Mas fuego, mas ruido, mas Valencia

More fire, more noise, more Valencia.  

Fitting in a stay between tenants, we made a mid-March visit to Valencia that can mean only one thing: more Fallas.

I wrote about our first experience of this incredible cultural festival exactly one year ago. Purely by chance and the ever-changing plans of our tenants, we were able get a second bite after so many years of waiting.

 

But first, the journey.

A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike.
And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless.
We find that after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.
John Steinbeck

This outward journey was (I fervently hope) the last of its kind for us. Out of 220 people on this flight to Alicante, 218 were going to Benidorm. On the infernal bus from terminal to plane, the first strident cries of “I’m on holiday me, I don’t give a fuck!”* could be heard. After a chaotic boarding, the cabin crew tried to make sense of this crowd with a mixture of fear and steadfast determination on their faces.

Our travelling companions (having amply availed themselves of the bar facilities of our local airport) indulged in 2.5 hours of over-laughing, over-sharing, shouted, bigoted belligerence, mixed with an astonishing lack of self-awareness. To get an idea, perhaps you might imagine the very worst iteration of “Brits abroad” and multiply by 218.

They are of all ages, but exclusively white. Cheap lip fills and even cheaper false eyelashes. Vest tops to show off all that ink. Pink leisure suits and travelling in curlers. Continuous shouting and ugly attempts at singing, accompanied by a shocking disregard for cabin crew, fellow passengers and even their own families in many cases. “I’ll do what I fuckin’ want love, I’m on holiday”.

And I keep hearing that immigrants are the problem.

Dear reader, if you’re compelled to aim accusations of snobbery in my direction right now, then please do (and please comment if you wish). But these are not my people. I don’t get them. I generally try to resist hate, but in the context of that flight and their behavior, I have no time for them. None at all.

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous
than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Martin Luther King Jr.

Finally we’re in a taxi and headed for Alicante centro, and our small hotel for one night before the train to Valencia. Average tapas on a busy but chilly Alicante Saturday night, followed by a couple of glasses of a decent red in Plaza Nueva before bed. I’m not sure if we’ll ever spend significant time in Alicante, but it was a more than reasonable stopover, having arrived too late for the last train to Valencia.

After an easy walk the next morning to Alacant Terminal, we discovered our train to Valencia was around 1hr late. As this 1hr grew and grew on the information screens, we were grateful for the pretty good Gabrinus station café. Eventually we were through security and ready for our now 2hr late train. We waited on a breezy platform. A tall English guy engaged us in conversation, asking if we knew Valencia. His plan was to was visit for the day from his touring base in Alicante. I cautiously asked if he was aware of the Fallas festival, and he replied that he’d heard a little about it from some Americans. He was hoping to avoid it in favour of visiting the tourist attractions.

I did mention that there would be a Mascletà at around the time we arrived at Estació del Nord (“what, fireworks in the daytime, that can’t be much good”) but I had no time to explain the effect Las Fallas has on the city, particularly on a Sunday so close to the March 19^th climax.

An old Spanish guy uttered a sarcastic “choo-choo” as our train finally rocked up, and I wished our new English acquaintance good luck as we went to different carriages. He would need it.

Leaving Alicante, we passed industrial areas, dusty cuttings, sandy land and hills. A stop at San Vicente del Raspeig, then fields of vines begin to appear. The Spanish chap opposite us mentioned to his partner that these would be the vines of Moscatel grapes. He sounded like he know what he was talking about, so I’m going with Moscatel.

 

The land begins to get greener and is cut by quarries. There is pine forest and olives and a little more light industry and farming. We stop at Elda-Petrer, the twin towns a jumble of sand-coloured apartment buildings under a flat-topped mountain.

 

Jagged hills sit above a flat valley-bottom, spring green with occasional almond blossoms. After the Villena stop, small towns nestle at the foot of greener hills and the plain broadens as you make your way towards Xativa. The earth is redder now, and I can’t resist thinking back to the horrific events of the DANA, the red/brown inundation of October 2024, which ended and changed so many lives to the south and west of the city of Valencia.

“Only the people save the people”
Quote appearing on social media following the DANA disaster

 

The pretty approach to Xativa with wooded hills and almond blossom, jacaranda, terraces of olive trees and red, red earth, then giving way to Valencia’s ubiquitous fruit trees. Thousands of fruit trees.

The (must visit one day) castle of Xativa grows out of its rocky crag, and we steal away to Valencia. Through Alzira, Algemesi, Catarroja, Silla, evidence of the devastation of the DANA still remains. Debris-strewn fields in which orange trees are only just now making their inevitable comeback. Still-closed roads where underpasses were blocked with mud and cannot yet be cleared. We see our first sights of Fallas in the quiet streets of these towns as we pass.

