The Rain in Spain Falls Mainly on the Brooms
When we decided to take this trip we had a few criteria: somewhere that would allow us in (COVID restrictions), somewhere that COVID wasn’t too out of control, and somewhere reasonably warm. We settled on the east coast of Spain as it promised average March temps of 20 degrees and only 5 days of rain in the whole month of March. While we knew we shouldn’t expect the sultry, lazy days of a Spanish summer, we still figured t-shirt weather or maybe a light jacket.
Instead, it has rained almost every day for the last 10 days at some point, and
hasn’t tipped over 16 degrees. Indeed, the locals are telling us that until our
arrival, it’s been a very dry winter with no rain for months. No one has outright
said ‘go back where you came from and take your weather with you’, we wouldn’t
blame them if they did.
But, like we said in our Sitges
post… the worst day on holiday is still better than the best day at work! A
little rain here and there hasn’t stopped our enjoyment of finally travelling
again, and while it might be raining, it’s not snowing!
Juicy Valencia
As we made our way down the
coast from Sitges passing through the provinces of Barcelona, Tarragona and
Castellon, it was immediately clear once we’d entered the province of Valencia.
As soon as you drive across the border the vineyards of cava and grenache
grapes change to fields of orange trees. We’re here at the right time as the
trees are heavy with ripe fruit now and they’re delicious.
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| "Agua de Valencia" is a cocktail of orange juice, cava and vodka. And gin. |
We're really enchanted with the city of Valencia. We had decided to time our visit
during Las Fallas, but quickly realised it’s a truly stunning city with so much
to see and do. As New World neophytes, we are constantly enchanted by Europe’s
old cities where you bump into incredible buildings around every corner.
Valencia has an amazing ‘green river’ that winds its way through the city (the
former riverbed of the Turia River, that was diverted
following a flood in the 50’s), the excellent modern art gallery and the
fabulous tapas bars sprinkled around town, Valencia charmed us from day one.
And did we mention the paellla? We didn’t even make it to the beaches which are
supposed to be great.
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| The bullfighting ring in the centre of Valencia |
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| The Central Market of Valencia |
Five days of Las Fallas festival madness
It’s hard to do justice to this incredible Valencian festival in a single blog
post. And looking back at our photos and videos, they really can’t capture the spirit
of this festival either. So, as long as you aren’t suffering from PTSD (seriously), we’d
recommend you come and experience it yourself sometime.
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| A Falla at the Torres de Serranos |
Bang!
Las Fallas is a festival of sound as much as sights. The festival is essentially a celebration of the beginning of Spring, specific to the province of Valencia. It runs for about three weeks, ending with the celebration of Saint Joseph’s Day on March 19th. There are many activities that go on during the festival, from paella competitions to music concerts, local bands to street performers. But like a drumbeat underscoring everything is the constant sound of fireworks, from every street of every neighborhood. Fireworks big and small, being set off by people big and small. Small, like five years old small. Every other store is selling boxes of firecrackers, sparklers, flares, Catherine wheels… basically if it burns and bangs, you can buy it. And from first thing in the morning until very late at night, someone somewhere is throwing a firecracker at something or someone. And with the high and narrow streets and laneways, many of them can be extremely loud and incredibly close. We captured a couple of random moments on video, but the iPhone is a bit too good at regulating volume, so it isn’t nearly as startling or tooth-rattlingly loud as in real life.
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| Some 'older' kids rummaging through their fireworks boxes. Note sis with her fingers in her ears |
This video is just a random street we happened to be walking down.
Of Ninots and Fallas
So much of Spanish life centres around family and community, and this festival is the same. Every small community within the province of Valencia (so, hundreds) has its Fallas social club, and throughout the year they hold fundraisers and events, both to build the spirit of community and to design and build their Ninots (cardboard statues) and Fallas (collection of ninots that tells a story, often political or risque). Each day during the festival, the red-jacketed teams from each of the neighborhoods set up their Fallas in their local square, have paella and other foods, their local band practices their songs and basically party all day and – from what we could see – all night. The local Falla club that we could see from our hotel window always had people spilling out of it anytime we looked down at it, day or night.
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| Close up of one of the ninots in the falla above |
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| The falla in the main square this year highlights the plight of endangered animals around the world |
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| The larger fallas are BIG |
Flower Parade
Each Falla from around the city selects a group of people to represent them in bringing an offering of flowers to the Saint. There are over 400 Fallas so the parades take two days. Everyone dresses in traditional clothing and walk through the old city and when they reach the Placa de la Mare de Deu, each of the people give a small bouquet of flowers which are placed on the **Massive** wooden lattice-cum-statue. Over the course of the two days, these flowers are added to the statue until it’s fully blanketed in a floral tapestry.
