Category: Las Fallas

Las Fallas / Valencia

Is that ninot I see, or is it just a Fallas-y?

WARNING: there is a lot of male nudity depicted in this post! We are not kidding. In March of 2018, nostalgia drove us back to our first Spanish home to experience another Valencian Fallas celebration. First things first: we headed to our favorite fried dough place for an indulgent breakfast. A charanga, or small musical group common to street festivals, entertained the hungry line with that old Valencian classic. Seeing how the bunyuelos were made was equally entertaining. Speaking of can’t-miss Valencian treats, we could’t visit the city without visiting our favorite horchatería, Daniel in Alboraya.  Later, we enjoyed some

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Burriana / Las Fallas

Losing Ninot or: burn, falla, burn

And so, our Fallas coverage draws to a dramatic end. All of the parades, fireworks, and other events in our city and in the capital, Valencia, led up to this final moment in the life of any of the enormous monuments: the burning, also known as La Cremà (quema in Spanish). We came home to Burriana Sunday, March 19, after a brief visit to Castellón to see the Magdalena celebration, only to encounter a smoldering pile of rubble in the street where one of the children’s fallas had stood before we left town. And down the road, smoke in the sky indicated there was more

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Burriana / Las Fallas / Valencia

For foc’s sake: what is a mascletà?

Valencians love their fireworks. The community is Spain’s leading producer of fireworks, in fact. Rare is the night when we’re lying in bed and don’t hear some random pops or booms coming from another part of the city… or even right next door. We do live directly above a local falla, after all. For the Fallas celebration here, it should come as no surprise, then, that fireworks factor in heavily. Everyone participates, starting at a young age. A really young age. Because we don’t live in the capital city, we didn’t witness the daily wake-up call known as la Despertà, in which parades of people

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Las Fallas / Valencia

Finding Ninot: Valencia proper

If Burriana offers a more comfortable, familiar Fallas experience, then the capital city, Valencia, provides large-scale wonder. Dreamer’s first visit to Valencia during the festival week with Dad and Deb (poor Doer had to work!) revealed a city completely metamorphosed into a monument to celebration. Little mojito huts had sprung up out of nowhere. We did manage to find one area that wasn’t completely overtaken by Fallas: City of Arts and Sciences, the iconic cultural complex designed by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava. Still, you couldn’t go far without running into a monument or a parade. When it was time for our visitors to return

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Burriana / Las Fallas / Valencia

Finding Ninot: Flowers and parades

Many parades accompany the Fallas celebration, both formal and impromptu. Sometimes it seems like you can’t go anywhere in the city of Valencia during Fallas week without running into a panoply of costumed marchers and musicians. Each individual march doesn’t always seem to be a big deal for the participants. Really, sometimes people just seem to be getting from Point A to Point B, like anyone using the road. There was no escaping it. The festive fanfare was never far away, and it frequently interrupted us during our Valencian walking tour, while we were trying to take a break from las Fallas.

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Las Fallas / Tourism / Valencia

Ninot takes a break: Valencia walking tour

We spent a very long, fun-filled day taking part in the Fallas in Valencia last month, and we will tell you more about that next time (finally… we promise!). Although the festival really does overtake the city, we still managed to have a few non-Fallas experiences while we were there for a very long day. For example, not all of the street performers we saw were dressed in traditional costumes – some were quite unique. Dreamer gave this guy a shiny nickel. Because we’ve enjoyed the experience so much in other cities, we decided to go on a free walking tour. And wouldn’t

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