PassFire In Spain

Team PassFire arrived in Spain (Valencia) in time for the Las Fallas Festival. Whilst this is widely attended by Pyro Freaks from around the World including a group of British Pro-firers and enthusiasts over there on a mission, there are also tens of thousands of firework lovers all there to see the spectacle for themselves.

The Las Fallas Festival is what can only be described as utter madness with fireworks! The beautiful City of Valencia plays host to this event which has been celebrated since some point in the Middle Ages (11th to 15th century) and was thought to have been created by the artisans who disposed of broken art works and any off cuts or unusable pieces of wood and other combustible materials and made them into dressed figures and set them alight to welcome the Spring Equinox.

The event essentially is 5 days and nights of partying and includes along with the plethora of fireworks and bonfires a great many religious, comedic and historical Ninots (puppets or dolls). The types of ninots are usually determined as a ‘theme’ and they are absolutely spectacular.

The main event ‘La Mascaleta’ is a barrage of fireworks and firecrackers which are fired at 2:00pm daily and the best of these is then selected to provide the finale ‘mascaleta of the fiesta’.

The origin of the word ‘Mascaleta’ is from the latin for masculine (not unsurprising with big boys toys!) and Fallas is derived from the latin for torch so essentially Las Fallas Mascaleta translates as The Torch Man!!

The next stop on their tour to bring the world of fireworks and its relevant customs together in one film takes the Veverka Brothers over to Portugal and we will of course keep you posted on their exploits. More pics of the #PassFire project on our flickr channel.

Whilst in Spain, Jesse and the #Passfire team ran into a little bit of trouble... Here's a short extract of an email from Jesse Veverka...

"On a final note, you might have also heard that we successfully chased down a few bag thieves in Spain who tried to rob our camera equipment. It's a true story. We got the bags back and even handed one of the thieves over to the cops. What can I say, the production must always go on!"

Great news Jesse - Be Water My Friend :-D