Valencia recovers the festivities of the Fallas, after two years marked by covid

Valencia (Spain), 19 Mar The city of Valencia (east) is experiencing the end of its festivities this Saturday, the Fallas, one of the best-known celebrations in Spain, where fire, gunpowder and music are the protagonists, and which for two years were depleted by the pandemic. Tonight, at the end of St. Joseph's Day, dozens of large ensembles of cardboard stone sculptures, allegorical and satires, known as fallas, installed in streets and squares throughout the city, will burn, as the final highlight of the celebration, although one, the one pardoned by a jury, will be saved. These are festivals that date back to the 18th century and were declared a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 2016. After two years, the Fallas were the first parties to be suspended in Spain due to the pandemic, Valencians and thousands of tourists will live the big night of the festivities, after a week of celebrations, which has been tarnished by the heavy rains that fall on the Spanish Levante. These days, there are hardly any traces of the pandemic, beyond the mandatory masks in crowds and interiors and some ninots (cardboard stone figures) that make up the fallas. This year, the artists who made these ephemeral sculptures preferred to focus on other sarcastic and emotional allegories, rather than artistically gloating about the coronavirus itself and there were no shortage of allusions to the crisis to climate change, including politicians, kings and leaders such as Russian Vladimir Putin. Despite the bad weather, the constant noise of explosions and firecrackers prevail, the sound of marching bands of the parades and pedestrian tides between fault and fault. These 2022 holidays are celebrated entirely in March, as tradition marks, after those in 2020 were suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic and those in 2021 were postponed to September to celebrate only five days of minimum festive events. In addition to the burning of the fallas tonight, throughout the holiday week Valencians live the fireworks with intensity, where gunpowder is the protagonist, the most important of them, the so-called “Nit del Foc” (Night of Fire) was held last night and 1,500 kilos of gunpowder were burned. Another typical element of these festivals is music, with dozens of bands playing in all the neighborhoods of the city. Music societies in the Valencian region are celebrating their return to the streets these days, with the hiring of 18,000 musicians to entertain the main week of a Falla, which has brought great economic relief after two years of inactivity and 55 million euros of losses (more than sixty million dollars). These holidays represent a great economic upheaval for the city of Valencia, the third most important in Spain, although hotel forecasts this year have been reduced by bad weather, which caused at least 10% cancellations.