 

Outside Estació del Nord in Valencia, there are predictably no taxis. We walk against the flow of humanity heading for the Mascletà and dive underground at the Bailen metro. Via underground and overground, the last part of a journey shared with the best and worst of humanity was finally over. Our beloved apartment is in good order, our last tenant from Brazil had left it as he found it.

The great festival of Fallas is ours to enjoy once again. Out to town dodging rain showers and fire crackers. A great people-watching slot for lunch at the top of Calle Caballeros. We visited a few of the incredible Fallas monuments, had a chance meeting with our restaurant owner friend on Calle Corretgeria (table booked for later in the week!) and enjoyed our old favourite Café Sant Jaume.

 

The towering Falla at Na Jordana (the closest major one to home) is incredible in size, execution and complexity. We learned later that serial winner Falla Convento de Jerusalén was adjudged to the best of the best for 2025 once again. We didn’t visit that one this year before it was swallowed by the flames, but if it was a greater achievement than Na Jordana it must have been very special.

We ate at a local favourite that evening, alongside chilly diners and drinkers determined to live the outdoor life despite the un-spring-like weather. Big day tomorrow. Mascletà.

 

That Monday morning was chilly and wet. We skirted around Plaza Ayuntamiento via Calle Poeta Querol, Calle Pasqual y Genis and Calle Roger de Lauria, eventually finding a good place in the growing crowd close to Unicaja at the southern end of the great city square. The incomparable Correos building was to our right. Employees, Falleras and members of local Casals Fallers filled the balconied upper windows. The rain continued. Umbrellas blocked everybody’s view of the high-fenced Mascletà area for the moment, as the clock ticked around towards 2pm.

 

As if by order of the Fallera Mayor herself, the rain stopped a little before the 10-minute warning. The umbrellas were down. The 5-minute warning exploded in the air above us. The anticipation was palpable among thousands of Valencians and visitors who surged forward as barriers were removed. We had a great position now.

As I tried to explain to our traveller friend on the platform at Alicante, you can’t explain the Mascletà**. You have to experience it. It’s a breathtaking, extraordinary assault on the senses. Senyor Pirotècnic had the crowd instantly in his pocket with great plumes of smoke in the colours of the Valencian flag that spread around the whole Mascletà arena and surged skywards. 

As the noise and power of the Mascletà built in intensity, the emotion of it took me by surprise. People around us were in tears. This was uniquely Valencian. This Mascletà is their thing, they own this. It’s so much more than fire and smoke and incredible noise, it’s their regional pride on show in the most raw and dramatic way possible. And this was the first Fallas since the horrific events of the DANA, of course. It’s still raw.

As on previous occasions, you believe the intensity of the noise and smoke and flame has reached its peak, only for the skill of the Pirotècnic to take you further. At its most intense the noise had you wondering if your ears would ever recover, and it shuddered upwards through your feet and out of the top of your head. In the last seconds, the entire area of the Mascletà arena was the orange and yellow fire of intense explosion, then it ended with loud, sharp aerial blasts… the whole huge plaza was full of smoke.

Nobody knows what to do immediately after it ends. The most intense over-stimulation has been so abruptly taken away. But we start to move through the thousands of people, towards the Ayuntamiento and its balcony full of Falleras and the Alcaldesa, still enjoying that buzz. 4 people pushed to the front of the crowd on the balcony and waved to the crowd to rapturous applause, but I have to confess that I still don’t know who they were.

 

Let's wake up, Valencians! Let our voice greet the light of a new sun.

To offer new glories to Spain, our Region, it knew to fight.

They mumble, both in workshops and in the fields songs of love and hymns of peace!

Translated from the Himne de València – the anthem of Valencia

 

Having freed ourselves from the crowds, we enjoyed lunch at Café Lisboa in Plaza Doctor Collado, a much-visited favourite that never grows old for us. In one corner of the square, one of several bands of drummers gamely added to the noise of a cacophonous city by beating their Mascletà-like rhythms to the delight of the crowds of Fallas celebrants. Many people wore the checked Fallas panuelos around their necks, and Fallas was never more alive.

We took a vaguely homeward route to see more Fallas, then to take a break and watch the first part of Ofrenda de Flores at home on TV. In amongst all the fire and noise of Fallas, the emotion and spiritual dedication of the Ofrenda is an inspiration. Hundreds of Falleras and their entourages parade in their beautiful traditional dress though the streets of the city bearing floral gifts for Valencia’s Virgin, the Virgen de los Desamparados (our Lady of the Forsaken). The emotion of one of the biggest days of their lives is evident as the Falleras arrive in the Plaza de la Virgen and make the floral offerings that go to make up the mantilla of the hugely imposing idol of the Virgin, to be completed by the end of the second day of this Ofrenda.

