Campanar Nou and their 600,000 euro Falla

It was announced this morning that Campanar Nou's 600,000€ masterpiece (pictured above) came second to Convento Jerusalem's latest work costing only half - we'll have pictures of it for you tonight. Fallas, meanwhile is hotting up with the wonderful spectacle of the ofrenda starting today, 150,000 costumed women (falleras) parade though the streets to the cathedral to offer flowers to the Virgin.

Las Fallas

Las Fallas is almost upon us. It officially starts on the 15th of March and ends on the night of 19th March with La Cremà - when the entire city appears to be on fire. For a full description and everything you need to know about the wonderful Festival click on the headline.
All Photos ©2008/9/10 Diana Birch

Fallas Facts and Figures

THE OFRENDA IN LA PLAZA DE LE VIRGEN


A FALLA


THE BIGGEST FALLA AT NOU CAMPANAR

THE PAELLA PAN FOR 500


Now that the festival of Fallas is truly over you might like a few facts and figures.
103,647 Falleras took part in the ofrenda this year, walking through the city to offer their flowers to the Virgen de los Desamparados in the Plaza de la Virgen.
Because of the high winds of up 80Km on Monday night - the Crema took longer than usual with the last ones burning at around 4am. Some, Carcaxiente and Naquera were not burnt at all, and the cremas for these two places are, Carcaxiente, tonight and Naquera on Saturday.
Nou Campanar, the biggest Falla this year and the overall winner cooked a Paella for 500 people on monday. That's 50kilos of rice and 7 litres of Olive oil and 200 kilos of wood to cook it on! An estimated 120 million people are said to have watched the Crema at Nou Campanar, thanks to BBC World, CNN, and other satellite tv channels.
It Hurts! The Red Cross looked after 115 people in the streets during Fallas for injuries from fireworks. The looked after a total of 940.
Confiscated - the police confiscated a total of 1,273 dangerous rockets from people in the streets
Churros - 80 kilos of churros were confiscated from street stalls considered to be not up to standard.
Rubbish from Fallas - this year the city had to clear up 9,610 tons, 1,470 tons more than last year.
Vandalism was down this year. Wastebins and Rubbish Containers are the favourite targets and this year 1,093 wastebins (53 less than 2006) and 104 Rubbish containers (31 less than 2006) were damaged and will have to be replaced. Total cost to the city 79,054 Euros. The whole cleaning bill will cost 295,000 euros, an increase of 24% over last year. This all sounds a lot until you think that during the festival over 2 million people visited the city and Fallas has generated 60 Million Euros.
Roll on Fallas 2008!

The Gigli Tower

For the past week or so some very agile men from the Italian town of Nola have been very busy with lots of planed down trunks of wood, building an extremely high and very spindly looking tower in the Plaza Manises (just around the corner from the Plaza de la Virgen) . It was finally finished yesterday morning and since then it has been a hive of activity with a lunch party and then, last night a large and noisy Verbena taking place until the early hours of the morning.
I managed to find out from some friendly Italians that this tower is built during a festival in Nola each year and is a little like the Virgen in the main square, Gigli is Lilly in English and, like the wooden Virgin in the ofrenda, floral tributes are bought to the tower. It will be interesting to see if any of the Ofrenda flowers make their way to Gigli.