• DIA - 16 Marzo
• DIA - 17 Marzo
• DIA - 17 Marzo II
• DIA - 18 Marzo
• DIA - 18 Marzo II

The Fallas Festival

is a very unique event and is celebrated with a fervor beyond imagination. Celebrated only in the Province of Valencia, on the east coast of Spain, the festival is hundreds of years old. The origine is unknow, at least as far as I have been able to discover. The festival consists of parades, usually beginning early in the morning around 8 am, with brass bands, loud fireworks called mascletas, frequent stops for eating and drinking, and visits to the ninots, or dolls, that have been created throughout the village. The village in this case is Oliva, where I live. The ninots are the main attraction and are efigies of political citizens, heros, and prominant characters of any given time period. Anyone may build a ninot, which will be judged and awarded ribbons for their creativity and accomplished construction. They can be huge in size, approaching 100 ft, the size of a 10 story building. The mascletas are more than visual fireworks, they are about loudness. One morning beginning at 8 am I followed a group (see Dia 17 Marzo ) where more than 400 mescletas were exploded in an hour and a half. Each day at 2 pm a special mescleta display is put on in the town square and the Queen of the Fallas, her escorts, the mayor, the various bands, young people and old all in costums, and hundreds of spectators gather for this 5 minute display of rockets and bombs exploding.

The queens costums are rich in design and cannot be bought in any store. Each one is custom made and costs thousands of dollars. The dresses speak for themselves. Each year appointed judges elect a queen to represent the Fallas festival for the entire year.

On the last day of festivities, beginning at midnight, the ninots are burned ( see Dia 18 Marzo II ). The first one to be burned is usually the last placed ribbon awarded. The Queen ignites a fireworks display which ends at the ninot and ignites it. Afterwards hundreds of people march throughout the streets, bands playing, mescletas exploding, while moving on to the next placed ninot, and so on, to burn the remaining ninots. The burnings last until all the ninots are burned to the ground. This year in Olive there were 6 ninots representing the six neighborhoods within the village. The burnings lasted until 5:30 am. In Valencia, where the most grand ninots are constructed, there were more than 800 ninots burned to the ground. So prolific were the burnings that fire departments from all over Europe were called in to help maintain order and keep the city from burning to the ground.