by Ann Randall
Squeezed in among the expectant crowd on the Plaza del Ayuntamiento in Valencia, Spain, I knew I was about to watch an explosion. I did not anticipate the teeth tingling, throat vibrating, ground shaking impact of over 200 pounds of gunpowder going off in what the tourist brochures describe as a “perfectly synchronized rhythmic symphony of noise finishing with a 20 second grand finale.” The daily 2 PM explosion called Mascleta is a tradition of the city’s March Fallas Festival; a noisy, colorful nineteen day event that begins on March 1st and ends after midnight on March 19th, St Joseph’s Feast Day, which is where the celebration has its more humble beginnings.
Fallas is an opportunity for local artists and craftspeople of to showcase their talents and that includes the pyro-technicians responsible for Mascleta and the nightly fireworks shows which are part of the festivities. Also the cooks who make bunuelos, the pumpkin fritters that are a Fallas specialty; the brass band musicians and dancers and the seamstresses who create the elaborate traditional costumes seen on the streets.
But the original artistic stars of Fallas are the designers, carpenters, painters, mold-makers and technicians who create and assemble life-size and larger figurines called ninots onto neighborhood platforms in scenes that depict all manner of political and satirical statements. A scene of ninots is called a fallas which is how the festival got its name and the fallas aren’t on full display until the final three days of the festival when their artistic teams have a designated window of time to fully assemble their creations. There are only a few days for the public to wander Valencia to view all 500-700 ninots before the final act of Fallas, the burning of all the ninots in a fire known as Crema which occurs on March 19th.
Those simple early ninots have evolved into magnificent wax and polystrene figurines that require such precise skills that the artists who create them now have their own guild, The Guild of Falleros Artists; at least two schools who specialize in training them; two museums dedicated to their work and a part of Valencia known as Cuidad del Artisto Fallera (the City of Falleros Artists) where many of them have full-time workshops.
To find out more about the art of creating a fallas, begin at the Museo del Artista Fallero located in City of Falleros Artists in the quiet Benicalap district northwest of Vallencia’s historic quarter. The museum is open year round from 10AM – 2PM and 4PM – 7PM Monday – Friday and Saturdays from 10AM – 2PM. There’s a small auditorium in the back of the main floor and if you ask the museum staff they’re happy to show you the video (available in multiple languages) that traces the evolution of the process of building ninots from its humble beginnings in the 18th century to the complex craft it is today.
Then wander the two story museum to see the process for yourself. There are examples of early water color and pencil sketches (the first step in the process as the ninots must be approved by the neighborhood committees who ultimately pay for their creation); scale models of the fallas, examples of the wooden skeletons on which the larger ninots are constructed and the final product including the previous year’s favorite ninot voted on by the public. The talents of the Falleros artists are in high demand and many of them have been internationally commissioned to design movie and theatre sets, displays for industry and trade shows and other museums.
Turn left when exiting the front door of the museum and wander among the industrial buildings housing the workshops of many of the artists. I was there the first week in March and many of the workshop doors were open with artists putting the final touches on their Fallas creations. I asked permission from the working artists to go inside their workshops and take photos and though my Spanish didn’t fully appreciate the tours they gave me, their evident pride in their work and my appreciation for it crossed language barriers.
The scale model and the massive pieces of the scene in the workshop did not do justice to the full scale of the monument as it was being constructed. Because of its sheer size, much of the actual carpentry happened in the plaza where the public could watch its daily progress. The monument, called Fallas of the World, consisted of a tall wooden human figure surrounded by world “monuments” that had been part of previous years’ fallas structures – the EIffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, the Concorde jet, the statues of David and Moses.
Equally large and impressive fallas monuments could be found throughout the city in the neighborhoods who had commissioned them. The most impressive were lit up at night which is one of the best times to appreciate their artistic creativity. Festum Bacchas, a large scale monument showing the life cycle of the area’s wine industry cost 90,000 Euros to build and display according to a member of the neighborhood committee. The committees work all year raising money in a variety of events to pay for their fallas monuments to show their neighborhood pride in Fallas and in hopes of producing a winning monument from the judges who only have two days to see and judge the completed structures.
