Saturday March 19th
Saturday March 19th, Burning the Fallas:
Around noon, we left the house and headed across town on foot, to meet Sol and Candido. We met them near the train station and walked in the direction of the Mascleta we were going to see. On the way we stopped to look at a couple of Fallas that had mobs of people swarming around them. Eventually we started to drift over to where the show was going to happen.
You can’t describe a Mascleta without hearing it and actually feeling the force of the explosions hit your chest. Smoke filled the sky, people smiled with their mouths open to protect their eardrums, and the sound was deafening.
Afterwards, our friends led us to Ruzafa, the neighborhood that had won the annual Falla light contest. The streets were decorated with massive walls of multicolored lights. Unfortunately, it was not dark yet, so we couldn’t fully comprehend the display, but it was still impressive. We bought lunch at various stands set up for Fallas; I chose a sausage and onion sandwich, followed by a luscious chocolate crepe. I was getting cold, so we returned home to change before the evening’s events.
After a short rest, my dad and I went out to the vacant lot near our house, equipped with 8 empty pop cans, a wine bottle, and an armful of fireworks. This was the last official day to light them legally. At first, we were content to simply drop the lit firecrackers in the cans and watch them explode, but then we started experimenting with other combinations. My dad found an empty plastic cup and placed a lit petardo (firework) under it. The cup was shredded into hundreds of little pieces! We tried to find more cups like that, but apparently other people had had the same idea: most of what we found had already been exploded. Some local Spanish kids had come with their own fireworks, and while we were busy with the cup, blew up our wine bottle. We had intended the bottle to be a launcher for my rockets, and now we had no way to shoot them off. However, we found an empty Fanta bottle that proved just as useful. For some reason, the locals had not seen my particular type of rockets and were impressed when I lit them off three at a time.
The next adventure would be the burnings! We shared a cena (small dinner) with Celia, Denis, Candido and Sol at Celia’s house, and then at almost midnight, we set out to watch the Fallas burn. If you’re lucky, you can see 4 or 5 Fallas burn on this one night. We saw six!
The first was a children’s Falla, set off by the neighborhood organization and complete with loud fireworks exploding as the fuse burned. We were curious to see locals busting into part of their larger Falla; at first, I thought they were stealing a piece of it (Celia told us sometimes people take parts of it for souvenirs). But it turned out that they were actually rigging it with more explosives, so the Styrofoam and plastic would more easily catch fire and burn.
The next Falla was only a block away, and since the Bomberos (firemen) were already there, we figured they would start soon. The Fallera Mayor of the neighborhood was given a piece of the Falla sculpture (in this case, an apple the size of a large dog), and the honor of lighting the fuse. Someone, probably the Pirotecnico, doused the sculpture with gasoline, and must have already rigged the entire body of the sculpture with petardos, because when the fuse was lit, it not only burned but exploded. In addition to the fire and explosions of the Falla itself, there was also a mini Mascleta and fireworks show, all put on by the neighborhood association. The outside paint coast and plastic melted off the Falla first, and eventually we could see through the flames to the bare wood supports. Bomberos sprayed the walls of the adjacent apartment buildings to stop the windows from stress fracturing. When the fire had mostly died out, the local children
were allowed to throw their leftover fireworks into the blaze (including Celia’s daughter, Luna, who had met us there after a party she had attended before. Luna was a Fallera for the first time this year).
We traveled from Falla to Falla, always on the move watching for the next fire to burn, and stopping once for sugarcoated Churros. After several hours of running around, we headed over to the Falla de Jordana at the Puente de los Artes, the largest Falla in our part of the city, and in the end, the last one to burn. Thousands of people had already been waiting hours by the time we got there. Luckily, Luna had a classmate who lived in one of the nearby apartment buildings, and we were invited up to their rooftop to watch from there. We could see black smoke billowing from numerous Fallas around the city. Since this was to be one of the largest burnings, it also needed the most firemen. The part of the Falla that made it so huge was a life size replica of the nearby tower, El Torre de Santa Catalina, and stood 80 feet tall.
I was slightly disappointed for two reasons: one, the wait was almost unbearable, what with sore feet from running and the fact that it was four in the morning before the fire began in earnest; and two, when the tower did finally burn, it was a very slow process and ended up gradually collapsing in on itself instead of a mighty finish, like some of the others we had seen. Celia told us later Luna had also been disappointed, not only by these factors, but also because she had not been sprayed by the firefighters. There is a tradition with the locals to taunt the Bomberos by insulting their mothers and their manhood, until they turn their hoses on the crowd . That night, we got home dry and exhausted, near five o’clock in the morning.
Overall, Fallas was a great experience for me and even with this detailed explanation, you will not be able to fully comprehend the excitement and intensity that is Fallas. You’ll just have to be here for next year!
