Life: Idiotropic

It's Monday and I don't think I've fully recovered.  Could it be aging?  No.  Tiara's exhausted too.  But, we did it.  We saw the grand finale of Fallas, La Crema, where a year of hard work, a ton of money, and quite extraordinary works of art are burned to ashes.  Sacrifice?  Lent gone wild?  Madness?  May be a bit of each?  It's sad.  Profoundly sad.


Of course, we didn't do everything and we did take a vacation in the middle of it, but I did attend a mascleta, saw the children's parade of ninots,  and saw the Exposition de Ninots at Nuevo Centro.  Sadly, I missed all the night fireworks in person, but saw many of them from the relative safely of my balcony where they kept me up into the wee hours of the morning.  Valencian fireworks often don't begin until 1am.

What is Fallas?  Some say it stems from a medieval tradition when the carpenters would burn wood scraps for spring equinox.  A British ex-pat told me the church got involved in the 1950's to make it coincide more directly with St. Joseph's day.  There are probably as many theories as there are fallas.  So what does it matter?  Now, it's a block party on steroids.

I've read a few blogs and commentaries about this holiday.  A Spanish man told me back in February how emotional this celebration is for him.  The mascletas make him cry.  (Many have that reaction, but mostly because of pain from the noise.)  Others cry at La Crema.  A third of the city can't stand the daily noise and simply move out for the month.  A family in my neighborhood loves it so much, they move IN to the city for the last week.  Outsiders marvel at the sheer insanity of it all.  I mean, fireworks at all hours, and why would you spend a year planning and creating something amazing just to watch it burn???

But.. I love it.

My first reaction was that this is a celebration that is a bit overly hyped.  It is the second largest festival in the world next to Brazil's Carnival as far as the influx of people coming into the city.  The amount of money spent just blows my mind.  Add the fact that it all goes up literally in flames is incomprehensible - especially in this economy which was well documented in the falla sculptures themselves.  Mascletas daily for 19 days, each day getting bigger, longer, louder...  Fireworks at night many times also longer, louder, more impressive until the culmination at the end.  Three parades including the Cabalgata del Fuego - a fire parade where observers are literally showered with sparks from the various spark spouting torches and wands held by locals dressed as jokers and devils. 

We heard a lot of hype about this holiday.  Hype that is hard to live up to for an outsider.  I imagine if you are a beer thirsty college student looking for an insane environment to party in, this might be cool.  For an outsider watching it, it is profoundly interesting, beautiful, strange, but I didn't cry.  I wasn't moved emotionally.  I felt a bit sad though - like I was missing something.

See, this isn't for the outsiders.  It never was.  Fallas is for the Valencians.  Yes, they open up their city and welcome us in.  They welcome the tourists and the revenue that they bring.  But it isn't a party with an open invitation.  It's a private event.  It's actually over 700 private events.  It's a block party like no other.  And I think to really appreciate it, to really know and understand it, you need to be a part of it.

Any time of year when you walk around a town in the Comunidad Valenciana, you will come across a door with a little plaque near it that says, "Falla Something-or-Other" and, if the door is open you may see a few people inside talking, drinking beer, hanging out.   Children run in and out with soccer balls playing.  This is the meeting place, the Casal Faller.  Neighbors meet to discuss next year's fallas.  They are probably meeting now.  They choose a theme.  They find an artist.  They plan.  They have dinners and parties and paella contests with other Casal Fallers.  They have fundraisers.  Everyone donates money.  Local businesses donate money.  A year's worth of planning culminates in this one event, ending with La Crema on Saint Joseph's Day, March 19th.

They elect falleras and falleros majores and menores - the adult and child princes and princesses of the event.  There is pomp and ceremony and tradition and lots and lots of fireworks.  There is a contest to see who has the best ninot.  Everyone gets a vote.  Even me.  One ninot.  Just one small piece of one huge construction will be saved.  There are street light contests.  Amazing ones.  Each street is different.  Calle Cuba usually wins.