Each committee selects one of the ninots from their fallas to display in the Exposition of the Ninots, held this year in the Prince Felipe Museum in the City of Arts and Sciences. For 38 days (in 2016 from February 5 – March 15) members of the public (including tourists) can wander through the display of ninots and cast a vote for the one that should be saved from the fire. Called the Ninot Indultant, the tradition of saving one figure from the fire first became a tradition in the 1930s in response to public sentiment that something should be saved to commemorate the artistic effort of that year’s fallas artists.
In 2016 it was a ninot from the Festum Bacchas fallas that the public voted to save; a farmer playng a guitar while a small girl and her dog listen. In addition to the Museo del Artisto Falleros, the city has a second museum open year round dedicated to Fallas called the Museo Falleros where all of the ninots indultants saved from the fire since 1934 are on display. The progression of technology and art over the years is evident in the chronology of ninots. The early ninots were wooden and paper mache figures dressed in real clothing. As the artists began to use wax, clay and cardboard, polyester and then polystrene, the ninots got more complex and the fallas monuments more extravagant.
The art of the Fallas Artist Guild can be appreciated any time of the year by visiting both museums, but to see it in its full glory, it really must be seen during Fallas and in particular, in the three days leading up to March 19th. If you are not a fan of the high decibel noise of the daily Mascleta and the miniature neighborhood mascletas that seem to occur all day and much of the night in the final week, then finding accommodations outside the historic city center is advised. Bus and metro transportation run frequently and you can just wander the city’s streets where you’ll find a fallas on most street corners. Ask locals for the best fallas to see since you won’t be able to see all of them. And don’t get too attached; they all go up in flames on March 19th save one ninot indultant. By the morning of March 20th, the streets have been cleaned of burnt debris as though nothing was there. But the artists of Fallas Artist Guild are busy planning their creations for the following year.
Valencia Private Food and Wine Tour
If You Go:
♦ Accommodations in Valencia are in demand and expensive during the three week March Las Fallas Festival so be sure to book early. There are several hotels, hostels and Air B&B rentals in the historical district. Next to the historic district is the trendy Russafa district where you will find the ABCYOU Bed and Breakfast at about $70 per night (more during the Fallas Festival) and a variety of restaurants, coffee shops and art galleries.
♦ Getting there: Valencia’s well-served airport is 5 miles from the city with a regular metro that runs between the airport and the historic district. It’s an easy two hour trip on the high speed AVE train from Madrid to Valencia.
♦ Other activities: In addition to the two Fallas museums, Valencia has a wide range of other museums including the beautiful Ceramic Museum in a historic Baroque building, the ultra-modern Museum of Science, an archaeological museum (the city began as a Roman fortress) and a Rice Museum. There are parks, gardens and the open green space of Turis Park for biking and walking. The city is on the Mediterranean with its beaches, hotels and restaurants that are a very different scene then the historic old town. Valencia is the birthplace of paella and you can learn to cook Valencia’s specialty paella at Escuela de Arroces y Paella.
Ann Randall is a well-traveled international election observer and independent traveler who now spends at least two months annually venturing to out of the way locales from Azerbaijan to Zimbabwe. She has recently taken up travel sketching as a way to savor the journey in an attempt to see if pictures really do speak a thousand words. A former high school teacher and staff for an educators’ union in Washington State, she now consults and trains for an eco-tour company in Costa Rica; observes international elections and does NGO volunteer work. Her articles have appeared in Travel Post Monthly, EcoTeach Online, Yonderbound and Viking Magazine. She blogs about her travels at www.peregrinewoman.com
Photo credits:
First photo by Enric Cuenca Yxeres / CC BY-SA
All other photos are by Ann Randall
The sun is just setting behind the Serranía de Ronda (Ronda Mountain Range) and an hour and a half later, we arrive, relieved and unscathed.
