Valencia Spain: Las Fallas Festival

I probably never would have heard of the Las Fallas festival in Valencia, Spain, if it hadn’t been for a family friend from England who had studied there. When he found out that my husband, daughter and I were planning to visit Barcelona, he said we absolutely had to plan our trip around the time of Las Fallas and include it in our itinerary because it was an unbelievable experience. He was right.

What is Las Fallas?

The Las Fallas Festival, which takes place every March, dates back hundreds of years. It supposedly originated with a grand feast that the carpenters of Valencia would hold in honor of their patron saint, Saint Joseph, on March 19. At the center of the festival are the fallas: elaborately painted sculptures made of wood, papier-mâché and even polyurethane, standing anywhere from six feet to more than nine stories tall.

Typically, each neighborhood in Valencia erects a large falla mayor for adults and a smaller falla infantil for the children in their main intersection. The fallas are installed during La Planta on March 15, after which they are judged in various categories, the largest and most prestigious being the Sección Especial. On the night of the feast of St. Joseph (March 19), all of the fallas are burned during the exciting Nit de Foc, or Night of Fire. In addition to the fallas sculptures, each neighborhood also elects a Fallera Mayor (or Fallas Queen) and a Fallera Infantil (the children's equivalent) to represent their area of Valencia. These falleras, along with their court, spend the festival dressed in elaborate, 18th century-style dresses typical of their area of Valencia.

• Young Valencian girls participate in Las Fallas parades.
• Joshua Young

An event for the entire family

For adults, the Las Fallas festival is an amazing experience, but for children, it can be truly magical. Every street offers a new experience; be it fallas sculptures that seemingly appear out of nowhere, a procession of falleros on their way to another ceremony or an impromptu mascletà (an earsplitting loud fireworks display). My daughter, who was 3-1/2 years old at the time, spent three days looking on in sheer awe as we passed numerous “parades” of falleras and brass bands, complete with banners flapping in the wind.

She would squeal with glee at the very sight of a Fallera Mayor, and I had to keep a firm grip on her hand to prevent her from running away so she could talk to one of the “princesses.” Even though she was mostly met with blank stares from these costumed girls, a few of the older ones who knew English smiled and laughed at my daughter’s gushing and even posed for pictures with her.

The fallas themselves are also quite amazing for children. With their cartoonish looks and massive statures it is almost as if children’s book illustrations have come to life. To this day, whenever my daughter sees a float, sculpture or, really, an oversized version of anything, she says, “Look, mommy, it’s a fallas!”