Life in Culebrón

It was in Vilanova d'Alcolea in Castellón that I really thought I was going to be burned alive. I ran faster that evening than I have since I was fourteen when I was being chased around a cross-country course by some deranged PE teacher who beat me with a stick if I tried to slow down. Then again, only last weekend, in Novelda, a group of men and women, dressed as devils, were making as though to set me on fire. Here in the Comunitat Valenciana, from tiny villages in Castellón to the bustling streets of Valencia or on the beaches of Alicante, people like to set things on fire and to set off pyrotechnics—fireworks of all sorts, shapes, and sizes. It's not just the Fallas in Valencia or the Hogueras de San Juan in Alicante; it's absolutely everywhere - even in the streets and villages of Pinoso. Valencianos always seem ready to put another log on the fire or light the blue touch paper and stand well back at the drop of a hat.  I hoped to find an organised and methodical way t...

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 tou...

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 fr...