Las Fallas of Valencia

Every March the neighbourhood associations of Valencia raise hundreds of sculpted monuments at street corners, some several storeys high, built over the previous year in workshops on the edge of town. The figures are satirical, exaggerated and painted in bright colours, and on the night of the nineteenth almost all of them are burned where they stand. In the run-up, a firework barrage called the mascleta is set off in front of the city hall in the early afternoon, judged on rhythm and pressure rather than light. Brass bands play through the streets, kitchens set up outdoors, and one figure from each monument is voted a reprieve and kept.

What you actually see

• The monuments - hundreds of sculpted scenes standing in the streets for days.
• The mascleta - a daytime firework barrage judged on rhythm, felt in the chest.
• The flower offering - processions in regional dress building a huge floral figure.
• La Crema - the final night when the monuments burn in place.

When to go

The festival runs to fixed dates, with the mascleta held daily through the first half of March and the main days from the fifteenth to the nineteenth. Book accommodation months ahead. If you want Valencia without the noise, come in April or October instead, when the workshops on the outskirts still show pieces in progress.

Honest expectations

The mascleta is physically painful without ear protection, and firecrackers go off in the streets at all hours, so sleep is not realistic. Hotel prices multiply and sell out early. Whole districts close to traffic, taxis vanish, and smoke and litter are heavy by the last day. Anyone travelling with dogs or sensitive to noise should pick other dates.

Nearby

The Central Market and silk exchange, Malvarrosa beach and the Albufera rice lagoon.