Now that la Plantà has finished, and the falleras and falleros have picked up their prizes during the Entrega de Premios, it’s finally time to explore this year’s Fallas figures. We always buy a catalog like the Turista Fallero from the kiosk, and spend time flipping through the pages to get acquainted with the 700+ figures which will be placed around the city. We mark the ones we’d like to see in person, as well as those within a reasonable distance from our house. It’s tricky to ensure that we can see all of the year’s most talked-about monuments… luckily, this year’s winner was right down the road. And it was spectacular.
Naturally, we make an effort to see all of the figures in the category Especial, and do so as early as possible. These are the most popular, and get more and more crowded the longer the festival goes on. People start to panic if they haven’t managed to see the winner on March 19th yet, because the very next day the figure will be gone and burned into ashes. It’s like, now or never. We were so happy when we found out that Exposició Misser Mascó won this year, breaking the cycle of the usual winners. We love this casal anyways; given its proximity to our house and the fact that it’s in a spacious area, it’s frequently our pick to watch the Cremá. We’ve recently seen two of their figures burn: 2018’s The Wedding, and 2021’s Extravagancia II.
The winning Falla Infantil (the children’s figure) went this year to Convento de Jerusalén. We think both wins are well deserved. Though the budget for this year’s figures was a bit tighter, you couldn’t really tell. And we love the trend of using renewable and more sustainable materials. Hopefully, they’ll be able to make this a requirement for all figures in the future.
There’s so much to see during the main days of Fallas, and there’s so little time to see it all, we always rack up a crazy number of steps — one day, we were shocked to see our step-counter saying we’d done 29K! We hadn’t even really noticed! With that in mind, please make sure to wear super comfortable shoes, if you plan on seeing as many figures as possible.
From our Fireworks Festivals Blog.