Postcard Child: Valencia and Las Fallas!

March 19th is the feast of St. Joseph and in Valencia that means Las Fallas!
Every year over 4 million people flock to Spain's third largest city for the most spectacular and most dangerous festival I have ever seen!
Las Fallas is a celebration that begins at the very end of April and lasts throughout the month until the 19th. In honor of St. Joseph, the carpenter, sculptors throughout the city build these huge statues out of wood, cardboard, and paper maché. Each sculpture is made up of lots of little ones, called ninots. A grouping of ninots is called a Falla, hence the name of the celebration.
They spend the entire month building and painting these gorgeous Fallas. Each day of the celebration there is a Mascletá, held at 2pm in the Government Plaza. The Mascletá is essentially a concert of fire crackers! They are timed to go off and create a rhythm that you feel in every bone of your body, and it all ends with the "terremoto" or earthquake that shakes the entire city. Every mascletá lasts 10 minutes and each one is conducted by a different "pyrotechnic" and the best performance wins the honor of performing the mascletá on the 19th. And on the night of the 19th each barrio gathers around their falla which has been strung with "petardos" or firecrackers and doused in alcohol to watch it burn to the ground.

We went to Valencia on Friday the 18th to see all the Fallas before the burning. They are the size of buildings and each one has a theme (many of them political). They are absolutely gorgeous!!!

A Falla of Thor

Patrick and Me!!

One of my best friends from high school, Patrick Nyberg, is studying in Valencia so I spent the day with him and my friend Grace from Whitman (he's the first of my high school friends to meet any of my college friends)! It was an incredible day filled with gorgeous fallas, beautiful weather, and delicious buñuelos (the valencian version of funnel cakes) and chocolate!

Buñuelos de calbaza y chocolate

On Saturday I went back to Valencia with a group of students from the University. We filled 8 buses!

We left Alicante at 8 am (it's a 2 hour trip) and left Valencia at 3:30 am Sunday morning. We got to see more of the Fallas as well be a part of the MASSIVE crowed present for the final Mascletá. We ran into some friends from Whitman who are studying in Madrid, took a nap in the park, drank mojitos, ate tapas, and watched the fallas go up in flames. The EMT in me was going a little nuts around all those people with firecrackers as well as the lack of fire safety equipment...

But the kid in me was fascinated and intrigued and simply enjoying the excessiveness of such a festival!

I could have slept for the next week afterward, but it was completely worth it!