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fireworks

Photography Travel

Las Fallas: The Sights and Sounds at Night

The Las Fallas festival in Valencia, Spain is filled with activity all day and is especially colorful, loud and bright at night. Every neighborhood comes alive with street parties, music, processions, loud firecrackers and crowds milling around the fallas monuments while eating buñelos or churros dunked in hot chocolate. The atmosphere at night was very festive!  Here’s some night shots I took during the 2016 Las Fallas festival in March.

The fallas monuments are lit up and take on a new mood after dark.

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The beautiful “Illuminations” shine brilliantly and light shows are choreographed to music. These huge lighting structures take up an entire city block and are several stories tall. So beautiful!!

illuminations

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The massive fireworks display during Nit de Foc is well worth staying up until 1:00am to watch among the massive crowd near the Alameda.

nit de foc 01 nit de foc 02The grand finale, on March 19th, is the night of La Crema, when more than 700 fallas monuments scattered throughout Valencia are set ablaze surrounded by millions of spectators. There are a large number of firefighters carefully watching these massive structures burn and shoot flames high into the air, readily spraying water on them to make sure the fires stay under control and don’t damage nearby buildings. It was spectacular!

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Here’s a few videos of La Crema taken by people who had a much better vantage point to film than I did:

Falla Convento (the one on the corner of the street where we stayed):

The Main Falla in Plaza del Ayuntamiento:

Falla L’Antiga de Campanar:

 

Photography Travel

Valencia: My first Mascletá!

I’m reporting in from Valencia, Spain where I am currently documenting an amazing festival called Las Fallas.

The famous Fallas is Valencia’s most anticipated annual festival, featuring the ear-splitting Mascletá celebration which happens every day from the beginning of March until the end of the festival on the 19th of March. Each day, strings of hundreds of large firecrackers are hung by local groups in the town square. At 2pm sharp each day, thousands of onlookers and party-goers gather in the main square, Plaza del Ayuntamiento, to enjoy the explosive choreography of the petardos, the lighting of hundreds of firecrackers in all of their cadenced power and glory. Fireworks artists are allowed to use a maximum of half a metric tonne of black powder in their show as they compete for the best Mascletá.

mascleta 027 Las Falleras Mayores on the balcony of city hall getting ready to announce the lighting of the fuse.

mascleta 025 The crowd gathers at the Plaza. The barricaded area behind the tall fence is filled with fireworks.

mascleta 029-6 mascleta 029-12It was amazingly loud during those 6 minutes of non-stop explosions in the sky. I captured it on video while holding my camera over everyone’s heads.

La Mascletá in Valencia, Spain from Carol Watson on Vimeo.

I’ll be back again tomorrow to see what the next team of pyrotechnic freaks offers up to compete with today! My goal is to get to the plaza early and get in closer.