La Cremá (The Burning)

Gabriella, Jordan and I with our falla in the background
right before it burned

My friend Jordan and I with a fallera that belonged
to the falla we helped to construct

My friends and I were in an internship that aided in the construction of the falla behind us.  Upon arriving to the site an hour before it was set to burn, I told the fallero on the right that we had helped to build it and his face lit up.  We were treated to VIP access (actually let inside the big yellow gates surrounding each falla), and were able to get close up pictures with them and our falla in the final moments of it's short but beautiful life.  As you can tell, I am kind of mourning (haha, just jokes).  But really though, I still am surprised that it is all gone and that all of the 800 fallas across the city burned to ashes that night.  I still walk the city and turn a corner expecting to see a giant falla in the middle of an intersection, as it was work the entire week of Fallas

The burning of my falla!  On the left there is a string attached to the top of the sun.  This was rigged about 5 minutes before the fires started, and petardos (firecrackers) were also placed in various places around the figure.

so many hours of work.  bye-bye!  I really do not know how the artists can stand to watch their works of art burn, year after year.  But hey, that's the spirit of fallas!

hasta luego!

that's rough.  On the bottom right you can see the top hat of one of the ninot figurines. 

After watching my infantil falla burn to a crisp, a large group of my friends and I hung out in the large market on the street for a while, then made our way over to the falla Na Jordana (which was one of the few fallas made completely of wood).  We were all having a great time and chatting it up for about an hour before the actual fire began.  Fireworks first went off into the sky above us to warn of the upcoming burning.  Then the fire slowly crept up from the bottom of the beard, lighting up the giant Da Vinci head in front of us.  The fire got so enormous that my face and body could feel the heat, and I was over a street's width away.

This was a few minutes into the burning.  His face was about to fall off and let off a big cloud of smoke and ashes.

Adios face, hello firefighters!  There were numerous firefighters around the base of Na Jordana, spraying water to contain the fire as well as on the buildings and apartments beside the fire to keep them from overheating and catching fire.

La Cremá was such an incredible experience, I wish I had stuck to my original plan of following the bomberos from falla to falla to see as many as I could.  (Many of the fallas are so large that they have to wait for bomberos to arrive in order to start the fire).  However, the Na Jordana falla apparently had a few technical difficulties in the actual starting of the fire, and therefore took much longer than we had been expecting.  This was no problem to us though, as we munched on perros calientes (hot dogs), churros, and chocolate coated cream-filled churro circles.
Almost immediately after the fire of this falla was nearly put out, it started to rain.  It was almost as if the earth knew that Valencia had to be cleansed of all of the filth, ash, urine in the streets, alcohol and broken bottles, and yes, vomit, everywhere.  It started to pour, and my friends Gabriella, Susie and I took off in the direction of La Plaza de Ayuntamiento.  We even made it as far as the Plaza de la Virgin to see the enormous Virgin Mary covered in soaking flowers once again (I am honestly not sure of how we even got there at this point).  After some more running around, random churro buying at stands across the city (we had convinced ourselves that it was a great idea since they would all be gone the next day), and chatting up others unfortunate enough to not have umbrellas (who would bring an umbrella to watch a falla burn?).  I finally made it home around 2 or 3 am, and crashed into my cozy little bed until the afternoon the next day.

Fallas was such an incredible experience I really do not have enough words to explain the non-stop fun of that insane weeklong tradition.  It is honestly an unsustainable event, and I almost feel like there should be a siesta day to break up the week.  My friends and I were all recovering for days afterwards, with our madres' help to recuperate and attempt to wake up at a normal time in the morning again.

However, I didn't worry about recovery time, as 3 days later I left to London to meet up with my cousin and her friend for the weekend!  More about that in the next post