This past weekend, the festival of Las Fallas started in Denia. It is a festival dedicated to Saint Joseph, the carpenter. Traditionally, all the carpenters would clean out their shops, use the extra wood to make statues, and then burn on them on Saint Joseph’s Day. The burning signifies purging the people of their failures (fallas), from which the festival gets its name. Today, Las Fallas is a huge contest between the neighborhoods of Denia to construct the biggest and best statue (which today are made out of sculpted flammable foam over wood frames). Various intersections throughout the city have been shut down, and the different neighborhoods are starting to put together the statues.
Las Fallas is also an excuse for the entire city to be a fiesta: in a party, which means that almost 24 hours a day, you can hear firecrackers in various plazas of the city. Two nights ago, at 23:45 (11:45pm if you dislike military time), I was talking on the phone, leaning out my window, and looking out at the street when this group of young teenage boys (12-14ish?) came running down the street with a 2L pop bottle. I watched them curiously as they huddled over the bottle about fifty feet down the street. Suddenly, they all sprinted toward me, past me, and out into the plaza. I looked back at the bottle just in time to see it blow up in an explosion that was big enough to rattle the windows of the house across the street. It was sweet!
This coming Thursday, we are headed to Valencia (the capital of our region) to see the statues there. Las Fallas is a regional festival throughout the Valencian community, and the statues in the capital are the biggest. One neighborhood has spent 600.000 Euros = $800,000 constructing theirs! The day that we go, we are also going to see a bullfight and watch the fireworks which start at 1am!
In the mean time, we are in the middle of exams: literature today, history and art history tomorrow, and contemporary culture on Wednesday. Yeah for studying to the sound of firecrackers!
(apologies for the lack of pictures...I left my camera cord at my house...maybe tomorrow? - don't hold your breath)
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