amorousodious

Friday the fourteenth, the day before fallas began one of our professors, Jesús Peris-Lorca, gave a presentation on the fallas about what we could expect, what actually happens each day, and how much noise there will be. The schedule goes like this:

15 Marzo: La Planta – It means “the planting” basically, the smaller fallas will be put together and the bigger ones will be finished on this day.

16 Marzo: Los Premios – This is the day of “the prizes” when they decide which of the fallas are the best of the best. There’s an award ceremony in the Plaza Ayuntamiento and the builders of the fallas get to parade through with their award. They also choose the grand prize winner this day, or the falla that will NOT be burned. All the rest of the fallas will be torched on the last day.

17 Marzo: La Ofrenda – This literally means “the offering” and it has only been a tradition of the fallas since the 1940s because Franco decided that there had to be more of a religious message included in the celebration. Basically all of the Falleras (that is, the women who dress up in traditional Valencian clothing and do their hair in this ridiculously complicated style) offer flowers to this HUGE wooden statue of the Virgin Mary. The bouquets that they offer are mostly taken apart and used to construct a dress for the statue. Without the flowers, the statue looks like this:

The parade to offer flowers is a LONG parade. It begins at 4pm and usually goes until midnight, and that’s just the first day. It resumes in the morning the next day and goes until all the people who want to have offered flowers and the dress of the Virgin is finished. Jesús suggested that we watch a few hours of the parade, but that it gets old after awhile. There are only so many different styles of dresses and so many different bouquets to look at before you get bored.

18 Marzo: Sin Nombre – This day does not have a name. It’s basically an “everyone party, let’s finish the ofrenda, fallas are going to be over tomorrow night so see them while you can” day.

19 Marzo: La Cremá – The name of this day is interesting because it’s the only one that is in Valenciano that they don’t translate to Spanish, ever. It’s pretty obvious from the name, but this is the final day of fallas, and the day that they burn every one of them except for the one that won the grand prize. The fallas infantiles, small fallas that accompany the bigger ones, are burned first, and then they burn the rest of them periodically. Some of the bigger ones, like the one in Plaza Ayuntamiento, have specific times, and others just begin whenever the bomberos (firemen) arrive at the site. There are obviously more than a few safety procedures that have to be followed when you’re burning three hundred 8 story high structures. Jesús said the best idea is to get to one of the big fallas early to watch it burn close up, and then to follow the bomberos as they go from falla to falla so that you can see more of them burn.