The Irish love to celebrate St. Patrick's day and strangely manage to get everybody else to join in whilst totally ignoring their own patron saint's day.
March 17th on the Cabo Roig strip near where we live saw over 8,000 people joining in the fun and getting completely into the spirit, in both senses. It was a very sunny day with temperatures in the high twenties and all had a great time with no trouble.
There were parades of classic cars, bikes, and 22 floats, all of which combined Spanish and Irish humour. Plans are already on the table for next year's event which is the only St. Patrick's Day parade in the whole of Spain.
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| Two honorary Paddies for the day. Chris and Viv from The Orange Tree Restaurant |
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On a less savoury note, March sees the beginning of the Feria de Falles which is a mass slaughter of bulls for the entertainment of the brain-dead in the bullrings. Some parts of Spain have now banned this blood sport but alas it continues in most of the country.
Sometimes the bull has a slight victory...
but will still go on to be slaughtered painfully. The above picture shows a matador being gored and badly injured by the tormented bull at the beginning of the 2014 festival. The matador concerned, Enrique Ponce, has killed over 2,000 bulls and was described as "lucky" as the bull only broke his collarbone and several ribs. The bull was not so lucky as he went on to be killed. Defenders of the sport say that because the bull only suffers and is tormented for about 20 minutes before being killed it compares favourably with humane slaughter in other countries. I say Bull Sh**t.
On a happier note, Falles is also a time of party and celebration held in commemoration of Saint Joseph in the city of Valencia.
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| One of the huge statues or Falles, which are paraded during the celebrations. |
The term Falles refers to both the celebration and the monuments created during the celebration. A number of towns in the Valencian Community have similar celebrations inspired by the original one in Valencia.
The five days and nights of Falles are a continuous party. There are a multitude of processions: historical, religious, and comedic. Crowds in the restaurants spill out into the streets. Explosions can be heard all day long and sporadically through the night. Foreigners may be surprised to see everyone from small children to elderly gentlemen throwing fireworks and noisemakers in the streets, which are littered with pyrotechnical debris. The timing of the events is fixed and they fall on the same date every year, though there has been discussion about holding some events on the weekend preceding the Falles, to take greater advantage of the tourist potential of the festival or changing the end date in years where it is due to occur in midweek.
Each day of Falles begins at 8:00 am with La Despertà ("the wake-up call"). Brass bands appear from the casals and begin to march down every street playing lively music. Close behind them are the fallers, throwing large firecrackers in the street as they go.
On the final night of Falles, around midnight on March 19, these falles are burnt as huge bonfires. This is known as La Cremà (the Burning), the climax of the whole event, and the reason why the constructions are called falles ("torches"). Traditionally, the falla in the Plaça de l'Ajuntament is burned last.
Many neighbourhoods have a falla infantil (a children's falla, smaller and without satirical themes), which is held a few metres away from the main one. This is burnt first, at 10:00 pm. The main neighbourhood falles are burnt closer to midnight; the burning of the falles in the city centre often starts later. For example, in 2005, the fire brigade delayed the burning of the Egyptian funeral falla in Carrer del Convent de Jerusalem until 1:30 am, when they were sure all safety concerns were addressed.
Each falla is laden with fireworks which are lit first. The construction itself is lit either after or during the explosion of these fireworks. Falles burn quite quickly, and the heat given off is felt by all around. The heat from the larger ones often drives the crowd back a couple of metres, even though they are already behind barriers that the fire brigade has set several metres from the construction. In narrower streets, the heat scorches the surrounding buildings, and the firemen douse the façades, window blinds, street signs, etc. with their hoses to stop them catching fire or melting, from the beginning of the cremà until it cools down.
Away from the falles, people frolic in the streets, the whole city resembling an open-air dance party, except that instead of music there is the incessant (and occasionally deafening) sound of people throwing fireworks around randomly. There are stalls selling products such as the typical fried snacks porres, xurros and bunyols, as well as roasted chestnuts or trinkets.
While the smaller falles dotted around the streets are burned at approximately the same time as each other, the last falla to be burned is the main one, which is saved until last so that everybody can watch it. This main falla is found outside the ayuntamiento - the town hall. People arrive a few hours before the scheduled burning time to get a front row view.
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