The Fallas, the Fallas monuments, the ninots, always provide a critical sense of life, with acid looks at politics, the economy, culture or specific characters from any field. That’s the tradition, that’s the tone. But there are fallas commissions, sometimes described as “experimental”, which offer a more forceful story, be it through the shape of their ninots, fleeing from classic baroque style, or configuring more direct political messages.
This is the case of the Arrancapins fault, the only one that is out of competition and that with a humble budget usually raises reflections for the most ambitious visitors. On this occasion they have outlined a fault that with the title “Passaran?” He wants to underline his “active and militant commitment to the fight for the freedoms that are currently threatened by the darkest forces of the contemporary world.”
The Fallas commission explains that this year its failure, in which the Statue of Liberty is shown surrounded by sandbags, protective fences and emergency armor, wants to convey that “the enemies of freedom are stronger than ever.”
They add that “not only freedom is threatened, but also equality and fraternity, and with them all the ideal bonds that seek human emancipation, of women and men, of the peoples of the world, of the poor and marginalized from the system, of migrants and refugees in search of a better life”.
It is also an alert to the threat to those “with a freely chosen sexuality, to those affected by abandonment and oblivion, and to all those who had hope but see how they are progressively deprived of rights and possibilities of having a dignified life “.
They reason to explain this monument that “in the end, Freedom is completely surrounded by dangers, that is why we need to build a defensive structure around it. That is why, from the fault and with this scaffold, we commit ourselves to be alert before the dark forces of a devastated world. Will those forces pass? Will those monsters get in? We don’t know, really, but the threats are real and growing.”