Ronda is one of the oldest cities in Spain first settled by the Celts around the 10th century BCE as Arunda. The town continued to thrive under the Romans as did the nearby settlement of Acinipo originally founded by the Phoenicians. Today, ruins of a vast Roman theatre and thermal baths dated to the 1st century can be visited about 12 miles northwest from Ronda in the ancient city of Acinipo or, as it is locally known, Ronda La Vieja (Old Ronda.)
Ronda is the birthplace of the highly gifted 9th century Muslim Andalusí physician, mathematician, and engineer known as Abbas ibn Firnas. Of Berber descent, Firnas was also an illustrious inventor creating such ingenious devices as a water clock, a mechanized planetarium, an armillary sphere, and even a flying machine (for this reason, he is known as the “father of aviation.”) Firnas was also skilled in astronomy, music, and poetry as well as being responsible for introducing glass-making techniques to al-Andalus (Andalusia during Muslim Spain.) Today, he has an airport in northern Baghdad and a lunar crater named in his honour as well as a bridge in Córdoba where he died in 887.
The town of Ronda is connected by three bridges that cross the deep canyon adding to the city’s remarkable features. The Roman Bridge is the oldest dating to the 11th century. Although it is Arabic in origin, it was likely constructed over an older Roman bridge. After the Christian conquest it was renamed Puente de San Miguel (St. Michaels Bridge.) Not far away is the early 17th century Puente Viejo (Old Bridge) and smallest of the three. As it was built over the ruins of an old Arab bridge, it is also known as Puente Árabe.
After crossing this bridge, I wander the charming old Moorish quarter with its winding pedestrian streets, white-washed houses, and historic squares. Locally known as La Ciudad (The City), the old quarter is situated on the south side of the gorge as opposed to the newer city on the north. Not for from Puente Nuevo in the historic quarter is an interesting gate known as Arco de Felipe V (Arch of Philip V.) This emblematic arch or gate, crowned by three pinnacles, was reconstructed in 1742 from the old Arab gate that provided access to the medina by the southwest.
The first Moorish site on my itinerary is the 13th century Bańos Arabes (Arab Baths) located near the Arco de Felipe V. The public baths were traditionally situated outside the walled city where visitors, adhering to Muslim customs, cleansed and purified themselves before entering the city. Typical of this period, the Moorish architecture displayed the traditional Islamic-shaped supporting horseshoe arches and domed ceiling embellished with skylights in the shape of stars that magnificently illuminated the room. Used until the beginning of the 17th century, these Arab Baths are considered as the best preserved in the Iberian Peninsula and possibly Europe.
Next I decide to visit the 14th century Alminar (minaret) of San Sebastián in the old Moorish quarter. The impressive square tower is all that remains of a mosque that once stood here before it was destroyed and rebuilt by the Christians. The lower part is clearly Moorish in architecture while the top part was added by the Christians to house the bell tower of the San Sebastián Church that also once stood here.
Near the minaret is the early 14th century Casa de Mondagrón that is also well worth visiting. The stone palace, promoted as “probably the most important civil monument in Ronda”, was the former residence of a king and its last Muslim governor. In 1485, Ronda was captured by the Christians and a few years later, King Fernando and Queen Isabella also made this palace their home. Although restored and enlarged during the 18th century, the exterior pales in comparison to the beauty of its interior adorned with arched patios, ceramic tiles, marble columns, balconies overlooking at inner courtyards, decorated fountains and water gardens. Today it also houses an auditorium and a municipal museum on the second floor.
Ronda is also the birthplace of bullfighting. Not only was the first professional bullfighter born here in 1754 but it is also home of the oldest and largest bullfighting ring in the country dated to 1785. Another unique and unusual aspect of Ronda is their fascination with bandoleros (bandits); particularly those between the 18th and 19th centuries.