We walked back into town across the Puente San José, and it was a little bizarre to see the same Falleras and their families that we’d just seen on TV, making their way home in the opposite direction. We could see the never-ending flow of these Falleras continuing down Calle Caballeros from our spot in Plaça de Sant Jaume.

The penultimate day of Fallas dawned very wet. The heavy rain on this Tuesday morning threatens everything***. On the news, it was reported that regional towns were cancelling their own Ofrendas & Mascletàs. Valencia capital was holding out. The rain would not win.

 

There are several local channels dedicated to Fallas, and they showed stoic but very wet Mascletà preparation, and a million umbrellas across the city. In Plaza de la Virgen, dripping but magnificent floral offerings stood proudly against the weather. The second wave of the Ofrenda was still to come from that afternoon and through to midnight.

 

We had an appointment with great food in the Cabañal district. The local bars and cafés were closing for a Fallas event, but we caught one open for a quick caña before a rainy walk to Casa Montaña. I normally hesitate to name specific bars/restaurants in this blog, but Casa Montaña is a glorious refuge of old-school Spanish comfort and joy. This cosy, traditional Valencian hideaway with great food and wine was precisely the order of the day. And it delivered, como siempre.

 

"Comer es un placer que no se puede dejar."
“Eating is a pleasure that cannot be left behind”. Old Spanish saying.

 

Back home after a sleepy tram ride, the second part of the Ofrenda on TV is inspiring. Heavy rain throughout the evening will never be a barrier to the spiritual commitment and the regional pride of the celebrants. They will make their special day special, and of course the emotion of the disasters of 2024 will add to their stoic determination. The towering idol of the Virgin is completed in the pouring rain, and I suppose we feel a little guilty for not braving even a little of the weather. We would enjoy that spectacle on the last day of this extraordinary festival.

I like the religion that teaches
liberty, equality and fraternity.
B. R. Ambedkar

 

Wednesday March 19^th. The final day of Las Fallas. Dia de San José and El Dia del Padre. The climax of 3 weeks of madness, and many more weeks of preparation. It is mercifully drier. We walk to Plaza de la Virgen and breathe in the elaborate floral tributes left by the many Casals Fallers and other organisations. We walk in blessed sunshine to see more Fallas in centro and the pleasant streets around San Juan del Hospital. Boys alternately kick a football and let off loud firecrackers in Plaza de Nápoles y Sicilia, like you do when you’re a Valencian kid in Fallas.

After lunch, we made our way home for a little downtime before the big night of “Nit de Foc” that ends Las Fallas for another year. But we’re still a little naïve. Our local Mascletà blasts its way though the apartment building windows and shakes the furniture with spectacular noise.

 

Tonight it’s La Crema. Everything burns. Along with those across the city, our local Falla Infantil is due for its burning at 8pm. We sit at the adjoining café with beers and observe. Everyone from this local Casal Faller**** including the Fallera and Fallera Infantil march with their marching band around the Falla, around the block and back
into their cosy marquee on Calle Sarrion. 

After a little while, they march to the Falla again, but this time they stop and collect for photographs, and the men in their Casal Faller jackets push the small crowd a little further back. La Crema is underway. Fireworks scream into the night sky above the orange trees lining Avenida de la Constitución, then the string of firecrackers leading to the Falla Infantil are lit, and the Nit de Foc has begun with the local community celebrating this ritual burning.

The larger Fallas were due to burn at 10pm. We had planned to see the towering Falla Na Jordana go up, but getting through the crowds from there to the climax of the festival in Plaza Ayuntamiento in time may be a big ask. Plan B was down to our favourite Plaza Doctor Collado to see that Falla. We joined in with the growing crowd and takeaway beers from Café Lisboa.

 

Again, the Casal Faller members pushed the barriers and the spectators back to the limits requested by the fire crews. The bomberos then made sure the ashes of the Falla Infantil were well and truly extinguished as a string of fire crackers were attached to the first floor balcony of the Home Hostal on one side of the square, ready to ignite the Falla. Spectators climbed the great old olive tree that shaded most of the tables outside Café Lisboa for a better view.

The firecrackers blasted their way down that string, igniting great surges of sparks and flame, and the Falla burned. Los Bomberos hosed down the encroaching buildings for safety in this compact old-town square, and some spectators got their own cold shower. Those who had climbed that old olive tree regretted it, as it was soaked to prevent it from burning along with the Falla.

 

We ducked away through the alleys towards Avenida de Maria Cristina to find our place in the crowds in Plaza Ayuntamiento. The winning Falla gets its own Crema slot at 10.30, and we arrived just in time to see the sky light up spectacularly beyond the Ayuntamiento as the already mentioned Falla Convento de Jerusalén had its own celebratory burning. It’s an intoxicating feeling to be in a city that feels like it’s burning all at once, yet knowing that it’s just a great celebration.

