Valencianos have a reputation for liking fireworks

I don't quite remember when but it was long before we lived here. We were in Spain for a holiday and a couple of friends, Pepa and Jaime, invited us to stay in their flat in Bétera near Valencia.

Bétera was having its annual fiesta and we went into town one evening to take part. I think there was a parade, there were stalls and a fair, we ate some tapas, we drank some beer and all sorts of normal fiesta things.

The next evening we went back to the fiesta and to the town centre. We didn't park in the same place. We walked much further than we had the night before. I didn't know why. As we walked through the streets in the centre of the town most of the windows were boarded up, there were no cars in the streets. The whole town was odd. Either Jaime and Pepa didn't explain very well or we didn't have enough Spanish to understand what was going on.

We waited in the main street with hundreds of other people. At the appointed hour someone lit the blue touch paper and suddenly there was a wall of fire advancing down the street towards us. I don't think we'd been expecting that. How it worked was that there was a principal cord running down the centre of the street and there were other fireworks hung on other ropes that went from the buildings on one side of the street to the other so that they criss crossed that central cord. As the waterfall of fire advanced the crowd fell back, the more foolhardy close to the fireworks and the wiser further back. Wading through the fire zone, just behind the main fire-front, were some blokes dressed in overalls and crash helmets carrying fire extinguishers. They were there to pluck up the fallen or to guide the panic stricken to safety and, if needs be, to put out anyone who was on fire. The cord ran into a square but the fireworks stopped a few metres short of it so that, once you were in the square, you were safe. The fun was that all the people who had been in the street, and all the people who had been in the square before the fireworks started, had to fit into an ever dwindling area as the fire pushed us all back. A bit like that scene in Bambi. It was a tad sardine like and Harvey Weinstein would have been busy but as the fireworks fell silent and fizzled out we were still alive and unscathed.

When it was over Jaime made us run back to the car insisting that we only had minutes to reach safety. We had no idea why. As we headed back we passed several groups of people who were putting the finishing touches to their own version of the uniform of overalls, crash helmets and gloves with lots of duct tape to seal the joins. They didn't have extinguishers and fire blankets though. They were arming up with Roman Candle type fireworks and, at one or maybe two in the morning the signal would be given that they could engage in all out warfare on the streets of Bétera. We saw something very similar years later on the streets of Elche on the Nit de l'Albà - the Night of the Dawn. That's why the properties were boarded up, that was why there were no cars and that's why we were parked well out of harms way.

The Cordá, for that's what it is called was on last night, the 15th August, in Bétera. The subsequent firework fight is, I think, called la Coheta 

Every year, since we've lived here, it crosses my mind that we should go back to Bétera for the event. It was one of the maddest fiestas that I've ever been involved in and it's been one of my stock stories for over thirty years, right up with that one about being on the wrong side of the fence, with fighting bulls, in Ciudad Rodrigo. So I set to looking up the details of times and things yesterday. I found some videos on YouTube of lots of people on the streets but they were all booted and suited. Then I found a form to apply for permission to be on the street for the Cordá. I didn't bother to read any further but it was obvious enough, now you have to apply to be potentially set on fire by a curtain of fire and you can't just turn up on a whim. 

I was telling Maggie. "Well, it's like Britons always say, Health and Safety wouldn't allow this in the UK - now they don't allow it in Spain either". Actually, I suppose that improves our story. When men were men and Spain was Spain and all that. Or it could be that I've misremembered the whole thing.

In the same place as always

I've mentioned it before, The poster that misses off the where or the when. The poster which tells you that the event is in the usual place. So, last night, with guests, we went down to Elche to experience the Nit de l'Alba - the night of dawn. I didn't need to check the info. It would be like always. Of course because I assumed it would be it wasn't.

Basically the Nit de l'Alba is an orgy of fireworks somehow miraculously loosely tethered to something religious. The origins are supposed to be that in the Middle Ages families in the city offered thanks to the Virgin for each of their children by launching one rocket for each child on the holy day designated to her. Nowadays all over the city, fireworks, aerial fireworks, are launched into the night sky in one long session of rolling thunder. I thought it was usually from quarter to midnight but Maggie told me that the city authorities were going to do something new this year in launching six enormous palmeras from different parts of the city at quarter past eleven. A pyrotechnical palmera is launching a huge number of fireworks from a concentrated area so that the tongues of flame and colour rise into the sky and fan out like the fronds of a palm tree, or palmera in Spanish. Elche is the city of the palm tree.

We headed for the Basilica church, where, at midnight, the most impressive of all the palmeras is launched from the highest of the church's towers. I read somewhere that it reaches over 250 metres into the sky. Sounds a long way to me. Anyway the square around the basilica de Santa Maria was closed. It seems that it has to do with European Health and Safety regs which have meant that several of the launch sites for the fireworks have had to be changed too. So, if things had to change, the city decided that it would try to improve the spectacle as well. Last night they pumped 64,000 rockets into the night sky and set off 390 of the palmeras using over two tons of gunpowder in the process. And that process started in earnest at half past eleven, just as we had arrived at the fences around the Basilica, and were discussing whether to go and get a drink or not. We waited whilst the lights of the city, at least in and around the square, were turned off. We waited whilst the fragment of the famous Elche mystery play - el Gloria Patri - boomed out from the loudspeakers and, as the sound faded away, the huge palmera from the church burst into the darkened sky. Impressive, With the lights back on the habanera type song, Aromas ilicitanos, got its turn to fill the square. It always says in the tourist write ups of the event that all the ilicitanos, the people of Elche, sing along with the song. Maybe so and maybe not but I can confirm that at least one young man was doing his best to make up for the recalcitrant, just in my left ear, at top volume and with obvious pride in his city.

We went on for a tapa or two and I forgot all about the firework battle, the guerra de carretillas, which I had described to one of our guests. In fact this morning I wondered if it still existed and I found that it does but that it has been renamed Carretillà to do away with the bellicose reference. In fact it was depressing reading for anyone who approves of the reckless abandon of some Spanish traditions. It seems the event, which once upon a time was a pitched battle between firework wielding youths, now has a specific, and purposely delayed, start time, is limited to one part of the city inside a fenced compound and that potential participants have to go on a training course beforehand.

One of the aspects I like most about the Nit de l'Alba has nothing to do with the organised part. It is that the city is simply rocked by bangers, rockets, Roman candles, flares and jumping jacks for hours. Fireworks exploded around the car as we searched for a parking space, we watched tiny children throwing bangers as we ate, the pavement was crunchy with rocket sticks. It would require a better writer than me to describe the way that the city simply booms and sparkles for hours but that's what it did and I think our visitors thought it had been worth the journey and the latish night.