Noa de la Torre Valencia
Valencia
Updated Friday, March 15, 2024-9:35 p.m.
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Imagine an Holy Week in Seville without the steps carried on the shoulders of the costaleros.
Or a Sanfermines without its massive running of the bulls.
Now try to imagine
a Fallas de Valencia without its faults
.
Too surreal?
Well, in this scenario, the debate about the festival in Valencia has taken place: what would be left of it without the monuments that give it meaning and that attracted 800,000 tourists last year (and from whose pockets came no more and no less than 269 million euros).
No one disputes that the Fallas are one of the most popular and internationally recognized popular festivals in Spain.
Now, however, they have reached a crossroads: can a festival declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity survive if its first link does not do so as well?
In other words: do the Fallas have a future if the Fallas artists who create their monuments do not?
It is not a minor issue, since there are those who already point out that
the Fallas world is experiencing its particular "great resignation"
, in the style of the great labor resignation that arose in the United States as a result of the pandemic.
"It's something that is happening," says Gil-Manuel Hernández, from the Fallas Studies Association.
"This is a serious problem that forces us to rethink the party."
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Quite a paradox considering that
the festival generated a global economic impact of 733 million in 2023
, according to a study by the Chair of Sustainable Economic Model of the University of Valencia and the Valencian Institute of Economic Research (IVIE).
And yet, another fact: one of the great Fallas artists has just said goodbye to the Special section... because such an effort is not paid for.
This is Pere Baenas who, after 25 consecutive years planting monuments in the highest category - which in recent years has served as a hook for the tourism
boom
- has just announced that 2024 will be his last year doing Special fails.
The fallero artist not only justifies his decision by the "self-pressure of the competition", but also by the evolution of the profession itself:
"The profession has become increasingly unsustainable
. "
And he points to the "logistical, financial and emotional demands."
Planting great monuments, in short, is no longer worth it.
So the question is what is happening in the Fallas.
Their machinery has a problem: the artists who shape the main monuments - those who make the 'Valencia brand' - denounce that the profession is no longer profitable.
"We have turned a popular festival into a tourist festival that barely has a return for us
," laments Paco Pellicer, senior teacher of the Guild of Fallas Artists.
"Las Fallas are a festival that is paid for by Fallas commissions, but from which hotels and restaurants benefit, above all."
If the first link in the chain does not make money - or not as much as it should or would like - can the Fallas end up dying of success?
"Yes, but not in a different way than the Sanfermines or the Cádiz Carnival," explains Pau Rausell, an economist who directs the Research Unit in Economics of Culture and Tourism at the University of Valencia.
"Currently, only a small part of the value generation reaches the creation of failures."
That is, to its main architects.
To those who are capable of turning a sketch into a monument for hundreds of thousands of people on the street to enjoy.
"Las Fallas are a party that is paid for by Fallas commissions, but from which hotels and restaurants benefit..."
In his opinion, reversing this situation could involve, for example, the establishment of a tourist tax with which to "improve the viability of the Fallas activity."
Rausell emphasizes that we must also not lose sight of the so-called "congestion costs":
if to see a failure you have to wait in line for hours, there will come a time when it will simply seem like a waste of time
.
"There are cycles in which the Fallas or any other festival loses interest," he warns.
José Manuel Pastor, director of the university Chair and co-author of the festival's economic report, admits that the overcrowding of the Fallas may end up causing its "denaturalization", apart from the "negative externalities" that are already obvious: dirt, noise, conflicts between neighbors and Fallas... Of course, he emphasizes that "all economic sectors benefit indirectly", although
the biggest beneficiary is the hospitality industry, which keeps a third of the economic impact of the Fallas
(247 million).
"And what about us?" asks a representative of the Fallas guild.
"Here it's not like in soccer, where a player earns a lot of money because he generates it. Fallas artists don't generate more than what we make."
More tourists, more profits? Not in this case
.
And that's without talking about the rising cost of materials in recent years, the rise in salary costs and all kinds of obstacles to their artistic work...
