hola, chorros, fuego, cansada

20 march 2005

I am so, so tired.

And I am in Spain.

It is Sunday, specifically Palm Sunday. On Thursday I flew from Amsterdam to Valencia. It was the sort of flying experience that feels like an extreme sport when it is happening, with all of the superfluous security measures and re-check-ins that budget European air travel entails, but I’m sure you’ve all had similar ordeals so I’ll spare you the details. Let’s just say that I woke up in Amsterdam at six am, after three hours of sleep, and I arrived in Valencia – the same time zone – at four pm. You may note from a passing glance at a map that the only thing between the Netherlands and Spain should be France and Belgium. And Belgium is pretty small.

In any case I arrived, exhausted and plane gritty, hungry and disoriented, to Valencia’s small airport. In the dilapidated schoolbus carrying me to the town center, the Boxer was playing. We passed crumbling buildings, covered in tiled mosaics and graffiti, Paloma te quiero, and I sang lai la lai lai, lai la lai, la la lai lai, lai, and I felt I had arrived.

I came to Valencia for Las Fallas, a weeklong fiesta of parades, dancing, fireworks, and most notably the burning of eight hundred building-sized effigies. What began years ago as the periodic scrapping of excess wood by the town carpenters has developed into an annual festival with thousands of participants. Throughout the city, citizens divide into neighborhood groups to create the monumental fallas, designed and built during the entire year, only to be displayed for this single week and then burned to the ground. Standing as tall as eighty feet, the fallas are constructed from wooden scaffolding, covered with papier mache, and elaborately painted. Most of the fallas depict political figures, popular entertainers, neighborhood personalities, and naked ladies, but the more ambitious fallas involve dozens of smaller sculptures interacting in complex and humorous scenes. Costing as much as two hundred thousand euros each to realize and requiring the cooperation of every citizen, the fallas are the hub of Valencia’s identity and calendar.

Neighbors not involved with the sculptural side of the event instead spend seven days filling the streets with bands and costume parades.


Once I arrived in the city, I headed to the Plaza del Ayuntamiento to meet Talley, who is studying a few hours away in Cartagena. She had arranged for us to stay with Sylvie, the sister of a friend, who planned to meet us in the plaza an hour later. We sipped coffee at an outdoor café. Sylvie arrived after three hours and two phone calls, thus beginning three days of the maximum cultural misunderstanding possible.

Talley and I were both exhausted from our day of traveling and carrying our bags and bedding, but Sylvie decided to take in some of the parades before heading home. By the second hour of touring we were practically crumpling into the sides of buildings at every corner. Sylvie did not seem to notice.

Eventually we arrived at her place, a spacious fourth floor apartment just outside the city center that she shares with two young Spaniards. Although tired, we were determined to stay awake for the midnight fireworks display. We ate an informal dinner and chatted around the table in Spanish. Around 11:30 Sylvie went to go get ready. She emerged at 11:55, frantic that we had not left yet – though we had all been waiting for her – and proceeded to run out of the building and down the block in her black pointy-toed heels. She ran for ten minutes, stopping only sporadically to look back in disgust at our meager attempts to keep up.

We reached a park. We watched the fireworks display. It was beautiful, and lasted just long enough for us to catch our breath.

We were joined by Sylvie’s roommate Israel. A young, cute, cocky Spanish guy, Israel immediately took charge. He wanted to meet up with his friends, so he engineered this through multiple cell phone conversations as we waited. He then led us through the streets to a square where we waited some more, amidst the loud drinking youth of Spain, until three of his friends and their girlfriends arrived. I say “girlfriends,” but “accessories” would be more appropriate. For the remainder of the evening the girls said little, preened often, and as a rule simply followed wordlessly on the arms of their boys. The boys, on the other hand, had long and loud conversations on their cell phones, which informed their conversations with each other about what we would do next. What we would do next usually involved walking across town to get a snack, to see a particular falla, or to meet up with another group of boys.

This went on for FOUR HOURS.

After only two hours, barely able to keep our eyes open and bored to tears by the complete exclusion from the group (since, as girls, we were not expected to do much besides follow), Talley and I suggested that we would like to be dropped at home. This was ignored. As the evening progressed we suggested it with increasing frequency and decreasing tact. This, to our surprise, was essentially laughed at and disregarded. Perhaps we were being too subtle. “We are really tired,” Talley would say, “Can we go home?” Israel would roll his eyes and laugh, and start walking to the next falla. The girls would smile and shrug as if to say, “Well what can we do? Tee-hee!” And everyone would follow.

Bitter, grumpy, and unrested, Talley and I resolved to escape the next day. It required half an hour of negotiation to make clear that we were not meaning to be impolite, we just wanted to see the city. During the conversation it was revealed that part of Sylvie’s bad feeling towards us came because water and electricity were expensive in Valencia. We happily agreed to pay her for our stay. This did not seem to comfort her. And yet, though she did not seem to like us, she was also offended that we wanted to walk around on our own. But we were resolute.