The crowd jostled for position in Plaza Ayuntamiento, climbed onto various perches, and the balconies of the towering buildings around the square were over-capacity. The climax of Fallas 2025 was upon us once again.

 

The aerial explosions that sound the 10 and then 5-minute warnings. The whistles of a huge and restless crowd as the clock ticks towards 11pm. Fireworks start and quickly become spectacular, everyone lost in a skyward gaze, no matter how cramped or precarious your own piece of real estate might be. 

And then the huge Ayuntamiento Falla starts to go up in a shower of sparks and flame. It burns in the final act of Fallas, and an enormous, curling plume of black smoke sits above the flame and drifts out above the towering buildings to the south-west of Plaza Ayuntamiento.

Fallas was over for 2025.

 

A city is not gauged by its length and width,
but by the broadness of its vision
and the height of its dreams.
Herb Caen

 

It’s normal, I think, to feel a little bereft after so much energy, noise, emotion and sheer “won’t let you go” immersion. For our last couple of days, we fell into an comforting default to our old favourites: paella after a cold, windy walk at Las Arenas… our friend with his great Italian/Spanish fusion food and several (much too quick) limoncello shots as we said hasta la proxima once again… un cremaet at Café Sant Jaume on the way home... and another visit to Valencia was almost done.

 

Leaving the apartment ready for returning tenants on that last Saturday morning, we took a very busy metro to Estació del Nord and gazed at Valencia’s soaring architecture from the café under the magnificent station facade.

Beyond the wood-panelled ticket hall, inside the station was a world of scaffolding, but we found the Cartagena train that would take us back to Alicante and our flight home.

 

Exiting Valencia, under the curve of the Paso Elevado de Giorgeta, through the railway works in the southern half of the city, new apartment blocks, Hospital La Fe, and across the diverted Rio Turia. The Pobles del Sud passed once again, Fallas long since burned. All the time leaving beloved Valencia behind for another Alicante airport and budget airline experience.

 

If you’re brave enough to say goodbye, life will reward you with a new hello.
Paulo Coelho

 

The Albufera slid by, and the Huerta, small olive trees and needle pines bending to the strong breeze, leafless vine trees stoically upright.

Xativa, dusty peaks rising on either side. a pause near Vallada then Villena and eventually and inevitably we pulled into Alacant Terminal. A large part of me hoped this might be for the last time. The novelty of “fly and train” had worn off. Particularly with the prospect of a flight from Alicante in the company of the Benidorm gang ahead.

 

The flight home to rainy Yorkshire was moderately OK as it turned out (different crowd really) but direct flights to Valencia from now on, please. They are hard to come by at times, but this is probably a good thing.

 

On reflection, Fallas was its incredible, unique self once again. Nothing in my experience compares to it. I started last year’s Fallas blog post with: “Fallas is everything that València is, and Valencia is everything that Fallas is” and it remains steadfastly true.

 

We had a different but equally great Fallas experience this time. All is well with the apartment, and we have another rental starting mid-April. We hope to be back for a long summer holiday, rentals permitting.

I wanted to add a quote here (I like quotes) about going back to a place that you love, but this seems appropriate instead:

The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.
Charlie Chaplin

* If I had £1 for every time I heard “I’ll do what I fuckin’ want love, I’m on holiday” during that hideous flight, I'd be a moderately rich man.

** And iphone photos don't even get close to doing it justice either.

*** There is a habit in Spain of cancelling everything when it rains... events indoors or out. It's a little odd to those of us in the UK who would do nothing at all if this were our habit. Fallas is different though. The rain will not stop Fallas, not in the city itself.

**** Essentially, we have 2 roughly equidistant local Fallas communities. In 2024, we were there to see the Falla Infantil of Falla Camino Barcelona go skywards, so this year (in the spirit of balace, as if anyone else noticed) we saw the crema of the Falla Infantil of Falla Actor Mora.

And once again, I apologise for the confusing mixture of Castillian Spanish and Valenciano in this blog post. Sometimes one is more appropriate than the other.

 

La tragedia de la división

As a world, as nations, as regions and as cities, we are so tragically divided.

The mood of some of this post will inevitably reflect the tragedy of the DANA¹, for this has had an effect on Communidad Valenciana that may never be forgotten. This weather phenomenon struck several parts of Spain, but on October 29^th 2024, approximately one year’s worth of rain fell in the Valencia region in one day. An isolated area of low pressure at high levels was the cause (undoubtedly exacerbated by climate change) and it is one of the deadliest natural disasters in Spanish history. Enormous damage and loss of life was inflicted on a huge area in a very short time.

 

And so, ours was a visit that may never have happened. The DANA struck less than 3 weeks before our planned arrival in Valencia, and the situation in the region and city was initially unclear from the often non-specific news coverage². As the hours and days passed, it became clear that the city itself was unaffected (at least physically) and the general tone coming from both official and local sources was that visitors remained welcome.

