A Little Rain Won’t Stop This Parade: Las Fallas and Valencia

Hi all, Emma here! We were privileged to spend the past week in Valencia with two dear friends from Chapel Hill, Anna Kate and Zander, and lucky enough that UNC-Chapel Hill’s spring break let us coordinate our time together with Valencia’s Las Fallas festival. The nearly month-long celebration’s revelry peaks in the third week of March, where residents and tourists alike spend late nights dancing in the streets, pulling off impressive pyrotechnic displays, admiring the fantastical statues built for the occasion, and, notably, burning them in a ceremony called la cremà.

But more on that later. First, the real breaking news of recent days: the shocking and untimely death of Andrew’s new jeans. Just before we left on our grand adventure, Andrew bought a new pair of jeans to replace a couple of pairs that had begun to sprout holes. We went to a Levi’s outlet, picked out a good set, and felt good about the general state of our denim heading into this adventure. Then, disaster struck.

When we were in Segovia (less than a month after purchasing), we noticed something distressing (photo on the left). By the end of our week in Valencia, the rip in the jeans had reached catastrophic heights, as depicted in the photo on the right. A truly heartbreaking experience.

Andrew sent many emails trying to convince both the Levi’s customer service folks in Spain and in the United States to replace his jeans, but to no avail. Stay tuned for our next post to see if Andrew is able to rectify the situation, or at least get himself some new jeans.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming…

Unfortunately, it gets worse before it gets better. The rainy weather you may have seen in pictures from our past posts did not relent, and I got my first solid soaking of the trip after a bus dropped me off twenty minutes from our Airbnb and I was forced to walk home as it poured. My poor canvas Vans didn’t stand a chance.

But Andrew and I were thrilled to have two friends visiting us from all the way across the pond, and we certainly were not going to let a little rain dampen our enthusiasm!

Andrew and I knew we had to show our guests a classic Emma-Andrew Good Time™, so we made sure to focus heavily on the food. It is, after all, our forté. We got kebabs (twice), ate plenty of Spanish tortillas, and Andrew even cooked us all dinner. If you’re ever in Valencia, here’s what we recommend:

Of course, there’s plenty more we never got to try!

After filling our bellies, we hit the streets. We spent most of our nights in Valencia wandering around the neighborhoods looking at the massive fallas sculptures (or, at least Anna Kate and Zander did. Andrew and I got a bad cold—don’t worry, not COVID—and spent about half the time sleeping, but we rallied on occasion!). This annual festival centers around the Feast of Saint Joseph, the patron saint of carpentry, and started as a way for carpenters to get rid of their mistakes from the year—their fallas, or “faults.” Over the course of more than two centuries, it has evolved into a massive celebration of both Valencia at large and the city’s many individual neighborhoods. More than a party, it’s a deeply communal event.

I’ve learned far more details about this festival than I could ever hope to fit into this post (and I don’t expect everyone reading this to particularly care about the nitty-gritty), but here’s the gist—and if any Valencian has stumbled upon this, I’m sorry. I’m leaving so much out, I know.

Every year, expert artists and carpenters construct fallas out of papier-mâché, wood pulp, styrofoam, and more; each neighborhood “owns” one falla. These massive creations are composed of individual ninots, or scenes containing one or two nearly life-sized people, and displayed in the center of streets across town. Beyond just the fallas, the city is also decorated from head to toe with large light installations.

Save for one ninot that’s saved after a vote by a panel of judges, all the fallas are burned in a series of massive bonfires on the night of 19th of March, following a week of partying, canons, and night after night of fireworks.

It really was an incredible sight to behold.

If you find yourself in Valencia, whether around Las Fallas or not, I highly recommend you check out the Museu Faller de València (it’s cheap, only a couple of Euros, or free on March 19th), where you can learn more about the history of this event. They also have displayed every single pardoned ninot dating back to 1934, and it’s fascinating to see the stylistic and thematic changes over the decades. Here are two I particularly liked (and remembered to take a picture of!):

We didn’t just make the most of our nights, though. Valencia is much more than a week-long festival, and we made sure to see as many of the sights as the rain and our exhaustion allowed for. On one clear(er) day, we took a bus down to El Palmar, a small town on the edge of the Parc Natural de l’Albufera. This massive lake irrigates nearby paddies where residents grow rice for, you guessed it, paella. While it’s seen in the United States as a generally Spanish dish, paella is truly a Valencian dish. Since we came all the way here, we figured we ought to go straight to the source!

And oh man am I glad we did. In El Palmar, we ate lunch at Restaurante Bon Aire, where we sampled both the seafood and vegetable paellas. All I can say is YUM. If you have the chance to come to El Palmar, do it and do paella right.

And that was our week! After a wonderful time (and a couple of canceled flights, but everything worked out in the end), Zander and Anna Kate flew back to the United States, and Andrew and I hopped a train to Córdoba…which we’ve already left! Time flies when you jump from city to city, apparently. (Don’t worry, that post is coming very soon!)

All in all, despite the rain and the sickness, we had a blast, and I feel so lucky that I was able to share this experience with people who are so dear to me.

In love and adventure,

E