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The origins of the city can be traced all the way to the Romans. The Roman Emperor Diocletian, who lived in the 4th century AD, wanted to build himself a retirement mansion. He liked the area of today’s Split for its natural beauties and the warm Adriatic Sea, so he had it built there. In the centuries that followed, the city of Split grew around it, even after the Romans were long gone. The Palace and its surroundings eventually become the historical city core of Split (or Split Old Town), and nowadays the remains of the Diocletian’s Palace are among the best preserved remains of a Roman palace in the world. It was included in the register of the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage in 1979, and is even featured on Croatian banknotes. Built in an irregular rectangle, it was a combination of a luxurious villa and a military camp. Its walls and the center court, the Peristyle, now housing various vendors and souvenir shops, can be explored freely by tourists. However, a tour through its cellar includes a 5 Euro entrance fee.
A city of such interesting history has several museums and galleries in which parts of that history are exhibited. For instance, the Gallery of Fine Arts contains works spanning through six centuries, thus providing an overview of artistic movements in Split and Croatia. Founded in 1931, it houses one of the greatest exhibitions of paintings and sculpture by major Croatian artists, but dedicating space to contemporary art as well.
The cuisine of Split and the surrounding area is heavily based on seafood; fish, clams, oysters are usually boiled or grilled and served with vegetables or potato. Local delicacies include grilled sardines, the octopus salad, or the special kind of dry ham called “prsut”. Served with local wine, the food is usually not spicy, but some restaurants, drawing influences from other Mediterranean countries, started adding exotic spices to traditional Dalmatian dishes, giving them a new spin. For classic local delicacies search for a “konoba” sign, denoting a family-owned tavern specialized in authentic dishes. Of course, if you’re not a lover of seafood, there are plenty of fast food joints in every part of the city.
During the summer tourist season the local nightlife flourishes, especially along the Bacvice beachside, featuring several late-opening clubs and beach bars. But the city is big and diverse enough for anyone, with different clubs playing vastly different music. Electronic music lovers should proceed to the minimally decorated Quasimodo, Split’s top venue for DJ nights, or the Jungla (Hula Hula), playing house and techno music. Rock lovers should visit the Kocka or Judino Drvo, where local bands often perform. O’ Hara Music Club is popular among tourists, due to its attractive location at the Zenta waterfront; hosting great parties, it’s great for dancing and drinking. Also, a plethora of bars can be found at the main city promenade, locally known as Riva, which is a great place for slow walks among the rows of palm trees with the incredible view of turquoise Adriatic Sea.
The Palace is also the location of the annual Festival of Flowers (usually held in May), where exhibitors display their flower arrangements based on a particular theme. Visually stunning, it’s a must-visit if you’re in the city at that time. If you’re interested in Roman culture, you’ll be happy to hear that there’s a whole festival dedicated to it. The Days of Diocletian are usually held in late August, and the entire area of the Palace becomes a living monument to the Romans, featuring their cuisine, lifestyle, clothing and customs. Entertaining and educational at the same time, the Days of Diocletian are especially popular with kids.
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At this point, I wasn’t worried about the other passengers’ thoughts. Dignity, respect, pretending not to be a tourist – all out the window having tried very unsuccessfully to validate my 5 Euro ticket for a solid ten minutes of the bus ride. I could stare and gawp all I wanted; and so I did, drinking in that immense sight. I had read the myths since I was a kid, studied the history in school, and poured over the art for project after project in undergrad. Thrill raced through me faster than the cold had, as I discovered for the first time something I thought I already knew. Here it all was in 3D.
Thankfully, what he actually meant was that he couldn’t get me to the front door along the one-way pedestrian street. But he could get me close and, after a nice little chat about whether it was more expensive to live in the UK, he did. In hindsight, it was quite beneficial to have a little tour of the city. But on a pitch black evening in February, hindsight wasn’t on my mind. What I was actually thinking about was snow – snow in the Mediterranean. For the first time in five years, it was forecast to snow in Athens and as we drove, big white flakes melted on the windscreen. Not enough to stick in town, but there was plenty to pile up in the higher altitudes. From the Acropolis and the top of Lycabettus Hill, I spun circles the next day, looking round at the mountains that ringed the basin where the city lived. The big, slow flakes from last night had left them white-capped under cracks of blue sky between stacked layers of grey and white cloud. The sun, when it did decide to join the day, was cold and sharp and my ears froze. I had forgotten to pack a hat.
