Valencia explodes with anticipation, excitement, bonfires and fireworks during the fortnight of celebrations that mark the Mediterranean city's most significant festival: Las Fallas. The annual ritual bonfires in Valencia began during the 18th century to commemorate St. Joseph's Day, the Patron Saint of Carpenters, gradually developing into one of Spain's largest fiestas. Each year from, the first Sunday in March to 19th the regional capital celebrates one of the most famous and symbolic festivals in the region. The extensive preparations for Las Fallas lasting up to a year involve a large majority of the talented artists, carpenters and crafts people from around the mouth of the river Turia.

This massive collective effort is undertaken to create the huge paper mache, wood and wax effigies that are the centrepiece of the festivities. The Mascletá noisily signifies the beginning of two weeks of amazing revelry in Valencia. This popular aspect of the celebrations occurs each day of Las Fallas at 2pm in the city's main square, the Plaza Ayuntamiento. During Mascletá vast numbers of people gather to witness the release of thousands of firecrackers and smoke bombs in a series of deafening explosions that can be heard for miles around.

A fundamental role in Las Fallas is that of the effigies, called ninots by Valencians, which portray key national and international events and personalities of the day. These half satirical, half symbolical caricatures that offer a humorous and often scathing view on current affairs are paraded through the streets and burnt on the night of the Feast of St. Joseph. Overwhelming public enthusiasm for this spectacle ensures that during Las Fallas Valencia is adorned with festival finery and the entire city takes to the streets. The seven main ceremonies of Las Fallas are held from 13th to 19th of March and include; the nomination of the Queens of the Fallas, the Exaltation, the Crida, the Cavalcade of the Ninot, the Offering of Flowers, the Planta and the Crema.

The Exaltation is one of the most colourful ceremonies of Las Fallas in which the Falla Queens are ceremonially crowned in the Palau de la Musica. During the Offering of Flowers to Our Lady of the Forsaken, Valencia pays homage to the patron saint of the city, offering thousands of bouquets and floral shrine arrangements in tribute to "Geperudeta."

The twenty four hours of the Offering is a time when Valencia literally becomes a City of Flowers in which the central Basilica square is transformed into a beautiful, colourful garden often decorated with more than thirty tons of flowers. The Planta is held on 15th March and is the most eagerly anticipated ceremony of Las Fallas. The Planta is the moment for hundreds of ninots to invade the city, filling the streets and squares of Valencia with "Fallas." These astonishing floats and effigies display the skill of the specialists, or fallero who created them.These cartoon like representations illustrate the personalities that have been the focus of public opinion with few politicians escaping comment by the fallero masters.

The Crema takes place on the night of 19th March, the Feast of St. Joseph, or La Nit del Foc (Night of Fire). The Crema is the culmination of Las Fallas when the effigies, which represent a whole year's work for hundreds of people, are burnt on massive pyres. The enormous colourful Fallas are finally erected into structures surrounded by kilos of fireworks.

At about midnight these monuments to Fallas are set alight and Valencia goes up in flames with each individual bonfire a temple devoted to this festival of fire. The last effigies to be devoured by the flames are those Fallas that have been awarded prizes by the Genrakl Fallas Committee and those in the City Hall Square. Each year a single ninot is saved from the flames by popular vote, and exhibited in the Museum of the Ninot together with the survivors from previous years.

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