Our First Fallas: Beautiful, Bizarre, and Very Loud

When we moved to Valencia, one of the things we were most excited about was experiencing Fallas.

We had done our homework. We’d visited the Fallas Museum multiple times. We understood the basics: the ninot figurines, the falleras in their elaborate dresses, and of course, the climactic spectacle of La Cremà. We thought we understood what we were getting into.

We couldn’t quite understand the people who said they hated Fallas. Or the ones who made a point of leaving town for the last half of March. Surely, they were missing something special.

We were determined not to be those people. In fact, we were thrilled that our apartment is right in the center, just a couple of blocks from the Ayuntamiento. We assumed this would give us the full experience.

It did.

Just not quite the way we imagined.

It turns out that Fallas is not just a festival. It is an environment. For three weeks, every day at 2:00 PM, the city gathers for the mascletà. On paper, it’s five minutes of daytime pyrotechnics. In practice, it is five minutes of what can only be described as a carefully choreographed war zone. The ground shakes. The air cracks. Your internal organs briefly reconsider their life choices.

And then there are the crowds. Thousands of people pouring into the center, every single day.

But the mascletà is just the headline act. The real story is everything else. Fireworks are not an occasional feature of Fallas. They are the background music. They go off in the morning. They go off in the afternoon. They go off late at night. They go off when you least expect it, and more impressively, when you do expect it.

Our apartment comes with what we now understand to be a very special acoustic feature: a narrow alley running alongside the building, directly outside our bedroom windows. This alley, we discovered, is apparently considered an ideal location for setting off fireworks. The sound doesn’t just echo. It amplifies. It reverberates with enthusiasm. What might be a distant pop elsewhere becomes, in our bedroom, something closer to a cannon report.

If you have ever wondered what it would be like to live inside a drum while it is being enthusiastically tested, we can now offer a detailed account.

The first few days of Fallas are exciting. The energy is infectious. The spectacle is real.

By the second week, you begin to understand why some people quietly leave town.

By the third week, “unremitting” starts to feel less like an opinion and more like a measurement. There is no pause. There is no intermission. Fallas does not taper, it builds.

In the final days, the flower offerings begin. This entails bringing bouquets of flowers to build the large statue of the Virgin Mary. The parade route passes on the street directly in front of our apartment, on the way up to Plaza de la Virgen, so we could watch it from our front windows.

On the positive side: it is genuinely beautiful. The falleras, especially the young girls, are extraordinary. The dresses, the music, the sense of tradition and pride, the steady stream of bands and participants—it’s a moving thing to watch.

For about ninety minutes.

The full event, as it turns out, lasts approximately nine hours.

And then it happens again the next day. Eighteen hours of marching, eighteen hours of brass bands interspersed with more traditional groups playing drums and the dolçaina, the traditional shawm-like instrument that sounds sort of like a cat choking on an oboe.

At a certain point, admiration gives way to a kind of stunned respect for endurance. Not just theirs, but ours.

The final event, La Cremà (the cremation), is where it all comes to a head. We made it out on the last night to watch the burning of our neighborhood’s ninot. This scene was repeated in dozens of places throughout the city, with, of course, the biggest (and most crowded) location being the Ayuntamiento Plaza.

Some of the ninots are extraordinary. In areas like Jerusalem, Ruzafa, and around Gran Vía, the scale, craftsmanship, and lighting are on a monumental level.

It’s obvious that these districts have a deep tradition and a level of investment that consistently produces the standout pieces. Walking through those areas feels like stepping into a city-wide gallery of satire, artistry, and sheer imagination.

It also explains something else we had been wondering about. Before Fallas, we had noticed the number of shops selling traditional costumes and wondered how they all stayed in business.

Now we know.

When you watch thousands of people – literally, thousands – participating in the flower offerings over the course of those long days, it suddenly makes perfect sense. The scale of participation is enormous, and the level of detail and care in the clothing is remarkable.

And yet, for all of this, there is something undeniably special about Fallas. This isn’t a performance put on for tourists. It’s something the city does for itself.

So, we are very glad we experienced Fallas.

We are equally confident that next year, we will be experiencing it from a considerable distance.

It’s a little embarrassing to admit, given how eager we were to be here for it. But there it is. There is a difference between appreciating something and wanting to live inside it for three weeks.

We now understand the people who leave town.

In fact, we will probably become them.