"The weakest part of the chain is the Fallas artist," says Gil-Manuel Hernández, for whom the declaration of the Fallas as a World Heritage Site has not really benefited the artists.
His problems, he says, come from afar.
Specifically, it could be said that they go back 15 years.
To 2009, specifically, the year in which
the most expensive monument in the history of Valencia
was planted .
It was a mammoth failure, 50 meters high by 50 meters wide, with more than a hundred pieces and cost one million euros.
The never seen.
And what has never been seen again since the real estate bubble that inflated that fault and that shaped the neighborhood that welcomed it, Nou Campanar, was burst.
That record failure was reduced to ashes, like all the others, but it changed the history of the party like no other.
It was a turning point, the beginning of a 'big' Fallas whose consequences continue to this day, despite the fact that it ended up disappearing for the simple reason that it was unviable.
And, of course, no artist got rich from it.
To understand the dimension of the phenomenon that Nou Campanar represented, you only have to look at the figures of this exercise: the group of Valencia's Fallas commissions will invest this year a total of 8.8 million euros in the construction of the monuments.
Only the big failures of Especial will spend 1.5 million this year.
The most expensive one will not exceed 245,000 euros
.
Even so, the pressure that that failure put on artists continues to weigh today.
"The elephantine, the unbridled monumentalism has dragged the Fallas artists, who have gotten into quicksand," says the expert from the Association of Fallas Studies, who believes that
the artists have fallen into the trap of "gigantism"
.
Nou Campanar set the bar too high and, although it is now unattainable, for better or worse it is still the reference.
Today, large monuments can reach 20 meters in height.
Now, far from presenting a pyramidal fault structure with a central body and a single top, they look more like a "roller coaster."
"Many failures have become large children's monuments: the more things, the better," says Hernández.
[Note for those who don't understand: children's fallaes are usually characterized by adding a multitude of small figures that end up making up a scene.
Do you remember about the hundred
ninots
in Nou Campanar?
Well that].
"The rampant monumentalism has dragged the Fallas artists, who have gotten into quicksand"
This raises another problem: that of the materials with which a failure is made.
To date, white cork was king.
Relatively cheap, easy to work with... but very polluting when combusted.
From the famous night of La
Cremà
on March 19, we are always left with that image of the Fallera crying, the 'ninots' or figures burning in the middle of the flames... The image that is not seen so much is that of the sky of Valencia covered in black smoke after a rain of ash.
For environmentalists, an
environmental horror
.
The party is not immune to this sustainability debate either.
What to do with the materials from the failure has been considered for some time.
It has been tested with organic cork and even rice straw experimentally.
There are even those who propose going back to the past to return to wood.
Is it feasible?
"Artists have before them the challenge of reconverting materials, but the truth is that the volumetrics are not enough for that.
The volume of the monuments would have to be reduced
," says Gil Manuel Hernández.
That is, if we want new, more sustainable materials, the failures cannot be so great.
And this, in a world where the main Fallas commissions also depend on private sponsorship for their monuments, is difficult to change.
Not to say impossible.
"The key word is degrowth
," warns this expert.
This concept, almost a taboo in Valencia, advocates for smaller fallaes that invade less public space, that rebuild ties with the neighborhood (the antifallero, that is) and, ultimately, that take care of their artists.
"The party is at a critical point," says Hernández, who proposes, for example, mechanisms so that the subsidy received by the commissions is conditional on the budget of the monuments exceeding a minimum.
"The goal is for commissions to spend more money on the failure," he says.
"Otherwise, more and more artists will do like Baenas."
The incentives to flee are not few.
To begin with, the senior master of the Guild confirms that it is more profitable for an artist to plant in other towns and in more modest categories, where the profit margin is greater.
Although many do not want to see it, the world does not end in the Fallas.
"For artists, there is more and more market outside," explains Hernández.
Pellicer himself confirms it.
Stages from music festivals, theme parks or television series have the seal and signature of Fallas artists.
There is life beyond the Fallas, yes.
The point is to try to ensure that there is also one in the Fallas.
Let the party not kill the party.