The fire has reduced to ashes in the early hours of this Sunday the 180 bonfires of Alicante, which has experienced record numbers in its big week, which has left more than a million daily visitors and the ‘full’ sign in most of the hotels in the city.
The traditional fireworks palm tree launched from Mount Benacantil, the slope of the Santa Bárbara Castle, has given the start to the ‘cremà’, in which 79 commissions and the City Hall bonfire have calcined the monuments that, little by little, They have been controlled by the 44 fire brigade teams, which, in addition, have wet the public in the ‘banyà’.
Since 12:00 a.m. this Sunday, the more than 150 bonfires have been turning into flames. They have done it in three different phases, because, given the need for the firefighters to control the extinction of all of them, the first ones burned at 12:00 a.m., while a second batch burned at 1:30 p.m. 3:00 p.m.
The first of these was the official City Hall bonfire, the ‘Geoda’, which wanted to be a tribute to all those who make up the Bonfires and who had demonstrated their capacity for recovery and resilience during the pandemic.
In front of a Town Hall square that has become too small and just after the palm tree lit up the sky of Alicante, the Belleas del Foc and the hundreds of attendees have observed how the monument, the work of Pedro Espadero, burned down and closed this cycle of bonfires, which in turn opens a new one.
Barely thirty seconds after the firework was lit, the flames have been covering all the figures of the monument, including the auction, and the fire has gradually taken over the bonfire of the City Council, which has taken half a hour to burn out completely.
This morning, through a statement, the City Council reported that the night had passed on a holiday “without incidents, progressively and with great coordination.” The more than seven hundred SPEIS Firefighters, Local Police and volunteers from Civil Protection and the Red Cross have made it possible, thanks to their work and professionalism, to burn the 180 monuments in 44 teams during the night.
During the night, the Red Cross and the Association of Civil Protection Volunteers carried out a total of 32 health interventions, due to fainting, drops in blood pressure, a broken eardrum, falls, a breach and attention to a pregnant woman with syncope, among others. .
After seeing the City Hall bonfire burn, the mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala, stressed that these have been festivals “with hardly any incidents”, mostly caused by the heat, while insisting that the security device for this ‘ cremà’ had been prepared for up to two million people “and we have to be there, there”.
“We must have gotten very close to that figure of two million people, which is absolutely a record, and all this without practically incidents,” said Barcala, who described these festivities as “record.”