Each Casal Faller creates 2 fallas (the statues), one adult falla and one falla infantil.  Just in my small town of Puzol, there are 5 Casal Fallers.  In the city of Valencia, there are over 300 - more than 700 fallas to see.  It's amazing though.  Some are absolutely astounding 5 story tall monstrosities so full of color and detail you cringe at the thought they'll be ashes.  Some are small and simple - something you think you could do yourself at home.  But each are special.  Each represents their neighborhood.  Of course, the more money a Casal Faller has, the bigger and more amazing the falla will be.  But if you're a part of it, then it's your party and it really doesn't matter how fancy it is.  It's neat to zig zag through the city and see so much variety even in the tiniest plaza in the more run down parts of town.

So I spent the last two days of Fallas in Valencia, the busiest, loudest days of all.

On Thursday, Luci and I took the train in with friends.  From the moment we left the station, we could see changes in the city.  A huge churro stand faced us as we walked out the doors and behind that a falla stood near another churro stand.  The streets to our left were lined with pointy white tented booths selling fried food, souveniers, and all sorts of Made-in-China Randomness.  Nothing I couldn't live without.  We saw a giant Charlie Chaplin, then another block over was the first prize winner - the best falla in all of Valencia,  the falla of The Comision De Falla Convento Jerusalen on the street that bore its name.  The crowds around this one were thick, but for 4 Euros, Luci and I got inside the fence to get close and take better pictures.  We each got a traditional scarf to wear as well - blue and white plaid with the name of the Casal Faller on it.  Luci tied it around her neck.  (I later learned that these are fabulous to have when the Crema begins if you are unlucky enough to be standing in the direction that the smoke blows.)

There is a style of dress that is traditional for this celebration.  Of course the falleras and falleros (princesses and princes) wear fancy clothes with traditional hair styles and jewelry, but the regular folks dress up too.  A loose smock-style blouse is worn by men and women with a scarf that often matches.  They are sold in all the shops here close to fallas time and the Casal Fallers usually have certain colors, so you can tell who belongs to who.

From here we wandered, stopping and taking photos of each falla we saw and eventually made it up past the Ayutamiento's towering falla, past the Plaza de la Reina, to the Plaza de la Virgen where there wasn't a falla at all, but a towering Virgen de los Desamparados made of flowers.  On Wednesday at 4, falla groups from all over the Comunidad Valenciana come bearing flowers for "La Ofrenda," the offering.  A tall wooden form is created to act as the virgen's traditional gown.  Each year it changes and the artists who design it tell the falla groups what kind of flowers to bring.  The falleras in their beautiful gowns come from 4pm until 1am both Wednesday and Thursday bringing their offering of flowers which are put onto the wooden frame to create the gown.  They also bring huge bouquets as "offerings" that circle the Turia fountain behind her and people come too.  Normal people.  They come dressed up - even babies dress up.  And they bring flowers too - big bouquets and small to fill two big walls leaning against the church and blanket the ground with piles of blooms.   It's amazing.  On Thursday her cloak wasn't done so it was possible to see the wooden structure beneath.  When I returned on Friday, it was finished, the crowds were thick, and she was stunning. 

From here we stopped for the promised churro break.  Churros and bunuelos are both greasy deep-fried foods that taste amazing when dipped in thick Spanish drinking chocolate more the consistency of pudding then hot cocoa.  It clings to the dough as you dip it in coating it completely in a thick layer.  So delicious.  They aren't served all year here, but for fallas, it's a must.  Kind of like eating hot dogs at a baseball game.

It is impossible to be downtown now and now see something amazing.  It's more than just the statues themselves.  Each falla commission has a band.  There are parades of finely dressed people and bands happening at random all throughout the city.  There's dancing and food and fireworks everywhere.  Next to one falla a large pot of stew sat cooking over a wood fire.  No fancy gas grill.  Just wood built on campfire style into a triangle and lit.  A nice orange flame.  A bit pot with steam billowing from under the lid.  A man and a woman in lawn chairs watching it.  It cooks there on the side of the blocked off street just a few feet from the falla, there with tourists and visitors milling around.  But this is one of those special things - one of those things we just can't quite get as outsiders.  We can't join in the meal.  Oh, how I wish I could.  It smelled wonderful.  And just before I began to walk away I heard a band, looked up, and saw two rows of beautifully dressed people walking towards me. They reached the falla and broke into casual groupings while the band played one more song.  A fallero grabbed the hands of two falleras and did a short impromtu dance that made the ladies blush and giggle.