 

But here is the first of our divisions: the anti-tourist lobby in Valencia is small but often vociferous. With their protest sharpened by the tragedy of the DANA, they pushed back against the visitor: “Leave us alone to recover, leave us to mourn, leave us to get back to normal”³.

In our minds, the “please visit” lobby won the day. We are not tourists after all: we are lucky enough to have a home in this incredible place. I had legal matters to attend to in connection with that, and meetings with letting agents and prospective tenants. As with every other visitor, it was very important to behave respectfully, but also to enjoy the city and continue pay for services, to travel, shop, eat, drink and contribute to an economy that would need every positive input that it can get in the coming years.

 

As advised, we had carried what we could to contribute to the huge recovery effort outside the city to the south and the west. Masks familiar to us from the COVID pandemic, disposable gloves, things that the Cruz Roja and volunteers needed to continue their staggering efforts. But as is so often the case, these needs had changed by the time we arrived… the Cruz Roja had run out of storage for such supplies, so financial contributions were now preferred.

 

I made such a contribution, but it never feels like enough. The masks and gloves were stored in the apartment. I couldn’t help feeling they would be needed one day.

 

Very soon after the DANA struck the populations immediately south and the west of the city itself, it was the public holiday of Todos los Santos. What gradually emerged on social media on that day was footage of thousands of Valencianos marching from the city, armed with brooms, mops, buckets, bottled water and anything else they could carry. They marched south from the city, across the great, wide, expanse of the redirected Rio Turia. They marched across the bridges that spanned the water and the highways that lined its route, and they marched into La Torre and any other areas they could reach.

It’s likely that the devastation that they witnessed made the mops and buckets in their hands seem useless, but they were there, and they offered up their help to those in great need. There can be no greater endorsement of the spirit of the Valencian people than this.

 

And despite this, it’s clear that another tragic division has emerged. As well as for the incredible street art that you can see in the city, walls are used for comment, complaint, protest and reaction. The volunteers are still helping in the stricken areas, yet the messages on the walls demonstrate a feeling of abandonment coming from the south and west. Now more than ever, there was division between the city and the Pobles del Sud and beyond.

 

It’s clear that warnings of the potential devastation to come were woefully inadequate, and the reaction of the regional government to the devastation was slow. This will no doubt be the source of some of these feelings of abandonment. This “them and us”.

Carlos Mazón, the President of Communidad Valenciana has taken much of the blame. He is a Partido Popular⁴ politician, and as such will court precious little popularity with the working populations of the stricken areas. Mazón is alleged to have been enjoying a 3-hour lunch in the city on the day of the DANA, eating and drinking as the devastation spread. This, along with the deadly delays in the arrival of help to some areas has resulted in huge protests against Mazón, and continued calls for his resignation. You can see the messages on the walls, and still hear random cries in the streets: “Mazón dimisión!!”. The anger still burns.

 

The city felt subdued as we went about our business. Appointments with an abogada and a notario to wrap up some legal matters, shopping for the apartment and ourselves, welcoming our letting agent and a potential tenant to view the apartment.

 

We walked the city as always, had great meals and saw familiar faces. The weather was beautiful⁵ despite a couple of windy days. These were not beach days (although some appeared to disagree) but a walk through the marina for a drink overlooking the water and along the Paseo Maritimo for paella was the usual delight.

The owner of a favourite restaurant in the old town welcomed us as ever. The restaurant had been quiet since the DANA, but he was positive of a return to normal. He had a forthright view on Mazón, and we were inclined to agree with it:

 

As he was out of limoncello, we discussed the situation over a couple of mistelas. Without hesitation, he described Mazón as a “fucking asshole!!”, so we got some idea of how he felt about that. He went on to say that yes, Mazón must resign, as many thousands were demanding… “but he must own his shit first”. He cannot run away. He must do the right thing and improve the situation at the very least.

 

Here is another division. Even within “the people v. Mazón” lobby there will be divided opinions. Our friend says he cannot run until he’s done the right thing. Others will demand an immediate resignation, others look for an even more extreme demise, as advertised on the walls of the Generalitat Valenciana.

Our last words to our friend were: “el año que viene, mas sonrisas”. More smiles next year.

 

The DANA will affect the communities outside the city itself, to the south and west, for many years to come. We saw daily news reports. A farmer had lost most of his stored potato crop worth several million euros. Househoilders and shop owners crying tears of fear and frustration. Locals and volunteers trying to sweep away the liquid mud, all the while risking serious illness from the sewer-infected filth. This type of struggle and loss will repeat over and over across the region. Hundreds are dead, and this will cut very deep across those communities.