I found the lower gardens on the hill around the Acropolis full of temples and remains of buildings, statues, column capitals, and broken bits of foundations. The museums and Acropolis grounds felt more like walking into the pictures from the books I had read, studied, photocopied, and researched for the past six years. With an almost reverence, my eyes traced the draping folds of the stone garments that were so much softer and more alive than the drawings and photographs had shown me. Poseidon and Athena had to come to life and watched me carefully as I revelled in the neatly arranged Corinthian column caps I had modelled my own exhibition project on.
After that, I walked and walked and walked the streets, looking for more awe-inspiring moments whatever the weather. Psirri turned out to be a fascinating district. I had booked myself into a lovely little hostel called City Circus for the week, where thankfully everything was warm and cozy with bountiful breakfast and friendly staff. Around the corner was a little spiders’ web of streets and five-point star intersections filled with shops and food. There were bars and music and fried filo dough and cheese concoctions in any shape I fancied. Lamp light and candle light poured through colored glass in the windows to join the colorful plaster walls. The music burst from inside the restaurants and the stones smacked hard under my new shoes. I didn’t want to stay long. I just wanted to see all of it, drink in this new, vivacious, loud place that breathed under my feet.
Athens’ graffiti was most unexpected. It was everywhere, unabashedly adorning abandoned houses, old government buildings, and ramshackle metal fences. My walk into town was a burst of color, screaming ideas at me that I could not understand. But still I knew they were trying to say something, trying to be heard amidst the throng of twelve-story concrete apartment complexes and canvas canopies. After a brisk souvenir search through the bustling side streets around Monastirkai Square, I grabbed a latte in a fourth-story coffee bar. It had huge windows looking out over the red tile roofs, all uneven height and helter-skelter pitch before stopping abruptly for the Hill to rise behind them. Buzzing with voices, the room was warm and curls of smoke caressed the windows. Out of the the top of the hill, the Acropolis rose overlooking the city, ever listening as the centuries marched past under its watchful gaze. How many stories had it seen unfold? What tales could it tell if only I could ask – what stories not found in any of my books? I would never know. My own stories would have to be enough for my curiosity.
On my last day, I took a little ferry to the island of Aegina. I joined up with two American brothers and we kicked little scooters into high gear, revving along the coast. Looking back at the photos, they are very odd – it looked a gloriously sunny day, but we were all wrapped up to our noses in scarves and hats. We rode up to highest point of the island to see the Temple of Aphaia. The three of us wandering around from faded placard to faded placard and gasping at the view and calling back and forth to each other to break the silence. Athens sat white across the blue, blue sea. We could pick out the Acropolis and took guesses at where Olympus was, though we really had no idea whatsoever.
On the way back, we scootered through a seaside town and grabbed coffee. After the hustle of the city and the very present feeling of history at Aphaia, it was odd how quiet the coasts were. Big, abandoned holiday homes half-built lingered just off the shore, silent concrete skeletons that didn’t tell stories like the ancient ruins. I thought it was only the island, but as I sat in a restaurant on Athen’s shore, I was as the sole customer. It was full of chairs placed upside down on tables – a hundred inside and maybe more than a hundred outside. The place felt expectant but mournful, waiting for the summer visitors to come and fill it with vibrance. As I stared silently down the coast, I felt out of place for the first time on my trip. In walking in the footsteps of the ancient past, I had created my own stories. But each story I created was filled with the stories that had come before me. In walking the recently built-up coastline, I felt disconnected from the past, though it surely had no shortage of stories to tell. Perhaps I’m far too picky about architecture.
We are celebrating the conclusion of a Rebetiko Music Festival on the island and are among the grateful throngs standing retsina-less at the side. Grateful that the sell-out concert is able to accommodate the late-comers, and happy that we are part of the audience who are standing ‘in ovation’ for the musicians who had given us such a wonderful weekend of this once outlawed music.
