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Fallas 2012 festivity is near, and you must plan your time now. We invite you to spend some days in Barcelona and then go to Fallas from here. It’s a good plan!
The Fallas festivity burns away winter worries in a tribute to srping. As a pagan ritual originating in ancient Mediterranean cultures brought to the shores of Valencia in remote times, this artistic display totally transforms the city during what is called “Fallas Week”. True to the saying, only those who have actually seen it can believe it. Some 700 fallas, or large and small papier-mâché monuments mounted over wooden frames, are burnt to cinders on 19th March in a tribute to St.Joseph, the patrón saint of carpenters, and to the coming of the spring solstice.
The huge Works of art called fallas can be described as authentic monuments of papier-mâché and polyurethane, built over wooden structures and conceived to embody pithy, good-humoured and sometimes sarcastic comments on daily life. Architecture and engineering dedicated to creating art of an ephemeral nature, something that takes place nowhere else in the world.
The “Cremà”
As a festival for all the senses, the Fallas culminate with the “Cremà”, or burning of all the monuments, on 19th March. This fire ritual consumes a whole year of work, a whole year of dreams. At ten o’clock the children’s fallas are set to the torch, amidst music and fireworks. At midnight, Valencia astonishes the entire world each year by burning its street monuments to ashes, ending with the fallas in the “special section”, whose budgets are in the range of 120.000€ each. Throughout the city fireworks are set off and the flames consume the gigantic figurines as onlookers stand in silence, with eyes reflecting the red flames, amid crackling red-hot wood and showering sparks and thick smoke. Valencia is enveloped in a weird reddish-grey gloom, yet the music still plays, and more than a few eyes shed tears as the last farewells are said to the monumental spring offering.
This wholesale incineration culminates in the burning of the main falla in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento.
You can go to Fallas, but first you must visit Barcelona! We can help you with sleeping, giving you a room from only 14€!
Book at Be Hostels, it’s a great idea!
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