 

I can’t escape the bitter irony of the precious Valencian soil. It’s what you sweep from your balcony and windowsills. It the dust that joins the leaves and city detritus and rises in flurries in the breezy streets. It lends the city its ethereal terracotta hue in the low winter light. It’s in the very air of Valencia because it surrounds Valencia and forms the great, fertile Huerta de Valencia⁶ that feeds people and communities and industry in the region, and much, much further afield.

 

The awful irony is that when a year’s worth of rain came down in 1 horrific day, this Valencian soil became the liquid mud that inundated homes and businesses. It destroyed hundreds of lives and livelihoods, washed thousands of cars into heaps on the streets, and turned vast areas of precious land into a fetid swamp.

 

The distress and anger was at such a peak in Paiporta⁷ when visited by the King, Queen and Prime Minister that this mud was literally thrown at them. They were forced to escape from a well-intentioned visit that turned very sour.

 

To date, 222 people have lost their lives in the Valencia region as a result of the DANA. Others have been lost in Castile-La Mancha and Andalucia.

With our business and visit concluded, we left with warm memories of the city once again, of excellent food and drink as ever, of faces new and old. But we left a subdued city. Valencia doesn’t lose its dignity, nor its poise. But the anger remains. The divisions remain.

 

 

 

 

This post is dedicated to all who have been lost as a result of the DANA 2024 in Communidad Valenciana and beyond, and to all those affected.

 

 

 

¹ To avoid any misunderstanding, I should make it clear that DANA is not one of the foolish names given to storms by some meteorological office or another. It’s the acronym that describes the weather phenomenon that caused this awful tragedy: Depresión Aislada en Niveles Altos.

 

² Lazy news coverage will use the word Valencia without making the distinction between Valencia the city (Valencia Capital) and Valencia the region (Communidad Valenciana). This can be misleading, and caused many to believe that the floods had inundated the city itself, at least initially.

 

³ There is no normal, and that’s why the city and region are what they are. You might go so far as to say that such disasters make the city what it is, they shape its people and its outlook.

 

⁴ Broadly UK Conservative Party equivalent.

 

⁵ I don’t know if there’s a syndrome that describes “weather guilt”. I’m fully aware that it’s irrational, but I felt genuinely guilty about enjoying warm sunshine and light breezes so soon after that deluge that had destroyed so many lives. I was told by several people that it didn’t even rain in the city itself on that awful day.

 

⁶ The Huerta de Valencia (roughly translated as The Orchard) is a huge area of farmland and fruit, vegetables, grape and rice growing areas. It extends some 120km2 around the city of Valencia. La Huerta supplies the markets and restaurants of Valencia, but its abundant production of fruits and vegetables is exported to the rest of Spain and abroad.

 

7 It’s very likely (i.e. absolutely definite) that the political hard right in Spain saw an “opportunity” in this visit, and were involved in the unrest that arose in Paiporta on that ugly day. That said, there can be no doubt that local anger and frustration were a very real factor.

The hard right in Spain thrive on division, as do so many on the extremes of politics. We are so divided.

 

 

 

 

 

 

La verdad sobre la Costa del Sol: Part 2… more truths

I posted in July 2018 with my random musings about the Costa del Sol and it’s debatable integrity, based around a summer soak in sunshine and local colour.

“The truth about the Costa del Sol is that what endures,
what is worthwhile, is what is Spanish.”
David Hewson

 
For me, Hewson’s quote above remains rock-solid true. But there are things to add now… more truths.

 

And I make no apology for quoting Laurie Lee’s “As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning” once again, for it is relevant (and he couldn’t half write):

“The road to Malaga followed a beautiful but exhausted shore, seemingly forgotten by the world. I remember the names, San Pedro, Estepona, Marbella and Fuengirola. They were saltfish villages, thin ribbed, sea hating, cursing their place in the sun. At that time one could have bought the whole coast for a shilling. Not Emperors could buy it now” 

Back in early June, we had welcomed 2 tenants from the US (plus small canine tenant) to our Valencia apartment, to stay until November. So we needed a summer holiday venue. My previous experience of Estepona had been with my work back in April 2007, I remembered a town that had retained its elegance, despite its proximity to Marbella and Fuengirola to the east, as our Laurie mentions above. So Estepona was our choice.

 

With tedious predictability, our budget airline (the red one) landed us 2 hours late in Malaga, and with an hour on the road to Estepona still to come, hunger was the enemy. We scrambled directly to the nearby Puerto Deportivo de Estepona on arrival, and snacked at Café Bar Reinaldo as the marina began to grow quiet, late on a weekday evening.

Until the nearby Plaza de Toros emptied. Mercifully (if you’re a bull) the bullring was now being used for concerts and performances, and suddenly the marina was full of hundreds of people retrieving their cars, and the amusing struggles with ticket machines and exit barriers (that we enjoyed for the whole visit) added to the sudden bustle.

