August 11, 2014

Blanes Firework Competition 2014

Back in February, we brought news of the forthcoming Blanes Firework Competition called El Focs de Blanes which celebrated its 44th edition of the pyro competition.

The event kicked off on Thursday night when it opened up with over 100,000 spectators in attendance but the usual crowd for Saturday is usually a great deal bigger at around 170,000 last year so it was no surprise that the total crowd was over a quarter of a million strong!

The event was supervised by Tomas de Castello, lead pyrotechnician and three times previous winner of the competition.

The event sadly didn’t go without a hitch as Saturday nights event was hit by disaster when the team from Pirotecnia Zaragozana as their computer system, set up to fire the display concurrently failed in magnificent style resulting in a lacklustre show which brought the gathered crowd to offer boo’s and moreover, as the pyro was set up to be fired randomly by computer had to be hand fired so the result was lots of dark sky moments and general disappointment from the crowds.

The gathered crowds are used to seeing events which are of the highest quality and as such, they were not happy. In fact, the city of Blanes is considering sanctions on the company which will be discussed further once the show’s technical committee have investigated footage taken on the night in detail.

Here's a small taste of the displays: