. This is known as the cabalgata del fuego (Fire parade). A tremendous celebration of fire, the spectacular Fire Parade.
Fire is the fiesta s symbolic spirit and the Falles final destination. So this parade is an exhibition of the varied rites and displays from around the world which, use fire as a basic feature.
This is a colourful, noisy event, with floats, giant mechanisms, people in costumes, rockets, gunpowder, street performances, music…
La Cremà
On the final night of Falles, around midnight on March 19, these falles are burnt as huge bonfires. This is known as the cremà (the burning), the climax of the whole event, and the reason why the constructions are called falles ("torches"). Traditionally, the falla in the Plaça de l Ajuntament is burned last.
Many neighbourhoods have a falla infantil (a children s falla, smaller and without satirical themes), which is held a few metres away from the main one. This is burnt first, at 10:00 pm. The main neighbourhood falles are burnt closer to midnight; the burning of the falles in the city centre often starts later. For example, in 2005, the fire brigade delayed the burning of the Egyptian funeral falla in Carrer del Convent de Jerusalem until 1:30 am, when they were sure all safety concerns were addressed.
Each falla is laden with fireworks which are lit first. The construction itself is lit either after or during the explosion of these fireworks. Falles burn quite quickly, and the heat given off is felt by all around. The heat from the larger ones often drives the crowd back a couple of metres, even though they are already behind barriers that the fire brigade has set several metres from the construction. In narrower streets, the heat scorches the surrounding buildings, and the firemen douse the façades, window blinds, street signs, etc. with their hoses to stop them catching fire or melting, from the beginning of the cremà until it cools down after several minutes.
Away from the falles, people frolic in the streets, the whole city resembling an open-air dance party, except that instead of music there is the incessant (and occasionally deafening) sound of people throwing fireworks around randomly. There are stalls selling products such as the typical fried snacks porres, xurros and bunyols, as well as roasted chestnuts or trinkets.
History
There are different speculations regarding the origin of the Falles festival. One suggests that the Falles started in the Middle Ages, when artisans disposed of the broken artifacts and pieces of wood they saved during the winter by burning them to celebrate the spring equinox. Valencian carpenters used planks of wood called parots to hang their candles on during the winter, as these were needed to provide light for the carpenters to work by. With the coming of the spring, they were no longer necessary, so they were burned. Over time, and with the intervention of the Church, the date of the burning of these parots was made to coincide with the celebration of the festival of Saint Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters.
This tradition continued to evolve. The parot was dressed with clothing so that it looked like a person; features identifiable with some well-known person from the neighbourhood were often added as well. To collect these materials, children went from house to house asking for una estoreta velleta (an old rug) to add to the parot. This became a popular song that the children sang as they gathered all sorts of old flammable furniture and utensils to burn in the bonfire with the parot. These parots were the first ninots. With time, people of the neighbourhoods organized the building of the falles and the typically intricate constructions, including their various figures, were born.
Until the beginning of the twentieth century, the falles were tall boxes with three or four wax dolls dressed in fabric clothing. This changed when the creators began to use cardboard. The fabrication of the falles continues to evolve in modern times, when the largest displays are made of polystyrene and soft cork easily molded with hot saws. These techniques have allowed the creation of falles over 30 metres high.
The origin of the pagan festival is similar to that of the Bonfires of Saint John celebrated in the Alicante region, in the sense that both came from the Latin habit of lighting fires to welcome spring. But in Valencia, this ancient tradition led to the burning of accumulated waste at the end of winter, particular wood, on the day of Saint Joseph, as was fitting. Given the reputed humorous character of Valencians, it was natural that they began to burn figurines depicting people and events of the past year. The burning symbolised liberation from servitude to the memory of these events or else represented humorous and often critical commentary on them. The festival thus evolved a more satirical and ironic character, and the wooden castoffs gradually came to be assembled into progressively more elaborate monuments that were designed and painted in advance.
During the early 20th century and especially during the Spanish Civil War, the monuments became more anti-clerical in nature and were often highly critical of the local or national governments, which in fact tried to ban the Falles many times, without success. Under the dictatorship of Franco the celebration lost much of its satirical nature because of government censorship, but the monuments were among the few fervent public expressions allowed then, and they could be made freely in Valencia. During this period, many religious customs such as the offering of flowers to Our Lady of the Forsaken were taken up, which today are essential parts of the festival, even though unrelated to the original purpose of the celebration, and somewhat antithetical in spirit.
With the restoration of democracy and the end of government censorship, the critical falles reappeared, and obscene satirical ones with them. Despite thirty years of freedom of expression, the world view of the fallero can still be socially conservative, is often sexist and may involve some of the amoralism of Valencian politics. This has sometimes led to criticism by certain cultural critics, environmentalists, and progressives. Yet there are celebrants of all ideologies and factions, and they have different interpretations of the spirit of the celebration. In fact, recent initiatives such as the pilota championships, literary competitions and other events show a culturally vibrant city that yet relies on its ancient traditions to express its singular identity, even those as seemingly frivolous as the Falles festival.
Secció Especial
The Secció Especial is a group of the largest and most prestigious falles commissions in the city of Valencia. In 2007, the group consisted of 14 commissions. This class of falles was first started in 1942 and originally included the falles of Barques, Reina-Pau and Plaça del Mercat. Currently, none of these are still in the group. The commission that has most often participated in this group as of 2007 was Na Jordana, with 54 times. Winning the first prize in the Sección Especial is the most prestigious prize any falla can win. All other falles fall into different classes that also award prizes with the exception of the one erected by the town hall.