Talley and I had a great day. We quickly adopted as our travel mantra, What shall we eat next? The list of winners included paella, gelato, octopus in tomato sauce, fried calamari, bacon and date sandwiches, roasted chestnuts, gelato, and multiple helpings of chorros and bunuelos, two delicious variations on the fried dough theme.

About nine hours of eating later we took a short pause to see the fireworks grand finale. The company that designed the fireworks for the Athens Olympic Games happens to be based in Valencia, and was therefore also in charge of this year’s fallas display. In the weeks before coming to Spain, I was told many times of the fabulous fireworks. I have to admit I didn’t pay much attention – after all, I’ve seen plenty of huge fireworks displays, including Fourth of July in NYC when you can catch five shows at once from the right rooftop.

But these were, by far, the most fantastic fireworks I have ever seen. To start, the colors ranged the whole spectrum, not just the standard common-chemical bold-color palette. And the fireworks did things I did not know were possible with current pyrotechnology: they fell and rose again while bursting, they broke into pieces that each erupted in sparks, they rocked gently down the sky like tiny burning parachutes.

It is no wonder that thousands and thousands of people came out to see the show, which didn’t even begin until one in the morning. Can you imagine an American city planning any event for one in the morning? But all night the streets were packed with all ages and types of people, and the bars and restaurants were open. Random intersections had become outdoor clubs, with band playing and hundreds of dancers. We returned to Sylvie’s in the morning to catch a few hours of sleep before heading out again into the final day.

The last Saturday of Las Fallas is filled with anticipation. Huge crowds mill through the streets, catching glimpses of all the art that is about to disappear. Around eleven, just after Spanish dinnertime, people claim their spots. There’s a bit of drinking – in Spanish style, many groups carry mixed-drinks ingredients with them in brown shopping bags – but mostly the crowd is just giddy from five days of all-night celebration. Intersections become clogged with spectators as the fallas artists begin to lace their work with strings of firecrackers and explosives. Plastic bottles of gasoline are tossed casually into the nooks and crannies of the giant papier mache figures. Firemen gather.

At last, when the artists feel the time has come, the switch is thrown. Firecrackers strung over the street burst to life, popping and spinning on their wires. Sparks fly, rhythmically making their way to the central sculpture. Suddenly the noise is deafening. Fireworks inside the sculpture break away, whizzing between buildings and showering the crowd. The papier mache catches quickly. Great clouds of toxic black smoke rush upwards, punctuated by rattling booms as the flames reach hidden caches of explosives. Within minutes the exoskeleton of the sculpture is burning and peeling away, revealing the wooden scaffolding below. The heat is so powerful it pushes back the crowd. Firemen ignore the main pyre and focus their hoses on the nearby awnings and facades.

By the time the last explosives have discharged, the crowd is quieter, staring in flushed awe at the towering forms that collapse piece by piece into smoky heaps. In the distance the smoke and fireworks of other fallas squeeze between the rooftops.

Eight hundred fallas. Eight hundred bonfires, surrounded by eight hundred crowds, releasing eight hundred displays of noise and flame in the late late hours of one single night. Eight hundred neighborhood groups that came together to create sculpture and music and parades for seven days, with no incentive from any God or politician.


As the last fallas burned, Talley, Jean Francois and I called Sylvie, who had stopped by her apartment before going out dancing. We told her we were on our way back. We were exhausted. We had barely slept in three days, and had just witnessed six hours of unrelenting visual and aural explosion. We needed shelter.

Because of the crowds the trip back to the apartment took longer than expected. By the time we arrived we were leaning heavily on each other, dreaming out loud of our cold mats on the living room floor.

But Sylvie had left.

Sylvie had left, along with her housemate Israel, to go dancing at the club where their final housemate worked. There was no one home. No one was likely to be home for hours.

We staggered back towards the center. As the sky lightened the crowds were thinning. The festival, which had gone on uninterrupted for seven days, had climaxed and collapsed. By five the street cleaners were sweeping up around the few clusters of lingering hangers-on, huddled around corners and park benches.

After an hour of criss-crossing the cold streets we found a dingy café and slumped around a table. For three hours we ordered, one by one, a procession of very small dishes. Around eight a.m. we had beers.

At nine, Sylvie answered her mobile. They were about to leave the club. We somehow made it back to her place and packed up our things. We left money on the table for the showers we had been asked not to take and the electricity we did not use while locked out. We went directly to the bus station. We took a bus to Cartagena.

Now Talley and I are in her third-floor apartment here in this Mediterranean town on the southeast coast of Spain. It feels like heaven.