Another hour on the road this morning and we reached El Saler near Valencia, where we had thankfully pre booked a place on a brand new motorhome site.
As we turned down the road past the three campsites, we realised that everywhere was jam packed!
It’s the week of the Fiesta de las Fallas and every man and his dog is here to see it.
In previous years, we’ve always missed this event by a few days so we are quite pleased to be here to see some of it this time.
Had a super quick lunch then caught the bus into the city. Every day this week, at 2pm on the dot, Las Mascaletas firecracker display takes place in one of the big squares. We were about 40 minutes early, but the noise of people coming from the surrounding streets told us that you can probably never be too early.
Such crowds down every street leading to the square, plus all the balconies were full of workers with the best view in the house.At 1:45pm there was one almighty bang 💥- the warning shot to build anticipation. It certainly did that.
Can’t say that we saw much as we were in such a crowd of people, but the noise from the explosions was at a level like nothing I’ve ever heard before in my life. It built up and up and the crowd were all expecting it and loving it.
Shortly after, the streets were full of people in fancy dress, especially girls in crinolines. Marching bands everywhere, and then the street sweepers came and cleaned everything up – spotless within about 15 minutes!
Fortified with coffee and cake, we wandered around looking at the giant caricatures or ‘falla’ being unveiled. Despite the painstaking work that’s gone into them, these will all be burnt at midnight on the 19th.
The whole fiesta stems from the day of San José which carpenters celebrated with the ritual burning of spare wood. Nowadays it seems to have evolved into blow up and burn everything in sight! 🤣
We walked back through the riverbed park and then into the very impressive City of Arts and Sciences. This place blows your mind – we love it! Too much to describe but so futuristic and I think I’ve said it all before anyway. 😂🙄
This evening, more singing and celebrating here, as bus loads of children turned up for an exhibition/competition of their own, smaller models.
You’ve got to give it to the Spanish…they certainly know how to party!