Carlos Bazarra
Valencia (EFE) , the best possible calendar and a collective desire to enjoy it to the fullest.
The flames that have reduced the municipal fault to ashes with the enormous wooden heart that, as an allegory of all the good Mediterranean, family, natural and gastronomic sensations, beat and lit up in the middle of the Valencia City Hall square, have symbolized the climax of some Massive parties that have exceeded even the best expectations before them.
The cremá of the nearly 770 sculptural monuments spread throughout Valencia, in addition to the dozens of them that are in towns throughout its province, as well as in municipalities of Alicante and Castellón, has put an end to some Fallas tonight for which The qualifiers on the part of the festive world, the authorities, the direct and indirect economic sectors that depend on them and the hundreds of thousands of tourists who have come are exhausted.
The first valuations already glimpse the best economic data of recent years, in the absence of materializing at the hotel and tourist level, but the optimism seen on the street has been more than confirmed and the climax has arrived this weekend, with a general feeling back to normal after some Fallas suspended in 2020, postponed to September in 2021 and still restricted in 2022.
Normality, however, marred by a homophobic attack after the festival of a Fallas commission and by the general sensation -and admitted by the mayor, Joan Ribó- that the massive influx of people this year has not had the corresponding display of cleanliness , although this will never be enough if the signs of incivility that have been seen in many areas of the city continue to grow.
The fire and its faults
The fire ritual has not missed its appointment this Sunday and, after having burned the children’s fallas without incident, since ten o’clock at night the big ones have begun to burn after the relevant fireworks and the tears of the major falleras of each commission Seeing the work of an entire year of its fallas artists disappear -physically, but not on social networks, where its influence grows exponentially every year.
This Sunday, the group “La pyrotecnia” of the L’Antiga de Campanar fault, the work of the Fallero artist Carlos Carsí, was saved from the fire, like a “doll pardoned” by the public, which will go on to add to the heritage of the Faller Museum of the Valencian capital.
The failure of the Special section that has won the first prize from the jury, the fantasy “Kromátika” that David Sánchez has created for Exposición-Micer Mascó with a budget of 160,000 euros -almost 100,000 less than the great favourite, Convento Jerusalén-, was going to burn, as tradition dictates, half an hour later than the rest but technical problems have delayed its cremá for about ten minutes.
This year, the Fallas de Especial have spent almost 1.5 million euros on their large monuments and 353,000 on children’s ones; In general, an attempt has been made to maintain the spectacular nature of all the works compared to other editions, although the budget reduction due to the current crisis and the inflation of recent years, together with the consequences of three years of pandemic, has been inevitable.
The heart that beats and burns
And at eleven o’clock at night Laura Mengó, the first major fallera in Valencia with a functional diversity -she wears a prosthesis on one leg-, has lit the fuse that started a pyrotechnic castle that has detonated, for the last time in these Fallas , the once again crowded Plaza del Ayuntamiento and has given way to the cream of “Valencian Cardioversió”, this year’s municipal fault.
Built with the wooden brace technique and designed for the first time by a woman (Marina Puche), this falla out of competition and whose 217,300 euros has been paid by the City Council, has crowned the “zero kilometer” of the Fallas from its plant last Wednesday. with its huge birds from the Albufera, its perfect oranges, its prawns and its grandmother with the paella as flying symbols and annexes of what makes the heart of this whole society beat again.
Accompanied by her court of honor and authorities such as the president of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, and the mayor of the city, Joan Ribó, the fallera mayor has endured stoically, with tears and to the sounds of the Valencian and national anthems, the cremá of that failure and the end of his reign, all before the eyes of tens of thousands of people who have collapsed the square -in the dark so that the fire was the main protagonist- and all its adjacent streets.
This puts the finishing touch to five big days of festivities but up to twenty days that have combined festive, pyrotechnic, bullfighting, gastronomic and museum events around some festivities that since 2016 are Intangible Heritage of Humanity and that this week they have begun to quantify, for a forthcoming and long-awaited official and academic study, what its real economic impact is. The emotional, this year, ends with a surplus.
