Spain: Getting Fiery at Las Fallas
By Brett Edmonds
Topdeck’s Head of Design Brett feels the heat at the Las Fallas Festival, Spain!
Close your eyes. Now think back to your favourite camp-fire memory. Can you hear the sound of the fire crackling against the cool night breeze? Can you smell the rich, smoky scent of burning embers? Can you feel the heat of the flames as they wash over you? Can you visualise the piercing glow of the red hot wood burning at the base of the fire?
Now picture that camp-fire on a scale similar to a two-story building and you’re getting warm.
Multiply that two-story camp-fire 50 times and you’re getting warmer.
Dot those camp-fires throughout a small Spanish city and you’re getting warmer still.
Add a festival atmosphere in the mix and you’ve escalated to hot.
Stretch this over 4 days at the Las Fallas festival and you’re officially scorching.
The Spanish know how to host a world class festival and Las Fallas is no different. In fact, the only difference is that it has yet to be discovered by the hordes of tourists that dominate many other Spanish festivals such as Running of the Bulls and La Tomatina.
Las Fallas is a festival that will truly ignite all five senses (six if you include your imagination).
Each year thousands of people descend on the city of Valencia to experience a festival steeped in tradition and imagination. Daily firecracker fights (mascletà), multi-coloured street parades, massive bonfires, sumptuous Spanish tapas, enchanting Flamenco music and fun-loving locals are all combined to make a truly incredible festival that is bound to leave a lasting mark on anyone game enough to visit it.
Be prepared to be swept up by the crowds of Spanish cheering and chanting in the streets, honouring the patron saint of carpenters, St Joseph.
A feast for the senses, this festival will really conjure your inner child with its towering, overly flamboyant effigies of politicians and celebrities dotted throughout the city in its many plazas.
The effigies are put on display for days leading up to the big finale, ‘the night of fire’, where at the stroke of midnight they are torched and burnt down to the ground in front of thousands of wide-eyed onlookers. This is where your inner cave man (or woman) will really come alive as you are mesmerised by the fiercely hot fire, raging only within a couple of metres from you - the heat snapping at you and the sound of the crowd moving through you like a freight train.
Las Fallas is a festival that really must be experienced by anyone looking for the magic of a European festival, but without the swarm of tourists over crowding the quaint little towns and cities that many of these festivals are set in.
Join Topdeck at Las Fallas from 17-20 March 2012! For more of Brett’s photos from the festival check out our album here!
Tags: European holidays, Festival, fire, Fireworks, Las Fallas, mascletà, spain, St Joseph, topdeck festivals, topdeck travel, travel to european festivals, valencia, Youth Travel