Here's the Saint statue before it's covered with flowers:
Each neighborhood participates in the parade, with their own band and everyone dressed in traditional garb. Some of the dresses can cost as much as 20,000 Euros!
Here you can see the men perched on the side of the scaffolding, filling out the Saint's cloak with bouquets.
Fire Parade
Have you ever seen the buskers on the streets juggling fire? Or the bad guys in
Mad Max? Imagine taking about 100 of these, giving them sticks that shoot
sparks and telling them to parade down a narrow city street. You start to get
some idea of the fire parade. Teams of local groups use fire, fireworks, flares,
noisemakers, music and drums to shock and awe the crowds packed onto the parade
route. As often with fireworks in Spain, the idea of a ‘safe distance’ is left to
the individual participants to determine. Sparks frequently fly over and into
the crowd, who laugh, cheer, and occasionally duck for cover as the squads make
their way through the streets.
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| Lighting the dragon |
La Crema
According to the official program, ‘On the final evening of the festival all local fallas are burned at 10pm, followed by the large falla in the main square at 11pm’. With dozens of fallas near us to choose from, we settled on one in one of the larger squares in old town. We arrived shortly before 10pm, but given the, shall we say, fluid concept of time here in Spain, we weren’t expecting a punctual start. But after about an hour of standing around, we started to get a little nervous that perhaps we’d picked the one falla that wouldn’t get burned this year. We managed to eavesdrop on another few people asking one of the organizers ‘Que pasa’. Apparently the bomberos (firemen) wouldn’t be getting there until 1am, which meant everything was on hold until then..jpg) |
| The 'before' shot |
We retreated to a local tapas/wine bar and whiled away 2 hours tasting the local grapes as well as some jamon iberico (cured ham…delicious, but it can’t be good for you!) and then made our way back to the square shortly before 1. At about 2am, the bomberos finally appeared… ah, Spain. After much discussion between the bomberos and the red coated fallas team, it appeared that things were going to get underway. The firemen pulled out a lot of hoses (!!) and the team started preparing the fallas for La Crema. Finally, the lights were dimmed and the band struck up a jaunty tune… we were ready! The 400+ crowd erupted with excitement. The fireman started hosing down the adjoining building (!!!) and… it was alight!
- The guy preparing one of the ninots for burning, by stuffing gunpowder up under her skirt (!!! LOL)
- The thick, black billowing smoke from the 30-foot high sculptures. Thank you N95 mask!
- The moment when the fire reached the fireworks inside and they started blasting out randomly
- The fireman hosing down the storefront to keep it from catching on fire
- The moment when the wind shifted and embers and ash started raining down on us and the falla team, and they tried to push back through the fences they’d put up to keep us back
- The band continuing to play through it all
- The crowd cheering in appreciation when the falla finally collapsed
And with that, it was over. By 3am we were on our way back to our hotel, and the rest of the city kicked into their next gear to see out the night drinking and dancing. As we were walking home we could already see the dump trucks and back hoes clearing up the debris. When we walked through town the next morning, it was as if the festival had never happened. Everything was back to normal – although there were still a few children setting off the last of their firecrackers before putting them away for another year.
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| The charred remains |
Driving in Spain
We spent one more day in Valencia, and then headed west towards Granada. Before
we leave you, we’ll share a couple of thoughts about driving in Spain. We’ve
driven in many countries and cities around the world, many with quite loose
traffic rules (some will remember the video from our motorbike tour of North
Vietnam). But driving in Spanish cities has a personality all its own. Two
thoughts:
Firstly, when it comes to turn signals, Spaniards subscribe to our friend Mike’s approach: “You have no business knowing where I’m going.”
Secondly,
lane markings appear to be more of a design motif rather than any sort of
directional constraint. As you sit at an intersection with five lanes set to
turn left you might be thinking how organized the traffic appears, only to
realize that through the corner the five lanes have transformed to three and
it’s every car for itself. Remarkably, despite all of this it works, and with
very little use of the horn - which is nice.
That’s all for this week’s post – next stop, Granada, the final foothold of the
Islamic empire in Spain.
For anyone who missed our previous posts about Spain... start here!
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