 
We walked on to another falla where members of their commission were just "hanging out."  A fallera in her gown sat on a plastic lawn chair with her feet propped up.  Children ran around.  Men sat at a little table drinking beer, talking.  A little girl, probably 4 years old, held a small rope in one hand, put the end of a firecracker to it, blew until the ember turned red, then threw the firecracker away from her, a trail of sparks following it.  It made a loud pop, she giggled with her friends, then grabbed another firecracker from her dad and started again.  Over and over again.  She captured my attention but she wasn't the only one.  I saw kids of all ages with short yellow or white ropes lighting not only tiny firecrackers, but larger fireworks as well, then throwing them sometimes quite near people (or at my feet), and laughing as they exploded.  It's something you'd never see in the states.  Or in Britain, one lady told me.  But it's everywhere at all hours.  And it's loud.  Several times we jumped.

My favorite falla and the one that I'd return to on Friday was what we called, "the money one," the falla of Almirante.

So these "fallas," the amazing wooden, foam, paper mache, painted statues are created around a theme that is usually satirical, always comical, and generally centers around events within the last year.  Political figures are rampant.  I counted over 8 Obamas.  Celebrities are frequent.  I saw 2 Michael Jackson's, one Charlie Chaplan, and one Ronaldo.  The mayor of Valencia and Zapatero, Spain's President, are easy targets.  And... the Crisis, pronounced Cree-sees, is the dominant theme.  So, my money falla of Almirante was a stack of US coins with a sprawled out tiger on top.  A overstuffed purple chair balanced on top of the tiger with a fat man smoking a cigar sitting in it.  His cufflinks were dollar signs.  Above him towered two slender women - flappers with short hair and long smoking wands, gloves and slinky dresses.  One had pound sign earrings and the other euro earrings.  A sleak car held three over-paid soccer stars and all around this enormous falla sat smaller ninots depicting world leaders.  Zapatero wore a santa suit and drove a sleigh full of presents waving a sign about  increased taxes.  Obama floated in a dollar covered inner tube.  Britain was an arm sticking out of the water holding a pound covered umbrella.  The Greek flag floated on the blue stones depicting water.  A Russian puppeteer held their new president.  And so on.  It was all there.  Angela Merkel singing opera on the Euro covered Titanic as it sunk.  The details were phenomenal.  Little things.  Right down to the gold charm bracelet one flapper wore.  And though most all the signs in and aroung these things are written in the local Valenciano, this one I could understand enough without the signs.  It was funny, beautiful, and made sense.  I took a million pictures.

We pulled ourselves away to see just a few more before leaving.  We had to see Calle de Cuba and Calle Sueca known as much for their phenomenal street lights that are impressive even in the day as their fallas that are also some of the best in the city.  Big, beautiful.  Calle Sueca's is another one that allowed entrance within the fences for a small fee.  I paid 1 Euro each for Luci and I.  She got a hard boiled egg and I got a shot of caramel Bailey's.  Yum.  Can I go in twice?

The train station parking lot was more crowded when we returned than when we left.  I imagine at night it will be even more packed.  Many will go in for the Nit de Foc - the biggest fireworks display of the season - and one I'll miss because it starts at 1 and I'm just too exhausted already.

So... Friday morning.  Elise had "mother-daughter" time on Wednesday grocery shopping and walking around Puzol.  Luci's day was yesterday - a longer one than we'd originally planned.  Today I had two more daughters to spend "quality time" with and many more fallas to see.

