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Las Fallas in Valencia

Valencia, Spain’s third largest city situated 350km south of Barcelona on the Mediterranean coast, is home to paella, possibly home to the Holy Grail - referring to a stone cup known as ‘Santo Caliz’ - and hostess to the mother of all fireworks displays.

Anecdotal musings have it that, with the arrival of spring, carpenters of old burnt the planks of wood they used for hanging candles on dark winter nights, outside their humble Valencia accommodation (we’re talking the Middle Ages). Not an advert for recycling then, the burning theme caught on and continued into today, developing into the week-long festival of Las Fallas.

A pyrotechnic wonderland for fireworks enthusiasts, Fallas starts with a bang, continues with quite a few bangs, and ends with a whooping bang. In short, don’t book a Valencia holiday apartment for the week leading into 19 March if fireworks leave you cold.

Over the years the planks turned into highly flammable representations of people - normally politicians or figures from popular culture - available in two sizes: monster-size effigies also called ‘fallas’ (each one cracker-filled), and life-size ‘ninots’.

At midnight on 19 March, all the fallas, and all the ninots bar one, are torched. Each year one ninot is saved by popular vote. This ninot joins all the chosen ninots from over the years at the Fallas Museum. And then starts the organisation and work for the following year’s Las Fallas. The fun, though, doesn’t stop there.

If you book a holiday apartment in Valencia in late August you might have the mother of all food fights in mind. On the last Wednesday of every August tens of thousands of participants, from all over the world, gather in the nearby town of Buntildeol to do over-ripe tomato battle (most non-local revellers rent accommodation in Valencia).

In theory the festival of Tomatina begins when one person successfully shimmies up a really high pole to steal a ham from on top. In practice this takes ages, and the authorities launch and end the food fight with the firing of a rocket.

The origins of the festival are linked hazily to some altercation occurring in the mid-1940s. The important fact everyone tends to agree is the original event - whatever it was - was such fun it was well worth repeating year after year on an increasing scale, until eventually a local custom involving some 140 tons of tomatoes emerged.

And what to do when the final rocket is fired, and the streets are awash with tomato puree? First stop might be the shower of your Valencia apartment rental, but Valencia’s character is more than the joys of organised anarchy. Eventually you’ll be squeaky clean enough behind the ears to take to the streets again.

The City of Arts and Science, a millennium project built in the diverted River Turia’s now dry riverbed, is an enormous leisure and cultural complex and includes an impressive opera house. Then there is Mercardo Central, Europe’s largest covered food market, and numerous museums. For sports buffs pilota is a decidedly local version of handball involving bare or nearly bare hands, leather balls, a four-walled court - or ‘trinquet’ - and maybe a net (several different versions of the game exist). And, like darts, and in keeping with Valencia’s laid-back approach, it’s normally played down the local boozer: the Pelayo Trinquet.