Around noon, we left the house and headed across town on foot, to meet Sol and Candido. We met them near the train station and walked in the direction of the Mascleta we were going to see. On the way we stopped to look at a couple of Fallas that had mobs of people swarming around them. Eventually we started to drift over to where the show was going to happen.
You can’t describe a Mascleta without hearing it and actually feeling the force of the explosions hit your chest. Smoke filled the sky, people smiled with their mouths open to protect their eardrums, and the sound was deafening.
Afterwards, our friends led us to Ruzafa, the neighborhood that had won the annual Falla light contest. The streets were decorated with massive walls of multicolored lights. Unfortunately, it was not dark yet, so we couldn’t fully comprehend the display, but it was still impressive. We bought lunch at various stands set up for Fallas; I chose a sausage and onion sandwich, followed by a luscious chocolate crepe. I was getting cold, so we returned home to change before the evening’s events.
After a short rest, my dad and I went out to the vacant lot near our house, equipped with 8 empty pop cans, a wine bottle, and an armful of fireworks. This was the last official day to light them legally. At first, we were content to simply drop the lit firecrackers in the cans and watch them explode, but then we started experimenting with other combinations. My dad found an empty plastic cup and placed a lit petardo (firework) under it. The cup was shredded into hundreds of little pieces! We tried to find more cups like that, but apparently other people had had the same idea: most of what we found had already been exploded. Some local Spanish kids had come with their own fireworks, and while we were busy with the cup, blew up our wine bottle. We had intended the bottle to be a launcher for my rockets, and now we had no way to shoot them off. However, we found an empty Fanta bottle that proved just as useful. For some reason, the locals had not seen my particular type of rockets and were impressed when I lit them off three at a time.
The next adventure would be the burnings! We shared a cena (small dinner) with Celia, Denis, Candido and Sol at Celia’s house, and then at almost midnight, we set out to watch the Fallas burn. If you’re lucky, you can see 4 or 5 Fallas burn on this one night. We saw six!
The first was a children’s Falla, set off by the neighborhood organization and complete with loud fireworks exploding as the fuse burned. We were curious to see locals busting into part of their larger Falla; at first, I thought they were stealing a piece of it (Celia told us sometimes people take parts of it for souvenirs). But it turned out that they were actually rigging it with more explosives, so the Styrofoam and plastic would more easily catch fire and burn.
The next Falla was only a block away, and since the Bomberos (firemen) were already there, we figured they would start soon. The Fallera Mayor of the neighborhood was given a piece of the Falla sculpture (in this case, an apple the size of a large dog), and the honor of lighting the fuse. Someone, probably the Pirotecnico, doused the sculpture with gasoline, and must have already rigged the entire body of the sculpture with petardos, because when the fuse was lit, it not only burned but exploded. In addition to the fire and explosions of the Falla itself, there was also a mini Mascleta and fireworks show, all put on by the neighborhood association. The outside paint coast and plastic melted off the Falla first, and eventually we could see through the flames to the bare wood supports. Bomberos sprayed the walls of the adjacent apartment buildings to stop the windows from stress fracturing. When the fire had mostly died out, the local children
were allowed to throw their leftover fireworks into the blaze (including Celia’s daughter, Luna, who had met us there after a party she had attended before. Luna was a Fallera for the first time this year).
We traveled from Falla to Falla, always on the move watching for the next fire to burn, and stopping once for sugarcoated Churros. After several hours of running around, we headed over to the Falla de Jordana at the Puente de los Artes, the largest Falla in our part of the city, and in the end, the last one to burn. Thousands of people had already been waiting hours by the time we got there. Luckily, Luna had a classmate who lived in one of the nearby apartment buildings, and we were invited up to their rooftop to watch from there. We could see black smoke billowing from numerous Fallas around the city. Since this was to be one of the largest burnings, it also needed the most firemen. The part of the Falla that made it so huge was a life size replica of the nearby tower, El Torre de Santa Catalina, and stood 80 feet tall.
I was slightly disappointed for two reasons: one, the wait was almost unbearable, what with sore feet from running and the fact that it was four in the morning before the fire began in earnest; and two, when the tower did finally burn, it was a very slow process and ended up gradually collapsing in on itself instead of a mighty finish, like some of the others we had seen. Celia told us later Luna had also been disappointed, not only by these factors, but also because she had not been sprayed by the firefighters. There is a tradition with the locals to taunt the Bomberos by insulting their mothers and their manhood, until they turn their hoses on the crowd . That night, we got home dry and exhausted, near five o’clock in the morning.
Overall, Fallas was a great experience for me and even with this detailed explanation, you will not be able to fully comprehend the excitement and intensity that is Fallas. You’ll just have to be here for next year!
posted by Mark and Margot at 6:16 AM
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