Las Fallas is the main festival in Valencia and it lasts for a week in March. A Falla is a club, like a family social club for a town or community and there are very many of them in the city and province. The festival is the focal point for these clubs and there are many ceremonies and processions of the Fallas during the week. There is so much to talk about it is difficult to know where to begin. I think I will have to write another chapter about the Fallas (the clubs) and the Falleros and Falleras (men and women members) and the clothes they wear and their processions. The Las Fallas festival has other very exciting things which I will write about here, namely the monuments and the fireworks

The history of the monuments, or statues, of Las Fallas is that the carpenters in the city would bring out their old pieces of wood and any pieces they had left over and they piled them up in the streets. They would essentially create bonfires and set fire to them at the end of the festival. I am not sure why they started making things out of the wood, but I suppose it was because they were carpenters and craftsmen and just that they COULD make things out of the wood. So the bonfires turned into bigger models or statues and shapes, until they became what they are now, which is cartoon like statues the size of houses.

The monuments represent all kinds of things, but usually try to satirise, or make fun of, things that are going on at the time or politians , sports people and other famous people. Or they are funny fantasy scenes with animals or strange things from space or monsters. So some of the bigger one will be making comments about the political situation in Spain with the political leaders taking money from criminals, or looking stupid and doing silly things, or somehow showing that the health or education in the country is not as good as it should be. And there are also huge flying dragons, cute teddy bears, naughty children climbing up weird and wonderful structures and all kinds of things. It is pretty difficult to describe and I think I will have to see if WhatPad will let me post some pictures to show you – in this case it is very true that a picture speaks a thousand words.

Around the base of all of the monuments are much smaller statues, only a couple of feet high, which make their own different scenes and they are called Ninots. These are created for the children of the clubs, the Fallas. The children have competitions to win one of the Ninots and they can take it home, but the others get set on fire along with the rest of the statue. This is called La Crema, which is like our word 'cremate' which means to burn. So on the last night of the festival all the monuments are burned. It starts with the huge monument which is in the main city square (which this year was a large lady made from cane or wicker, and thin sticks, so it looked very different from all the cartoon characters in the city, but at night they projected lots of different images and light effects on to it so it would come to life at night – like Valencia itself). They the monument which is voted as the biggest and best is burned and after that all the others are. And this happens across all the city centre, into the suburbs and all the towns and villages of Valencia.

So imagine this – the main street in your village, outside the shop being closed to cars for a week. Then imagine a big crazy colourful cartoon scene being built in the middle of the road and then late on the Saturday night it gets set on fire and all the village watch and set off bangers and there is a big firework display – it is like bonfire night, but in the roads rather than in parks and fields !

Every night for the week there are firework displays all over the city and in the dry river bed (further along from where the CAC is) they have beautiful and stunning firework displays as big as the ones they have in London for New Year's Eve – I think you have seen that on the TV. Last year I saw fireworks which looked made the shape of hearts and smiley faces in the sky, I cannot imagine how they did that.

But my very favourite part of Las Fallas are the Masclatas. I have to let you know that the Valencians are famous for their love of fireworks. There are a couple of families in the area who are known all over the world for the quality of their firework displays. During the whole year, whenever anyone has any kind of celebration, or the town has a holiday then people set off all kinds of bangers in the streets. It starts with toddlers throwing little paper poppers on the ground. The children all have wooden boxes on string over their shoulders. The boxes are packed with bangers and they carry long pieces of sting which burn slowly for hours. They can take their banger or small spinning whizzy firework out of the box, light the fuse with the string and then throw it on the ground and wait for it to bang or fizz and whizz across the road. All day long and all through the night you can always hears bangs and pops !

But the biggest are the Masclatas. These are displays which last about 5 or 6 minutes during the day. There are things called mortars on the ground, they look like upside down buckets and they fire a firework high into the air, but all it does is explode with a massive bang and a bright flash. Others send up coloured smoke or screeching screaming whizzy rockets. Then hanging from strings which criss cross the square are the mascaltas, which look a little bit like small Christmas crackers and they explode in order, to a rhythm and in order along the wire they are on. The result if 5 minutes of the loudest explosions you have ever heard, echoing off the buildings, punctuated with screaming fireworks and coloured smoke. Your ears are assaulted with the noise, it feels like your chest is being punched when the biggest explosions happen and everyone around you is cheering, shouting, clapping and jumping up and down !

I have just realised how hard it is to describe and I hope you get to experience it soon. This chapter is quite long because there is so much I get excited about Las Fallas and want to share