We joined a group from the school to walk to La Crida, the official opening of the month long festival of La Fallas. Our guide/teacher warned us it would be crowded. “If you get lost, well…you’ll be lost. But you are independent, so I won’t worry. Have fun.”

As a group we joined the thickening hoards moving towards the big road on the edge of the old city that leads to the city gate where the ceremony would take place. We joined the road, and about 50,000 people, squeezing into the larger crowd straining to see the tv screen broadcasting the events at the gate some 6 blocks away.

After spending 20 minutes mushed against a parked police car – in a fog of cigarette smoke – R and I split off. We pushed and shoved our way through the crowd and climbed the barricade on the other side of the road to reach the space on the sidewalk above the river park. From there we had some breathing room and a somewhat better view. 

We still couldn’t see the gate and stage where the ceremony was taking place, but we had a better view of the screen and fireworks. And what a show. It started with the orchestra, which played for the acrobat riding a gigantic illuminated dove that flew over the crowds.

Dance performances and a round of fireworks introduced the fallera mayor and the fallera infantil (the adult and child “princesses” of the Fallas) (princess isn’t quite the right word, but close) who would (in their best Valenciano) declare Las Fallas open. Everyone sang the Valenican anthem – which, unsurprisingly, is about how Valencia is the best city in the world and how wonderful it is to be Valencian – and another round of fireworks closed things up.

Our guide from the school, Victor, had explained that the symbolic reopening of the gates recalled the era when they were used for real every day. If you got in before nightfall you had the protection of the city; if not, you were left out in the flat, treeless, featureless campo and had “only the protection of the moon.”

Valencia is home to a centuries old festival called Las Fallas.

We are going shortly to La Crida, the official opening of the 4 week long event, but in the run up, the city has been getting gradually noisier all day, with periodic loud (LOUD!) fireworks and groups of falleros and their families and friends (and musicians) making their way towards the festival.

Falla is a Valencian word for torch; the essence of the festival is that many elaborate statues are created out of wood, fiber etc., and the best voted on. The best go into a permanent museum collection and the rest are burned in enormous bonfires, and amid huge fireworks displays, at the culminating “Crèma” in mid- March.

Captured a small bit of video of one of the groups :

This is just one of about 10 groups we’ve heard/seen today.

K looking pleased with herself because we found a tiny sidewalk restaurant where the menu del día was both cheap and entirely in Valenciano:

Beer. Sun. And the main courses turned out to be enormous.

There was something quintessentially European about the fact that our table on the sidewalk was wedged up within about 3 inches of two cars, both so tiny that you could almost have parked them on the tabletop.

R deemed his bowl of muesli insufficient for attentive museum going.