Fallas

The Fallas (Valencian: Falles; Spanish: Fallas) is a traditional celebration held annually in commemoration of Saint Joseph in the city of Valencia, Spain. The five main days celebrated are from 15 to 19 March, while the Mascletà, a pyrotechnic spectacle of firecracker detonation, takes place every day from 1 to 19 March. The term Fallas refers to both the celebration and the Falla monuments (Falla, singular; Fallas/Falles, plural) burnt during the celebration. The Fallas (Falles in Valencian) festival was added to UNESCO's intangible cultural heritage of humanity list on 30 November 2016. A number of towns in the Valencian Community have similar celebrations inspired by the original Fallas de Valencia festival. For example, the Bonfires of Saint John (Hogueras de San Juan or Fogueres de Sant Joan) in Alicante or the Fiestas de la Magdalena in Castellón de la Plana.

Each neighbourhood of the city has an organised group of people, the Commission, that meets at the Casal faller, and works all year long holding fundraising parties and dinners, usually featuring the noted dish paella, a specialty of the region. Each commission produces a construction known as falla which is burned the last day of the celebration. Currently there are approximately 400 registered commissions in Valencia.

The name of the festival is the plural of the Valencian word falla. The word's derivation is as follows:

Formerly, much time would be spent by the casal faller preparing the ninots (Valencian name for puppets or dolls). During the four days leading up to 19 March, each group takes its ninot out for a grand parade, and then mounts it, each on its own elaborate firecracker-filled cardboard and paper-mâché artistic monument, in a street of the given neighbourhood. This whole assembly is a falla.

The ninots and their falles are constructed according to an agreed-upon theme that has traditionally been a satirical jab at whatever draws the attention of the fallers (the registered participants of the casals). In modern times, the two-week-long festival has spawned a substantial local industry, to the point that an entire suburban area has been designated the Ciutat fallera (Falles City). Here, crews of artists and artisans, sculptors, painters, and other craftsmen, all spend months producing elaborate constructions of paper and wax, wood and polystyrene foam tableaux towering up to five stories, composed of fanciful figures, often caricatures, in provocative poses arranged in a gravity-defying manner. Each of them is produced under the direction of one of the many individual neighbourhood casals fallers who vie with each other to attract the best artists, and then to create the most outrageous allegorical monument to their target. There are about 750 of these neighbourhood associations in Valencia, with over 200,000 members, or a quarter of the city's population.

During Fallas, many people wear their casal faller dress of regional and historical costumes from different eras of València's history. The dolçaina (an oboe-like reed instrument) and tabalet (a kind of Valencian drum) are frequently heard, as most of the different casals fallers have their own traditional bands.

Although the Falles is a very traditional event and many participants dress in medieval clothing, the ninots for 2005 included such modern characters as Shrek and George W. Bush, and the 2012 Falles included characters like Barack Obama and Lady Gaga. A literary contest organised annually since 1903 by the Lo Rat Penat cultural association recognises the work of local poets who write satirical verses in Valencian that explain these characters. The faller verses are collected in booklets (llibrets) and distributed to participants.

The five days and nights of Fallas might be described as a continuous street party. There are a multitude of processions: historical, religious, and comedic. Crowds in the restaurants spill out into the streets. Explosions can be heard all day long and sporadically through the night. Everyone from small children to elderly people can be seen throwing fireworks and noisemakers in the streets, which are littered with pyrotechnical debris. The timing of the events is fixed, and they fall on the same date every year, though there has been discussion about holding some events on the weekend preceding the Fallas, to take greater advantage of the tourist potential of the festival or changing the end date in years where it is due to occur in midweek.