On 17th March, we visited Valencia with our friends Ingrid and Colin to see the annual fallas celebrations.

Las Fallas is undoubtedly one of the most unique and crazy festivals in Spain. What started as a feast day for St. Joseph (Dia del Padre), the patron saint of carpenters, has evolved into a 5-day celebration involving fire.

Las Fallas literally means “the fires” in Valenciano and the focus of the fiesta is the creation and destruction of ninots – huge paper-machè and plaster statues. They are extremely lifelike and usually depict bawdy, satirical scenes and current events. A popular theme is poking fun at corrupt politicians and Spanish celebrities. The ninots are crafted by neighbourhood organizations and take almost the entire year to construct. Many are several storeys tall and need to be moved into their final location at over 350 key intersections and parks around the city with the aid of cranes. The ninots remain in place until March 19th, the day known as La Cremá (the burning) when all of the ninots are set on fire at midnight.

Another important part of the celebrations are the parades of festeros,  who are part of the neighbourhood organisations who have built the fallas, bringing to the cathedral flowers, which are used to create a huge effigy of the Virgin Mary.  Thousands of people of all ages take part in these parades, all dressed in their beautiful fiesta costumes and carrying bunches of red, white or pink carnations. See all the photos of the day in the gallery.

The celebrations generate national interest and there were numerous TV cameras filming the proceedings, a live broadcast into the midday news on Spanish TV from the cathedral square and 2 helicopters circling the square outside the city hall as the mascleta (’fire crackers’) went off at 2pm. The processions bring the centre of Valencia to a halt and the streets were thronged with thousands of Spanish people. Every bar and restaurant was full to the brim and there were hundreds of stalls which had set up in the streets to sell cheap mementoes, churros and other fast food and drinks.

The first weekend in December coincides with a public holiday to celebrate Constitution Day in Spain and there was plenty of opportunity to start our Christmas shopping with a Craft Fair at the Marriott hotel in Denia, a Fira de Nadal in the streets of Orba organised by local businesses to advertise their wares and to celebrate the start of the Christmas season and a Medieval Market in the streets of Denia old town

In Orba, there were some wonderful donkeys on display, along with the magnificent horses from the local Pereto equestrian centre and some cute little Shetland ponies.