Las Fallas

Hola Bloggers,

Way back on the weekend of the 18th March, Las Fallas was celebrated here in Valencia. I mentioned this in my blog on 13 March, and as promised, I now have photos.

The first ones show the regional costumes that they all wear. The girls dresses are absolutely beautiful actually. It appears that you have to wear your hair in some sort of stupid princess Leah stylee but I reckon I'd put up with that to be able to swan around in the dress. In fact I kept saying that if we have a daughter one day then I might dress up myself to accompany her! I bet the dresses cost quite a lot because they are very detailed and very heavy looking.

Each separate Falla centre sends some of their Falla kings and queens to be judged to see who becomes the ultimate king and queen of the whole of Valencia. There are just two different age categories - adult and child. I don't know when you are classed as an adult though. I can't say that the queens seemed to be drop dead gorgeous so I don't think its a superficial beauty pagent. I think its more to do with your outfit and perhaps cultural questions / speeches. Perhaps I'll find out one day .......

From about lunch time, all the fallas queens (and there are about 100,000) walk in procession with their fallas kings playing music (of a kind of brass band type) to the cathedral, where they give flowers to the virgen. At the cathedral, a huge statute of the virgen is erected withall the flowers that everyone has brought and people gather around here all day and night watching it come together (see photo). Many of them find this very emotional and cry as they are giving the flowers. Jose says the act of walking through town and giving the flowers is linked to repenting sins (so its not just that their feet hurt then?).

The next photos are of the statues that they erect and then burn. The first three are all of the one that was on the corner of my street. It came fifth in the competition. Not bad as I saw on the tv that there were 750 this year! Some are much more professional than others - and I mean this literally. They have companies sponsoring them and donating expertise and or money. This was one of the professional ones. The one on our other corner was a locally done one - all the labour and expense provided by the locals who live here and who are members of that particular Fallas association - like our electrician, who is always trying to get us to come done to their community centre thing for a drink. He seems a very friendly guy and I may be being overly suspcious in thinking he wants us so much due to Jose being a structural consultant and architect! He's just what they need. No, joking aside, we will go down for a drink one day, we just ahven't made it yet. They meet more than once a week throughout the whole year because thats how much work it takes to get everything sorted out for Las Fallas.

The last one is one I noticed that really caught my eye. It was so life like.

So, you'll all be wanting to visit me next March for Fallas. Well, first come first served.

S xx