The Falles (in valencian) or Fallas (in Spanish) are a Valencian traditional celebration in praise of Saint Joseph in Valencia, Spain. The term Falles refers to both the celebration and the monuments created during the celebration. A number of towns in the Valencian Community have similar celebrations inspired in the original one from the city of Valencia.
Each neighbourhood of the city has an organized group of people, the Casal faller, that works all year long holding fundraising parties and dinners, usually featuring the famous speciality paella. Each casal faller produces a construction known as a falla which is eventually burnt. A casal faller is also known as a comissió fallera.
Basically everybody comes to Valencia to see these massive floats, shoot off fireworks, and get drunk. This festival is like nothing I have ever seen before! It puts 4th of July to shame with the amount of fireworks and crazyness going on in the city. I had to wake up at 7am in order to get to the bus station at 9am for the 3 hour bus ride to Valencia. We got there about 2pm and pretty much did whatever we wanted to for the rest of the day and just had to be back on the bus by 3am to go back home.
I spent my day with 5 other girls walking around the city and trying to figure out what all was going on and what happened exactly with the floats. We ended up just walking aimlessly around the city looking at all the different floats and drinking Agua de Valencia which is absolutely delicious!! It's this drink made up of gin, vodka, champagne, OJ and sugar. It is so fruity but one glass gets you really drunk!
When it started getting dark out they started to burn the smaller floats which was extremely loud because they started the fire with fireworks. Sidenote: People were throwing fireworks in the middle of crowds around people. It was extremely dangorous and stuff like this would never happen in the U.S.
This festival was complete chaos and I have never been to anything like it in my entire life. Around 1am we headed over to this famous club SuperClub 95 which was so awesome! Hands down coolest club i've ever been to! It had two levels and I felt like I was on like Jersey Shore haha
Needless to say by 3am I was more than ready to go home!
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| smoke from the fireworks |
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| there were SOOO many fireworks and it sounded like explosions |
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| One of the floats |
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| Me with Agua de Valencia |
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| Burning of a small float |
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