The first crazy Mascletá of 2012 in Valencia
Friday, March 2, 2012 @ 12:45 PM
I was in Valencia for the past couple of days this week and I was lucky enough to witness the first "Mascletá" of 2012. I met up with Graham Hunt and went along to see it with him.
If you're not familiar with the Mascletá in Valencia, then, like me, you'll probably think this is a bit mad. In the city centre, opposite the town hall, at 2pm they let off a barrage of bangers and fireworks for about 10 minutes. But this isn't some little boring firework display, it's huge and they must use hundreds and hundreds of fireworks.
It's gets progressively faster, noisier and smokier and then ends with a huge number of bangers all going off at once and by this point you can't see anything and the noise is crazy.
The proximity to all of the surrounding buildings and the fact that it's in broad daylight, making it difficult to really appreciate the fireworks, it what, at least to me, makes it seem like one of those "it could only happen in Spain" moments.
And they do this every day for 19 days, leading up to the end of Fallas itself. I recorded this short video from yesterday's show and it not so much the visual aspect of it that's of interest, it's definitely more the audio.
If you've in Valencia this month it's definitely worth seeing, or should I say hearing!