Valencia's 'Fallas' fiesta earns UNESCO heritage status
Thursday, December 1, 2016 @ 9:48 AM
VALENCIA'S noisy, fun and colourful Fallas festival has been given UNESCO heritage status, putting it on the world map, ensuring its lifelong protection and potentially bringing in even more tourists.
Every year in mid-March, papier mâché monuments the height of a small block of flats are set up at practically every junction in the city, featuring a number of scenes with caricatures of politicians and famous people, poking fun at current affairs.
The late Rita Barberá, mayoress for 24 years until May 2015 and who died from a heart attack in Madrid on November 23, has featured in falla monuments so often that she would have thought something had gone drastically wrong if she ever walked past one which didn't house a spoof statue of her – such as the one in the above picture, in her characteristic red suit jacket.
Fireworks go off, marquées or 'casales' are set up next to every monument – known individually as a falla – in which girls and boys in traditional Valencian costume, called falleras and falleros respectively spend the best part of a week partying, eating and drinking around the clock.
A wooden frame with the head of the Virgin Mary is set up and falleras place bunches of flowers in it until a giant floral Mother of Christ is formed.
Then, on the last night – March 19, which is Father's Day and Saint Joseph's Day in Spain – the fallas are burnt to the ground, starting with the lowest-placed in the prizegiving and ending with the winner.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com