In 2016, Valencia’s failures were declared Intangible Heritage of Humanity for UNESCOwhich thus recognized the long festive tradition rooted in the city, but also in several locations in the province and the Valencian Community, which welcomed spring at the feast of San José with the burning of the acquaintances NINOTS.
Pagan rituals and old furniture: the germ of the Fallas of Valencia
Between March 14 and 19 The great days of the Fallas of Valencia are lived, one of the best known festivities in Spain, which have, however, their departure pistol from La Cridà, in the last week of February. One of its best known features is the burning of monuments, called ninots, color compounds, animation and some reaching great heights.
That the different failures end up reduced to ashes has their response in their own origin. This would be in the bonfires that took place around the Santoral Ephemeris of San José, As welcome to spring, in which Carpenters collected old furniture for the houses to burn them.
This has a special relationship with pagan rituals that have always occurred around seasonal change, and with fire as a purifying element and in search of good harvests and luck. In fact, it is believed that the word itself would come from the Latin ‘Facula’ that means torch or ‘fax’ which means fire.
Of these old furniture bonfires and pagan rituals, it is believed that the feast of Valencia’s failures originates, whose first notes date from the 18th and early nineteenth century, at which time the first details of satirical and social criticism arise.
The origin of the current Fallas of Valencia
The first writings that collect the tradition of Valencia Fallas are in the nineteenth century, such as The Marquis de Cruilles writingin his Valencia Urban Guide: Ancient and Modernpublished in 1876. A date that also coincides with the moment of the expressiveness of satire and social criticism that resulted in the beginning of censorship.
And, since the mid -nineteenth century, the City Council, together with the Bishopric and the General Captaincy established a censorship prior to the monuments, which, however, failed to appease His character of criticism and satirethat has also had it in the spotlight of the different authorities. Even so, they allowed themselves during the Francoist dictatorship and the Valencian made their appearance in the Ninots.
With the passing of the decades, especially since 1930, some of the main acts that take place during the failures were established, such as the Mascletà for several days, or the offering to the Virgin of the Desamparados, which had its first edition in 1945.
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