Las Fallas in Valencia
From March 12 to 19, around the saint's day of San José, Valencia erupts in a blaze of colour and noise for the fiesta de las Fallas. During the year, each barrio or neighbourhood builds a satirical caricature or falla. These begin to appear in the plazzas of each barrio at the beginning of March and are judged and awarded prizes before being set alight at midnight on March 19, the nit the Foc. The festival takes its name from the Valencian word of torch. Traditionally, carpenters celebrated the day of San José and the beginning of spring with a ritual burning of spare wood. They would decorate the torches used over the winter and add them to the bonfire. This simple rite of spring has become an international tourist attraction , and it's an extroardinary sight to watch these painstakingly constructed models, some as tall as buildings, some big enough to walk inside, be strung with firecrackers and litterally go up in smoke. The fallas are ignited in succession; the last to go up are the prizewinners. each falla has a small model or ninot beside it, usually created by the children of the barrio. Finally, around 1 am, the falla of the plza del ayuntamiento goes up in flames, set off by a string of firecrackers, followed by the last thunderous firework display on the fiesta.
On march 20, Valencia returns to normality-the streets are cleaned overnight, and the planning begins for the next year's Fallas.
If you decide to stay in this region, you have a large choice of apartments and hotels in Valencia.
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