 

The next day dawned hot and breezy. I remembered Playa del Cristo to the west of the marina due to its proximity to the hotel we had used back in 2007. The walk from the marina was a little longer that I remembered, perhaps due to the wind creating clouds of thick dust in the large car park between marina and beach. A sign at the car park entrance prohibited caravans and motor homes. Predictably, the shore side of the car park was populated by around 30 caravans and motor homes.

 

Despite the wind, we enjoyed a first day in the sunshine on the beach, a chiringuito lunch (more on these fine establishments shortly) and shopped on the way back to our unremarkable holiday apartment so that the fridge could be filled.

 

To the east of the marina, towards the town new and old, lies Playa de la Rada. This huge beach stretches from the puerto pesquero and its fish market, right along the breadth of the town itself. It was along this beach that we strolled on day two, looking for a more authentic chiringuito experience… and so we happened across Chiringuito Tropical, the first that you’ll encounter in this direction.

 

So… chiringuitos. Our friend Wikipedia describes such establishments by suggesting that they’re not really established: “a small beach bar, selling mainly drinks and snacks, and sometimes meals or tapas, in a more or less provisional building, since a more permanent structure on the beach may be inviable”.

I love that chiringuitos can sometimes feel a little provisional, perhaps ramshackle, temporary… your chiringuito may even be a shack. It takes me back to one in Cyprus many years ago that was literally a shack, but produced a lunchtime brandy sour that was a game-changer.

 

It’s the makeshift nature of the chiringuito that makes the good ones so remarkable. The coast of the Malaga region specializes in very good chiringuitos, with very good fresh fish and seafood, invariably staffed by amazing people.

 

In an attractively ramshackle arrangement of buildings on a beach, there will be a kitchen, a bar, sometimes an indoor eating area, sometimes a decking eating area, sometimes tables right on the sand. Many then have sunbeds on the sand stretching towards the sea.

For us, these are some of the ingredients that make a summer holiday.

 

On first arrival at Chiringuito Tropical, we found sunbeds available from 11am. As soon as the chiringuito opened, you would pay a very friendly guy for your sunbeds and get on with your busy day of lying down a lot in the sunshine.

 

The sunbeds filled pretty quickly, and after a few days, you began to recognize and interact with the “regulars”:

Dutch family. Astonishingly adept at languages, flitting between Dutch, Spanish, English and French as required. Dad was resigned to the expensive tastes of his brood, constantly fishing into his back pocket for more euros to finance their prodigal beach lifestyles.

Spanish couple. Not sure if local to Estepona, but we got on speaking terms after stepping in to rescue a broken cigarette lighter crisis. They swam every day until the 11am “sunbed release” watershed.

Spanish family. Couple with young son of about 8 and very small son #2 who was unfeasibly cute, very good at the waving game, and also very good at demanding his family’s attention. Punched his Papa's arm remarkably hard for a small child when Papa was reading instead of paying attention to him.

 

60-something Spanish lady who was very particular about almost everything, but also very pleasant. Loved her time in the sunshine and enjoyed the sea. Retirement life goals.

 

Huge American guy in a basketball vest with a partner who never said a word. This was perhaps because he constantly talked about himself, and how he had played basketball with Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson. Even if we had thought it was true, nobody cared.

3 Spanish ladies of a certain age (taking us back to my 2018 post again…) talking all at the same time… clearly determined to have a great day… and nobody can blame them for that. They were great fun, and cackled a lot after their first jug of sangria arrived. One fell asleep after a long lunch and snored loudly. Her mates found this hilarious, and therefore made a video. They then randomly played 30-second snippets of the same horrific euro-pop tune repeatedly, for what seemed like hours. This endeared them to us a little less, but they’d had a great day.

 

And various Spanish, Brits, Irish, French, Portugese, German, Scandi, Dutch, Eastern European and many and varied visitors. Some harmless, some demanding, some ignorant, some lovely.

 

And the lunchtimes. We wouldn’t miss those chaotic, hot, noisy, smoky, delicious, long lunchtimes in those vibrant, full-of-life chiringuitos for the world. Sunday especially is the Spanish family day out, and they dive into sardinas and boquerones fritos and calamares and fresh lenguado and dorada and paella and beers and sangria and they kiss and they laugh and they shout and they argue and we love it all.

 

We enjoy our own calmer version of the above, and we listen and we people-watch and we enjoy the service of the incredible staff, who work from 11am through a crazy long lunchtime service in 30º heat that can easily run through to 5pm… then they grab their own food and get ready for the evening.

 

We left Chiringuito Tropical on our last full day with heavy hearts and lots of genuine thanks. We had spent almost every day of our 2 weeks with the 3 generations of the family that run that place, and they had made our holiday.