Arianna and I took the train in to town this morning at 0930.  The crowds were already bigger at the station than the day before and there was a marked difference in the city as well.  We walked past the Ayutamieto to the Mercado Central, through plaza Tossal where a giant piggy bank sat with a thermometer in his mouth hooked up to a Euro IV drip.  Saw a sweet falla at Torres de Quart - the only real obvious connection that I saw between the children and adult fallas.  The children's falla showed a young boy and girl bent towards each other about to kiss, a birthday cake with the number 9, and a circle of young chubby angels over their heads.  The adult falla showed an old man and an old woman bent towards each other as well about to kiss, the circle of angels aged as well, and a line of walkers and wheelchairs around them.  It was really sweet.  From there we saw more fallas on our way past the IVAM to the Plaza Na Jordana.  Before we saw this one though, we heard music, a clear sign that something is going on.

At 11 on the Puente de San Jose, the falla queens and their courts came to bring flower offerings to the patron saint of fallas whose statue stood along the bridge near the center.  It was a surprisingly loose, casual gathering.  The falleras talked amongst themselves laughing at private jokes.  Friends helped them fix their hair with the long lace veils streaming behind them.  Mothers told their finely dressed sons to behave.   And a short line formed little by little with each fallera major carefully mounting rickety steps to lay a bouquet of white roses at the feet of the celebration's patriarch, San Jose.  We stood, watched, took pictures, then left before it was over.

The falla behind us was calling.  Wow.  This is the best of the day and Arianna's favorite.  The falla de Na Jordana was an enormous haunted house that you could walk inside through a small passage.  There were butlers, cows, crazy animals on top of a giant lamppost as tall as the surrounding buildings, a crazed man with a crazed cat, and multiple references to Britain, though I couldn't understand them all.  The photos don't even begin to do it justice and sadly, there's no going back.  That just about kills me.  It's Monday and they are all gone with nothing remaining, but photographs and memories.

Arianna wanted to see the Virgen, so we pushed through the crowds a bit, then cut through quieter side streets to get to the plaza where the giant flower cloaked virgin stood.  She was finished now and stunning.  More flowers here than before, a group of pigeons standing in a blocked off area behind her flying away, then returning as if trained somehow.  The crowds were thicker, more suffocating, but we squeezed through, got photos, and marveled at her - the Virgin de los Desamparados - the unprotected.  The original smaller version stands in the nave of the Cathedral next to us.  People go to her to pray for protection.  This is why so many girls are named "Amparo" here.  It means protected.

Churros and chocolate waited for us at a small white tent near the train station.  We grabbed them quickly, then got our place on the train and enjoyed them relaxed there, a sweet reward to a long walk.


A few hours later the babysitter came and it was Tiara's turn for a night out with mom.  Surprisingly, there was someone pulling out just as I arrived at the train station, so we got a great parking spot.  The train was crowded, so there wasn't any place to sit and it seemed incredibly slow.  We didn't have a plan, really.  I hoped to see the Cabalgata de Fuego, but we got there after it had started and the crowds were so thick you could barely see the sparks flying upward past the throngs of people and making progress through the crowd meant pushing and using elbows just a little.  We tried though and we did make ahead of the parade just a little through the people to a place where the crowd was only 4 people deep and I had a small crack between a couple heads to point my camera lens and hope for a couple good shots.  Which didn't happen.  Night, fire, movement, a tiny space.  No luck.  But, we saw enough to know that next year we will get there early enough to get a spot at the end where the fireworks are so that we can get good photos of both and see more than flying sparks and fleeting white painted faces.

We made our way north towards Almirante and once again pushed through crowds to get around the parade, "La Gran Parada Mora," that their falla commission had staged.  The costumes were beautiful, but after seeing the 9 October parade, it was much of the same thing repeated.  We kept walking, seeing as many fallas as we could, pushed through crowds at Sueca and Cuba just to see the lights.  Hoped to see Cuba's falla close up, but were irritated by the shortness of the lady demanding 4 Euros each and for only 5 minutes to walk around it.    Found churros and chocolate and a tiny fence to sit on and rest our feet a bit near the Grand Via.  We'd already walked a lot.  There were fireworks everywhere.  Not just the noise, but real displays.  Seemed every corner we turned we'd see the impressive colored sparks flying high above the buildings ahead of us.  Sometimes we'd stop and watch.  Eventually, it became too "normal," and we just pressed on.  We saw a falla infantil being wired for burning.  Those would all burn at 10.  And as we walked back to Almirante, we saw one still burning.

