La Crida
This is the proclamation of the Fallas’ official beginning: how a city enters three weeks of celebration, colour, noise, and spectacle.
La Crida
This is the proclamation of the Fallas’ official beginning: how a city enters three weeks of celebration, colour, noise, and spectacle.
The Crida (sometimes called Cridá) is a public proclamation that kicks off the most intense days of Fallas in Valencia. As such, it is one of the most eagerly awaited Fallas events, because it starts the festival as it is generally intended - the days between the end of February and the 19th of March. The Crida is the mark that, after a year of preparation and trepidation, everything is about to reach its climax and its end.
The key moment in the ceremony is the Fallera Mayor’s speech, in which she invites all people to get to know the festival and to enjoy it. In fact, the word Crida, in Valencian, means “call”.
This ceremony, officiated every year on the last Sunday of February, is exactly this: a call to gather everyone, to honour and welcome the festival as its time approaches once again, after a year spent in anticipation.
During the Crida the city, its inhabitants, its visitors, and its falleros are called to participate in the Fallas, celebrate, and have fun. This ceremony is the sign that the city is about to be taken by a storm of colours, joy, and fireworks, a sign that people will soon be able to see spectacular fallas sculptures in the streets and witness magnificent pyrotechnic displays.
As the sky explodes in dozens of colours and shapes around the Serranos Towers, the city enters its most extravagant celebration. After this night, people can say that Valencia está en Fallas (Valencia is under Fallas).