We arrived via ferry and were greeted by that archetypal Greek island scene: a pier thrumming with people and activity, faces alight with anticipation, voices calling out greetings, cafes jumping to attention, and ferry crews bent on maintaining control in the confusion. And in Hydra, donkeys. Perfectly poised teams of donkeys waiting for the stevedores’ commands. Motorized transport is prohibited on the island, except for emergency and sanitation vehicles, so donkeys are ubiquitous. The new refrigerator and month’s supply of water bound for the hill-top monastery? They get loaded on a donkey. We credit the donkeys as well for the blissful soundscape that greeted us on Hydra, where the church bells, the roosters, the laughter, the sounds of the ricocheting soccer ball, the children’s’ calls and the donkey’s hooves on the cobblestones seem to blend seamlessly with the silence. What a pleasure it was to walk through the narrow winding streets and to follow well-marked signs which led to the less explored regions of the island. Twenty minutes into the hills, we were surrounded by the pine forests, the island’s wild horses, and as always in Greece, the remote hill-top monasteries and the vast blue of the Mediterranean.
A particular joy on Hydra was ferreting out the fabled Cohen home on the island – the one he had lived in during the 60s with his Norwegian muse, Marianne Jensen. The years in Hydra had been seminal for Cohen, allowing him to immerse himself in his writing and imagine a future as a poet and songwriter. His house lies snug smongst others on a hill overlooking the harbour and is predictably modest unmarked and shuttered. We trace his probable route down to a favourite swimming platform at the entrance to the harbour. I plunge in, revelling in the clarity of the Mediterranean so close to town, imagining the heat of those summer days that would have coaxed Cohen down to the sea each afternoon. What manna for my imagination and memories still flush with the sound and vision of 60s song writing to relive this magical time for Cohen so many years later! I was not the only one seduced by this ‘oracle of my youth’, but the Cohen legend is thankfully carefully guarded on Hydra – no line-ups, and apart from the occasional furtive photographer outside his house, you can pay your respects in peace.
Rebetiko music, with roots in Anatolia, was fashioned in the ghettos of Piraeus and Athens after the population exchange between Turkey and Greece in the 1920s. It is the folk music of the displaced, the political outsider, the social pariah, and wonderfully marries the modalities familiar to musicians all along the Silk Road. A synthesis of Turkish, Greek, Arab, Persian and Jewish musical traditions, rebitiko gave expression to the experience of the exiled. Themes of love, loss, work, war, poverty, death, violence are embedded in the soul and sound of rebetiko music. Rhythms and melodies are drawn from the cross-cultural traditions and instruments in a rebetiko ensemble are likewise diverse: lyra, santur, guitar, clarinet, oud, tsimbalo, violin, double bass, piano and accordion. The instrument that is emblematic of rebetiko – the bouzouki – became more prominent as the musical form develops in Greece. Commonly associated with the ouzeri and hashish dens, and considered by both Turkish and Greek governments to be either too degenerate or ‘Oriental’ in nature, rebetiko music was forced underground in the 1930s. ‘Cleaned-up’ versions of rebetiko music began to re-emerge in the 1960s and with the growing worldwide popularity of the bouzouki, the rebetiko revival had begun.
Today, rebetiko’s storied past and distinctive musical idiom attract both the scholarly and musical community, the intersection of which we were privileged to witness on that October weekend in Hydra. While some of the academic presentations were specially aimed at “the insider,” (algorhthms of Persian music, anyone?) others – like learning that a dominant scale used in rebetiko music is shared by Jewish Klezmer, Iranian, South Arabic and Flamenco music – help us understand rebetiko’s close relationship with the Middle East. The presentations are interspersed with performances – some held in the famed Melina Mercouri auditorium (named after the Greek actress and a former Minister of Culture) and others in appropriately ‘shady’ cafes. One concert features a Greek singer and a Scottish bouzouki player who balance their Greek rebetiko repertoire with explorations into Celtic music. Suspended in this glorious web of sounds, ideas and cultures, we didn’t seem to mind that we had lost the trail on Hydra, and walked past the monasteries and Marianne right into rebetiko!
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