We both like the Falla at Almirante and both agreed that if we were to see La Crema, then we should see one that we actually cared about.  I thought Almirante would burn at midnight.  Like Germany's St. Martin's Day horses which must be shared, so must these fallas share firefighters, "Bombers" in Valenciano.   It should have been obvious that there wouldn't be enough firemen in the city to burn 350 fallas at once.  We arrived just after 1030.  Just after 11, a gravelly voiced guard told the crowds it wouldn't begin until 1.  Then just after midnight his younger cohort gave us the update:  0130.  The sushi place nearby closed at 11.  We were out of luck.  So we stood there, in front, watching our favorite falla as workers scurried around her for those couple hours pulling out foam from inside the purple chair and the fat policeman and stuffing something inside.  Circling the falla with wires, playing with fuses, pushing long sticks inside the falla in some places.  Sticks of fireworks?  A plastic container of gasoline sat there.  They set up mini mascletas, a wheel that would later make sparks, a long line of little barrels of fireworks, and horizontal stringed "ladder" that would create of white veil of sparks as the fires were lit. 

Close to midnight they set off fireworks to cheering crowds.  Even young boys stood within the fences with lit sticks lighting the little barrels.  A man ducked between two spouting sparks to set off a third.  It was beautiful, fun, and really quite insane to see the amount of fire, sparks, and the relative closeness people got to it.  The crowds got thicker as it got closer to 1.  We were all squeezed it.   Standing may be 20 feet away from the falla which sat in a relatively small plaza with buildings on all sides.  Just after 1 a part of the crowd began to scream and then we saw the firetrucks.  The bombers readied themselves, stood around the falla with hoses already hooked up and pulsing with water.  They checked them, sprayed a little.  I was glad to be at an angle where we wouldn't get sprayed.  It was beginning to get cold.

0130.  A series of fireworks shot to the air in front.  Lights nestled in the falla went off.   Fountains of sparks shot off from the sides.  The wheel through out sparks next as billowing smoke rose.  The veil of white sparks showered for a couple minutes and I could see for the first time the orange flame behind them.  It went so quickly after that.  I focused on the flapper with the pound earrings and didn't even see the police man fall over and burst into flames.  When I looked at him, he was already a simple wooden scaffold blackened with the edges glowing orange.  The smoke was thick, but seemed to rise, so that where we were there was no odor or smoke to breath in.  The firefighters sprayed the fires from all sides, not to put it out, but to control it.  And it burned on.  My flapper was suddenly a face and an arm, then just an arm that didn't seem to want to go.  It hung on, humorously, with it's long cigarette, then finally toppled over into the heap of embers.  The magician and the cat fell over and just hung there untouched by flames.  Most everything else was gone.  And Tiara and I decided that it was late enough - we had a train to catch - and we didn't need to watch until it was nothing but ashes.

We fought the crowds to leave giving our front row spot to someone else, then walked past the falla a block over, now a circle of black ashes with a random flame here and there.  Left alone.  No one was watching it.  In some areas, trucks had already come to clear away the ashes so that you saw just a shaded circle where a falla had once been.  We saw other trucks working as we walked by.  I was impressed.  They were cleaning up quickly.  By the morning the city would be normal.  It's profoundly sad.

We stood on the train again going home.  Feeling exhausted.   Standing was difficult and the ride felt like forever.  Tired.  Sad.

That is it until next year.  It is profoundly sad to think that the opportunity is gone to see some of these again, or ones that I missed.  They aren't on tour, in a warehouse somewhere, or tucked away in a museum.  They are gone, reduced to ashes, and literally swept away.