Post written by Empar, a United Planet Team member.
The festival of Las Fallas takes place in Valencia (my native city) every year and has been celebrated for many years, going back to the beginning of the 18th century.
Most of the celebrations of Las Fallas (“the fires”) begin on March 15th and culminate on el Dia de San Josep, or St. Joseph’s Day, on March 19th. This festival started as a feast day for St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. To celebrate the coming of spring, carpenters would start a fire to burn all the old stuff in their ateliers from the previous year. Nowadays, the tradition has evolved from this dusty mountain of staff to very sophisticated and huge monuments, made mainly of cardboard, wood and plasters statues. The statues, which are called ninots, are very realistic and often represent politicians and celebrities of the time. The ninots are often satirical representations of these individuals.
Picture from rj.tempest, Flickr at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/16117146@N03/2440897734/in/set-72157604995261101/.
After four days of being exposed, all the fallas, or monuments, are burnt at midnight on San Josep, creating huge fires all around the city. This closing event is called La Crema. The burning of the fallas in Valencian culture is a symbolic rite of cleansing, wherein we leave all the bad events of the previous year behind and start the new year with a fresh, positive attitude.
In addition to the monuments, during Las Fallas there are plenty of street festivals, live music, fireworks, parades and more. I must say that Las Fallas is quite a party.
It’s amazing that after a full year of efforts to get the money to pay for the monuments, and all the work to build them, a half an hour is enough to make them disappear! Some of these monuments are 30 meters high, and can cost up to a million dollars! Each neighborhood of Valencia (around 350 in total) displays two monuments, one for the children and the other for the adults.
Picture from rj.tempest, Flickr at: https://www.flickr.com/photos/16117146@N03/2440885084/in/set-72157604995261101/
As is often the case though, there is another side of the coin (as we normally say in Spanish). When the fallas are burnt, it’s as if all of Disneyland was burned down at once! So, one wonders, how much carbon dioxide is emitted during La Crema? How much are the fires contributing to global warming? Should this tradition disappear, change, or evolve to adapt to the new times? My feeling is that this should evolve to achieve a balance between tradition and the reality of modern times.
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