This year the Fallas of Valencia and dozens of towns and the Magdalena of Castellón are celebrated the same week. On Sunday the 19th in some places there will be the ritual of the cremà and in others the Magdalena Vitol. A historical coincidence that have one thing in common: they are popular festivals that bring thousands and thousands of people to the streets. They are street parties above the monuments on display. In Valencia they are burned and in Castellón they are kept. Not even in that there is backbone.
And these parties have something else in common: every year before and after the festive week there are all kinds of compliments to the need to rethink the party. There is no year in which the falleras or gaiatas commissions, the fans of fire or wine or the women who parade in the offering to the Virgen de los Desamparados or the Virgen de Lledó do not ask for important changes in the festival, in the tents or in the regulations that govern each case, even if they have been changed the previous year. There are always dissatisfied with their reasons.
In Castellón every year there are debates about the Pregó and whether or not it should collect the presence of the towns of the province, even though Bernat Artola’s text says that “we don’t want narrow limits”. And in Valencia the eternal discussion is the duration of the offer and the chaos of mobility that reigns in a universally pedestrian city.
The curious thing is that when these changes are proposed, the falleros or the gaiateros turn to the political authority, giving the politicians the control rod to decide on a popular festival, instead of assuming that the decisions of the festival are made by the own protagonists. And this is paradoxical, because the Fallas and the Magdalena have a long history of fighting against political interventionism in the festival to their credit.
Of course, as mandated by the canons of politics in the Valencian Community, the respective town halls exercise order and command over the festivities, whether the right-wingers, the left-wingers, the nationalists or the half-pensioners are in the mayor’s office. Politicians and politicians really enjoy festive photos. You have to see them wearing hearts of palm in the Pilgrimage or in the Ofrena.
In 1977 the Falla King Kong was born in the Ensanche of Valencia in an attempt to find its own style outside of the Francoist Junta Central Fallera. But it did not last long and although some of its principles now triumph (tabalet i dolçaina in front of the bugle and drum bands) the official dance of the Court of Honor is done with songs by Spoty instead of traditional Valencian music.
The Assaig d’approximacio a les Falles Folles Fetes Foc by Amadeu Fabregat (1974) was of little use, because in the end the traditions are conservative and only change depending on the degree of fun that is intended. And for that it is ideal to resort to political decision; We love to see an authority in an official car, as González Lizondo said. So we have someone to protest.
