Half the females in Valencia right now are dressed in traditional garb: beautiful flowered skirts with bodice tops that lace in the back and go over the waistline of the skirt. Very full skirts; crinolines underneath probably, slight bustle in the back – very much like the RenFaire “hover skirts” of old. The perfect length of a hover skirt is when the hem stops just above the ground, so the skirt doesn’t touch the ground, but you can’t see the shoes and the wearer looks like she’s floating over the ground like a hovercraft. Beautiful mantillas float on each side of the female and down her back. High combs on the top of the head hold the mantilla in place and there are “Princess Leia” flat buns over each ear, connected to a criss-cross of braids along the hairline in the back. This is a hairpiece that is obviously purchased (I saw one in blond over a head with dyed-brown hair and the style never changes one iota from person to person) and attached with long pins. I don’t know if it’s one big piece like a helmet that encircles the sides & bottom of your head or whether it’s in 3 pieces, so you can wear the Princess-Leias, but not the back piece.
I also don’t know if there are, for example 10,000 women divided among in, say, 5 parades or 2,000 women who do 5 parades each. Not unlike that scene in “Help” where the visiting bigwig is shaking hands with an endless receiving line, but it’s really only 5 guards who keep ducking down once they’ve shaken the dignitary’s hand and sneaking to the front of the line to shake it again because they all look & dress alike. I’ll probably never find out. But I did see my first African American Spanish senorita decked out in traditional dress in the parade. Ditto an Asian. So who knows.
My favorite parade participant: a perfectly outfitted young mother, flowered hover-skirt, nice mantilla, the works. In a parade, pushing her baby in its carriage. Baby is also decked out and positioned in the carriage. Lit cigarette firmly positioned in young mother’s right hand and she takes a drag every few steps or so. Ah tradition.
Favorite sight of the day: a sweet little girl, about 5 or so, holding her momma’s hand as she waddles along in her perfect hover-skirt, perfect mantilla, perfect Princess Leia hair. Innocent looking little thing. Together, momma & child go into the firecracker store and a short time later, little girl waddles out, proudly holding her box of firecrackers. Ah tradition.
Las Fallas is not for the faint of heart, as you may have guessed by now. It is also not for those who hate crowds or who have even a soupcon of claustrophobia. Case in point: about 1:15 we are walking towards the main plaza where we understand there will be a major firecracker display at 2pm. We get about ¼ block away and stop dead. And I mean dead in our tracks. It’s wall-to-wall people and NO ONE is going any farther. No one. A couple in back of us think they will continue to move forward and push into us. We just turn around and say “No mas”. They get the picture fairly quickly and stop trying as well. Everyone has their own little space, but it’s not that big. And everyone knows this is just the way it’s gonna be for the next 30-45 minutes – you won’t go forward, you won’t go backward you won’t go sideways either way. You will stand right where you are, so deal with it. And everyone deals with it and the crowd is quite content to just stand in place.
By the way, right on schedule, the firecrackers go off at 2:00 pm. They are magnificent. They are set off in a very rhythmic pattern. They are VERY loud. They last close to 10 minutes and get louder as they approach a THUNDERING climax that has everyone cheering. Doesn’t really matter that I was ¼ block away. It’s 2:00 in the afternoon and it’s really a sound display, not a visual display of fireworks. In fact, I could probably have been in my room about 3 mles away and heard it. But ya gotta soak up the atmosphere if you’re gonna go to Las Fallas.
As the crowd disperses – again mellow and peaceful – after the display ends, I catch a glimpse of the festival on TV from an overhead shot. We look like Egypt during the demonstrations – wall to wall people. But we are smiling and happy. Maybe a little deafer than we were when we started out this morning, but happy.
This is a great coupla days. And to think, I only found out about it cause I was channel surfing and saw an HD show called “Great Festivals of the World” or something like that and really just wanted to see the fireworks displays at the end.
It still sounds like a war zone outside.
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