On March 11, two days before the state of alarm was decreed and millions of Spaniards were confined to their homes, Valencia wept over the postponement of the Fallas . The advance of the coronavirus had allowed the firing of eleven mascletaes in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento and that hundreds of monuments came out of the workshops to start filling the squares. The order of the Ministry of Health was strict and President Ximo Puig executed it. Las Fallas are by definition a street celebration, with thousands of citizens and tourists taking over the city and events that can reach more than 30,000 people. Impossible in the toughest times of the coronavirus. But neither in the 'new normal'.
The Valencia City Council did not want to cancel, only left in suspense a decision that is already firm: there will be no failures in 2020 . There are only four moments in history when the festival has not been celebrated: in 1886 when the falleros refused to pay a municipal fee for planting their monuments, the Cuban War and the Civil War . Added to them is now the health crisis of the coronavirus that has brought down the Intangible Heritage of Humanity festival .
The determination was to be made in the middle of June, when the de-escalation phases advance, but the evidence that the party will not make sense without many of its key elements (daily pyrotechnic shooting, offering, visits to monuments, markets that nourish income to the commissions ...) have led all the sectors involved to choose not to hold them.
To this is added the evaluation of the Ministry of Health . Ana Barceló yesterday transferred to Mayor Joan Ribó that it would not be advisable to celebrate the Fallas in July. The fear of new outbreaks after de-escalation is evident. In fact, the San Fermines have been suspended, the Bonfires, scheduled for September, or were yesterday and the Tomatina in late August was canceled weeks ago.
The Mayor of Valencia, Joan Ribó , the Councilor for Festive Culture, Carlos Galiana , and 12 representatives of the party met in the early afternoon to "reach a consensus" and communicate the cancellation, which will be ratified in an urgent and extraordinary assembly of Presidents.
"After evaluating all the options, we understand that the uncertainty that another date can entail becomes completely impossible. We are aware of what it entails. Not only for the material and economic part of the party, but for the material and feelings part so difficult to explain, "Councilman Galiana has written in a letter to the plenary session of the Fallera Central Board.
Galiana also confirmed that she will propose to the Assembly of Presidents that the Major Falleras elected for 2020, Consuelo Llobell and Carla García , can "continue to hold office during the 20/21 exercise. And we encourage the other committees to do the same."
The commissions themselves have started to point out that it is not realistic to face the party in the midst of an epidemic . A celebration at half gas would not leave the city an average of 753 million euros and 15% of tourism for the whole year. With the lost investment of the year, some monuments, as part of the municipal fault that symbolized a meditator with a mask, were transferred to the warehouses of Feria Valencia or did not even leave the artists' workshops. Getting them out of there would be an extra expense that many cannot afford. But artists have also suffered the crisis and need to have their premises empty, in many cases because they have given up on renting or because they are going to move to other cheaper places. They have lost part of the business for the whole year with the suspension of Fallas y Hogueras.
The Valencia City Council announced that it advanced 25% of the year's subsidies to the commissions so that it could face the crisis and pay for its monuments, which represented 1.8 million euros. The Department of Entrepreneurship and Economic Innovation also added grants of 3,000 euros so that artists could maintain the activity.
In addition, the consistory requested two exceptional lines of credit from the Official Credit Institute , one for the affected business units and the other for the Fallen Commissions, and asked the different agencies dependent on the General State Administration for tax rebates and deferrals by the Tax Agency to the affected business units, as well as bonuses and deferral of fees by Social Security.
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