Madrid Community Events

The Valencian calendar is built on fire, and one festival in particular dominates everything else.

Las Fallas — 15 to 19 March, Valencia

Neighbourhood commissions spend the whole year and considerable sums building fallas — monumental satirical sculptures of papier-mache, polystyrene and wood, some over twenty metres high, populated by caricature figures called ninots that mock politicians, celebrities and whatever the year has produced. Around 750 of them go up in the streets on 15 March. For five days the city is given over to it: a mascleta every day at two in the afternoon in the town hall square, a rhythmic percussive explosion that is designed to be felt rather than heard and is genuinely overwhelming at close range; an offering of flowers to the Virgin, in which thousands of women in traditional dress build a vast floral cloak over two days; nightly fireworks over the Turia; and brass bands, churros and paella in the street at all hours. On the night of the 19th, the Crema: every falla in the city is burned, starting with the children’s ones and finishing with the winning monument in the main square after midnight. One ninot is pardoned by public vote and goes to the museum. It is UNESCO-listed, and it is not a spectator event — the city does it to itself.

Fogueres de Sant Joan — 20 to 24 June, Alicante

Alicante’s version, with its own monuments burned on the shortest night, ending with fireworks from the castle and a swim at midnight.

La Tomatina — last Wednesday of August, Bunol

An hour of throwing tomatoes at each other in a small inland town, now ticketed and capped.

Moors and Christians — through the year

Elaborate costumed parades re-enacting the reconquest, with Alcoy’s in April the largest.