The night the city burns...

The last view of our Falla before the ceremonial torching...

It was a most surreal experience right across the city. This yearly festival which, though only officially five days in actual duration, is in fact, a year-long labour of both love and money for many people. It ended abruptly in the very early hours of Thursday 20 March with the traditional burning of the Fallas across the city... a city which looked akin to the TV pictures of Beirut in my youth with burning pyres and thick black smoke rising across the skyline - accompanied by some of the most spectacular firework displays ever seen.

Wednesday evening, we headed for the city centre after dinner, to be accosted by young children throwing fireworks - a daily occurrence from 1 March onwards - arriving to view a number of the city's finest Fallas in their final hours of existence on this world...


Fallas in the city - the final few hours...

After a couple of hours of wandering throughout the streets, seeing the great works of art - each one caringly designed and built over the preceding twelve months - we ambled back to a side street near the market to see the some of the many marching bands returning from their own musical trips around the neighbourhoods - to set fire to the children's ninot - something which, every year begins at 10.30pm on the evening of the 19th.


The first lick of the flames for the childrens' Falla


Another Falla...


...another fire!

Returning back to the apartment in Avenida de Francia for the midnight burning of our 'own' Falla, we discovered that since the fire brigade (bomberos in Castilian Spanish; bombers in Valenciano) have to be present at every burning, the allotted time for Avenida de Francia was not in fact midnight, but 1.30am the next morning, so we managed to keep some very tired children up for another hour-and-a-half until the bombers finally arrived to assist the local association in the cremation of the Falla.


The biggest Falla this year - a €900,000 investment at Nou Campanar - and a great bonfire to boot!

None of the Brits present have ever experienced anything quite like the burning of a Falla. With hours of build-up, the final few minutes before 'lighting time' were conducted with a dousing of the structure in something highly flammable; fireworks kept going off all around us - many of them lit by myself and the children - totally legally, of course; the Falla Queens continued to meet and greet their followers; the bombers set up their firehoses; and the Valencian Anthem was playing steadily louder.


Outside our apartment, seconds after the Falla Queen lit the fuse... whoosh!

Finally, the TV cameras moved into position and the skies erupted with an amazing five-minute display of synchronised rockets before the Falla Queen was invited down to light the final 'fuse' - a string of exploding fire-crackers leading to the foot of the massive Falla. With an almighty bang and an instantaneous, searing whoosh of heat which left us and all the other spectators running backwards for shelter, the Falla exploded into a fireball of flames. As the fireball became an inferno, the bombers began hosing - not the fire - but the walls of our apartment (less than 3 metres from the edge of the flames) and the trees and shrubs surrounding the fire. This continued for much of the next thirty minutes or so until the final struts of the supporting frame of the Falla were reduced to a pile of burning embers and the bombers finally turned their hoses onto the fire itself, extinguishing the flames in a matter of a few minutes, turning the once-sweltering furnace into a giant pile of steaming charcoal and the Falla was no more.

As a footnote - the next morning, as promised - there was not a shred of evidence where the Falla had once stood, that anything had ever occurred. No scorch-marks. No burned embers. Just a simple road junction returned to its former state.


An amazing display of flowers at Plaza de la Virgen - creating a gigantic effigy of Our Lady every year as part of the Fallas celebrations. This year, the event coincided with Easter week


Yet more flowers at Plaza de la Virgen - their placement witnessed by tens of thousands of spectators - we could only get near nearly two days after the final flowers were laid

I now fully understand the explanations given of the Fallas festival in the tourist brochures. They talk about the history and tradition of Fallas and explain that Valencian people have learned to control fire. I have to admit, I was sceptical and thought this a bit of marketing bravado; however I now truly believe it really is the case. In many ways, 'our' Falla at Avenida de Francia was in one of the more 'open' locations - being plonked in the middle of a T-junction between a minor side street and the main avenue itself with only one apartment block on one side and pretty much open space on the other three sides. Many of the other 700 or so Fallas throughout the city and beyond, were packed into small crossroads and junctions with antiquated apartment buildings, shops and other ancient structures closely packed in on all sides. Every single one of those Fallas was burnt in the early hours of Thursday morning and I have yet to hear of any injury or 'mistake' which led to the accidental burning down of any of those buildings.

It does seem the strangest series of rituals - and for a 'tourist', quite a sad end to what must have been a protracted year-long programme of planning work, designing, building, fundraising, meetings and rehearsals. Perhaps for the people who create, celebrate and then burn these amazing structures, it is a simple repetition of a ritual passed down through the years in the same way as any other cultural practice. The Fallas year begins on 20 March each year - right after the last of the embers are cleared away from the previous Cremà.

I have video of many aspects of Fallas. I mean... I HAVE hours and hours of video! I will try to get some edited back to 10-minute slots as soon as I can in order to show off some of the highlights on this blog. In the meantime, Fallas has taught me quite a lot about what is and what is not a genuine community event - one which appears not to require a flood of public subsidy and government targets to ensure it provides value for the public purse, or the correct level of engagement and 'access' amongst its population. The event continues year after year - paid for by voluntary public subscription and private sponsorship. It truly involves everyone in some way or another - whether through participating in one of the 300 or more marching bands across the city, competing in the numerous Fallas Queen competitions, involvement in the Flower Offering at Plaza de la Virgen - even buying and throwing fireworks, eating and drinking the festive refreshments or participating in the many street events.

