Every day on our walk with Malta we pass the cuenta atrás, the countdown clock, over the door of our local casal faller. The clock counts to March 15, the first day of Las Fallas, a festival characterized by fireworks, music, flowers, and the fallas themselves — effigies that are made at each casal faller.
The cuenta atrás was just part of the scenery when I first got here, but things started changing when it hit 30 days. After a quiet January, there were suddenly more people in the streets and we were hearing languages besides Spanish and Valencian. Hammering and sawing from the casal faller filled the air during the day, and we started hearing drunk, joyful singing at night. The city swelled with anticipation.
February 27 was the official kickoff for the Fallas season. Members of casals fallers played music as they marched to Plaza del Ayuntamiento for the first mascletà, the daily afternoon firework event. Brian and I joined the huge crowd to watch La Crida in the evening, which included the most impressive fireworks show I’ve ever seen. Google translate tells me that “crida” is Valencian for “shout” or “yell,” and while I’m sure it means something more like “ring in,” an exclamation really is more appropriate. It’s loud and beautiful — people wait all year for this, and in this case, Valencians have been waiting two years for a “normal” Fallas, since the festival was canceled in 2020 and postponed in 2021.
La Crida felt like its own climax, but it launches a new cuenta atrás. We told our friend Carla, who used to be a fallera, that the fireworks at La Crida were the best we had ever seen. She was bemused: “But La Crida is just the first day.” Everyone we meet here tells us that we haven’t seen anything yet, that each day closer to March 15 gets louder and more lively. I didn’t have to wait long to see the celebration ramping up — on March 1 a churreria popped up near our apartment!
We went to see our first mascletà in person yesterday. There’s an audacity to a 2pm fireworks display, the confidence that you can produce something earth-shattering without the help of a dark sky. Mascletàs are a showcase of rhythm and volume — they’re called terremotos for a reason. The streets and buildings tremble as the sky fills with flashes and gunpowder. You feel the explosions in your bones. The mascletàs are their own kind of cuenta atrás — each day’s head pyrotechnic is more prestigious, each show grander and louder than the last.
The mascletàs continue through the end of Fallas, and we’re going to see the exhibition of 2022’s ninots next week. The newsletters through the end of Fallas will cover different aspects of the festival as we experience them, so stay tuned for more!
Song of the week:
Las Fallas aside, the daily reports from Ukraine have been at the top of my mind this week. I don’t have anything sophisticated to say except that war and invasions are awful, and I hope that peace comes quickly. Victor Jara’s words always resonate in times of war, violence, and oppression:
Es el canto universal
cadena que hará triunfar
el derecho de vivir en paz.
Hasta luego,
— Kata
Interesting! Is the point to intentionally launch fireworks during the day? Hard to see, but I assume there is a reason?