 

Just as an aside, we had taken to enjoying a morning coffee close to Chiringuito Tropical before their 11am opening. Our venue of choice for coffee soon became the oddly named El Amanacer de Paco* on Calle San Roque. This was partly because of the great coffee, but also because we were often served by a lovely guy who wasn’t Paco, but bore more than a passing resemblance to Tattoo from Fantasy Island, the awful/great Saturday night TV offering from the 1970/80s**. “Tattoo” was such a nice guy, bustling around the tables, sharing the challenges of his busy life with a grin and a shrug. Paco himself was a tall, gentle guy with a more understated manner. Rather disappointingly, he bore no resemblance whatsoever to Ricardo Montalbán, so the 1970s Saturday night TV analogy was never quite complete.

 

And so to Estepona itself. In Estepona I felt closer to Valencia that I had ever felt in the other Costa del Sol resorts that we’d visited before… Marbella, La Cala de Mijas, Fuengirola.

Estepona is a fairly large town, and feels like it’s been a fairly large town for some time.

 

We knew La Cala de Mijas had been a tiny fishing village around which a resort grew at an alarming rate. In our first few years of holidaying there, we found that the pace of change from village to resort was reasonable, but this changed. The old original cafés close to El Torreon in the beachside heart of the resort lost their Spanish character. Some became places where you couldn’t sit and talk with a coffee or caña… the table couldn’t be yours unless you ordered food. Some guy from a TV show about Essex bought a restaurant there, and advertised it as being in Marbella. It isn't. The supermarket big brands moved in, as did Irish bars and kebab shops, and places where you could get a Sunday Roast or an English Breakfast.

 

Beyond the coast road, the building of more and more housing moved on at a frantic pace (and still does) and the whole thing will just snowball.

 

But the feeling in Estepona is not the same. Yes, the town continues to grow as people from all places move in to live and work and retire, but you don’t feel that it will ever be swallowed like La Cala has been. Estepona was there before all of these people, and I think Estepona will remain.

I think the word is established.

 

We walked to the old town from our apartment close to the marina. Up a gentle hill from the Rotonda de la Barca, you very quickly arrive at the start of a traffic-free walkway that strolls you past a tastefully redeveloped residential area, all the way to the pretty (if very busy) old town. I remembered back to 2007 when some of this smart, floral, water-featured, cool walkway was a grubby, noisy, car-filled seafront road. What a difference.

 

For all of our 2^nd week, along this cool walkway, there was the Jamon Festival Estepona 2024. For the uninitiated, jamon in Spain is a VERY BIG DEAL. It’s hard to think of a UK equivalent to the impact, importance, history, artistry, craft and place in society that jamon has in Spain.

 

The best jamon is revered like the finest wines, and that is reflected in the cost. This festival featured an impressive range of jamon for sale, competitions for the best ham carver (an art within an art) and of course the finest ham at the end of the week. With sellers of cheeses and beer, and bread and dulces, the many stalls leading up to the great ferris wheel at the start of the old town were a delight.

 

We ate in the old town on a few evenings. One very nice mesón had a very likeable host and tables a little way down the street close to the ancient castle wall of Castillo de San Luis... and the food was amazing. Some old town restaurants were too turistic, but the occasional chiringuito tempted us back for an evening meal when we could see that fresh fish still being barbecued over wood.

 

On our way home, families played giant chess at midnight on the traffic-free paseo. The queue for the ferris wheel didn’t seem to diminish, and the jamon carvers didn’t slow down.

 

And just a word for the gulls. Gulls justifiably get a terribly bad press in many places. They scavenge and steal food and are a nuisance and a genuine threat to people in many places across the UK.

There are a lot of gulls in Estepona, but they didn’t appear to be a problem for anyone. They largely remained around the puerto pesquero, and that end of the beach. They fly in large flocks in the mornings and evenings, only once making themselves scarce when a gang of black kites moved in from the African coast one evening***.

 

The gulls appeared to have everything they needed from the puerto and the fish market, and to some degree they sum up Estepona as a place. Their part in the established order of things seemed clear, and they don’t push the boundaries. There are thousands of expats in Estepona also, but they haven’t turned it into any kind of expat enclave. There were a lot of visitors of all nationalities, but they were largely unable to have a negative influence on such an established town that clearly has solid foundations.

 

Nice place, Estepona. It’s something of a comfort to think that it’s likely to remain so.

 

 

 

 

*One of the possible translations is "The Dawn of Paco". Maybe he had some kind of epiphany that inspired him to open a café and employ Tattoo from Fantasy Island. It's hard to know where the truth lies. My Spanish wasn't good enough to ask him, and it's probably best left to the imagination.

** Many of my very few readers wil probably need to google this due to age, and then maybe you'll understand what I'm talking about. I hope.

*** I'm no Bill Oddie (again, please google if required) but apparently it's not unusual for Black Kites to cross the Straits in groups.