Feliz Navidad from Valencia

Well, we've had a great Christmas with the family so far. We thought we ought to follow some Spanish traditions and some British ones. Probably the net effect will be that the children will end up with far more presents than they need and the parents will consume far more food or alcohol than they require...

Diana, Thayer, Laurence and Lena arrived at VLC airport on Thursday morning whilst Chris and Jo were enjoying their last couple of days at school. The usual mid-morning traffic through the outskirts of Valencia delayed our convoy trip back to the apartment, having already spent the best part of an hour trying to rent a car for Diana at the airport. Lesson for the holiday: book cars in advance or expect inflated prices, or worse still, no available cars!

We spent a leisurely morning at Cabanyal Market down by the beach on Friday and managed to locate a suitable turkey (dead!), fruit and veg for the Christmas festivities. Having selected the most suitably-sized turkey, the butcher was all for slicing the bird up like a bacon joint as she raised her hand with an enormous meat cleaver, readied for action. Surprisingly, roasting whole chickens or turkeys in Spain is still seen as something quaintly English, or more likely, viewed with complete disbelief. For the evening, a trip into town to see Circo Wonderland - one of the few remaining animal circuses still touring in Europe. We saw this show a few years ago further up the coast, north of Barcelona, and whilst there isn't the glitz of a Cirque du Soleil show (we saw the latest Cirque du Soleil show - Delerium - at Feria Valencia the week before - wow!), it is nevertheless an exceptional show where the animals all appear to be extremely well-treated, well-fed and happy in their roles. This may be a controversial view, but the animals are, in the main, rare species, and one wonders how some of them will ever survive if not kept in zoos, employed in circuses and exploited in no ways more sinister than trying to demonstrate to young children the value of these beautiful creatures to the wild, and their likely fate if we do not do more to protect them in their natural habitats. Sadly, constant rain after the show somewhat dampened our walk through the various plazas of the old city as we tried to count the numerous Christmas streetlighting decorations up and down every side street. Such reminders of the UK (not!). Unlike the UK, most European cities - not least Spanish cities - manage to celebrate Christmas each year with the most fantastic lighting displays up and down every street and plaza - and wherever there is room, flowerbeds are full to bursting with poinsettias and other seasonal plants. We don't see the newspaper headlines following yet another local authority or chamber of commerce complaining that it can 'no longer afford to make a contribution to the lights this year', because in Spain, it is obviously something which is regarded as the right thing to do. No self-respecting community, it seems, would permit the apathy and disregard shown for seasonal public displays, by some British towns and cities, to permeate here...


Handbags stands of the Requena market... how can one escape without purchase?
And then to Saturday, for the return match to show off Requena to the rest of the family. With the weather in the region not quite as bad as the UK at Christmas, it was nevertheless cold and rainy. With Requena up in the hills, preparing for a few degrees south of the weather in Valencia is definitely a good idea. Having arrived, the rain stopped and the temperature settled down to a damp 10°C or so whilst we tramped out to the Saturday morning market doing Santa's work, picking up the bargains of the day, before settling down to another first class menu del día lunch at Mesón del Vino - the town's fantastic Michelin-listed restaurant.


Museu de Les Ciències Príncep Felip

A trip to the Science Museum (Museu de Les Ciències Príncep Felip) at the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia was voted the favoured activity for the children and mums on Sunday, whilst the remaining adults did some of the last-minute gift and food shopping. And yesterday, Christmas Eve was spent out and about at the famous concrete Gulliver childrens' park, and amazingly, despite the obvious lack of appearance (ever!) of any Health and Safety automatons, no child was seriously injured. Final, final last minute presents were obtained from El Corté Inglés and Carrefour, followed by a quick bike trip to show off Plaza de la Virgen to Diana. The evening was spent cooking and eating the first of our Christmas meals (this is where we follow Spanish and English traditions with Christmas celebrated on 24 and 25 December, plus the most important date of the Spanish Christmas calendar - Threes Kings Day on 6 January).


Celeb photos at La Pepica, taken by star paparazzi photographer, Chris Whitehead
[L-R] i) Laurence and Liz; ii) Diana and Lena; iii) Jo and Sandi; iv) Margaret

Today is Christmas Day and it has been a little hectic! There were tears late last night when some children found themselves unable to await Santa's call by sleeping through the night. This caused a near meltdown in Santa's schedule, but the evening was saved, because it appeared that Santa did visit after all, but was unable to deliver presents to the children's beds on account of them still being awake. They had to make do with Santa's delivery to the balcony outside on the ninth floor, but he didn't seem to deliver any less presents! Today, more presents continued to flow throughout the morning before we departed for a sumptuous multi-course meal at the ever-wonderful La Pepica restaurant with new friends Sandi and Margaret. La Pepica never fails to impress - a restaurant down on La Malvarossa beach which was the regular haunt of Ernest Hemingway amongst hordes of other others celebrities from across the globe, in days gone by. I think it is high time that the management awarded us some kind of 'frequent flyer' loyalty points as it is becoming a bit of a regular haunt of ours now - and we are very definitely not of the 'celeb' variety. A four-hour marathon meal with plenty of festive cheer and we were ready for a dusk walk along the beach before retiring back to the apartment to catch up with the day's Christmas TV. There are still plenty more days of Christmas remaining and with a week-long trip back to the UK and the 'Three Kings Parade' in Valencia to look forward to on our return, I'd better sign off for the moment and get some sleep... or another glass of wine!