Pueblos con encanto: Peñíscola and the Papa Luna

The iconic view of Peñíscola's seaside castle on a hill

If there are two towns that I consider to be an absolute must-visit for those who come to Valencia, they are Albarracín (more on it another day) and Peñíscola. An easy, short day trip train-ride away from the regional capital, Peñíscola offers you that quintessential Spanish Mediterranean experience, a castle by the sea. For this reason, and because of some interesting historical and cultural features, not to mention culinary highlights, I'm adding it here to my photo recollection blog entry series on "pueblos con encanto" that visitors should prioritize should they ever have an extended stay in the region.

I revisited Peñíscola a couple of months ago with a friend and colleague who had never been. The first thing he commented on was how much it reminded him of Greece, above all because of its white seaside buildings. Now this is no lazy comparison, since my friend is Greek American and has lived in and has family in Greece. It is striking, given that this similarity is not true for most Spanish seaside villages (with a notable exception, perhaps, for Menorca).

Putting aside this passing resemblance, what defines Peñíscola is its medieval castle. Like most Spanish castles, a fort turned castle had been built and rebuilt on this spot for centuries. The town's name comes from the Roman "Paene Iscola", meaning "casi isla" or almost an island (i.e. a peninsula). The present-day castle came into being in the 13th and 14th centuries, built by —take notes Dan Brown— the Knights Templar. Unfortunately, you have to pay extra to visit the part of the castle where they talk about that, and I'm too cheap to bother. (Note: it was a bright, sunny day, and I was experimenting with my new polarizing filter to get more brilliant blue skies. My apologies for the blackened edges in the photos.)

The castle's most famous denizen, "El Papa Luna", a.k.a. Benedict XIII, came to reside here in the 15th century, an antipope who preferred to live in Spain than renounce his Vatican-rejected claim on the popedom. His family name Luna, "moon" in Spanish, and the use of the crescent moon in his family seal, are why you'll see crescent moons all over the castle and town. (Admit it, "el Papa Luna" is an even cooler sounding pope name than "el Papa Paco".)

Somehow, every time I visit Peñíscola I manage to find this artisan ceramics shop closed.
The Papa Luna figurines in Cerámica Yvan look adorable and would be wonderful souvenirs!

Now as if seeing a castle on a cloud by the sea is not enough, it just so happens that this quaint seaside village was the site for not one, but two popular movies. The better known would be El Cid, the 1961 blockbuster movie starring Charleston Heston (in the title role) and Sophia Loren. Yep, if you look closely in that famous battle scene on a beach by a castle —you know, the one where Heston, err El Cid charges down all those Moors on his horse— well, that was filmed in Peñíscola. It's that castle.

Personally, I love like the other movie filmed here, Calabuch (1956), directed by my favorite of Spanish directors, Berlanga. This movie has it all: endearing small-town, Franco-era Spain antics, Cold War politics turned into lighthearted pyrotechnic play, and even an American rocket scientist having fun with locals on a much needed seaside vacation from the worries of the world. (Even the name of the movie gets a chuckle, since it is a Castilian parody of a common Valencian surname, Calabuig... the "ig" at the end is pronounced like a "ch".) What is most jarring of all watching these movies is seeing how undiscovered Peñíscola was back when they were filmed. The castle stood alone. Now the town littered, plagued filled with seaside hotels and resorts with a thriving tourism trade.

Credits to this site for the image and detailed explanation of the movie.

Following my standard "pueblos con encanto" day-trip formula, we ended our tour with superb local food at an excellent, a little pricey well-reputed restaurant: Casa Jaime. Their specialties are, naturally, seafood and rice dishes, but they have a signature dish that we could not resist ordering – the "Arroz Calabuch" created in honor of Berlanga when he visited, and which includes a local type of sea anemone and sea cucumber. (On top of being totally original, it was delicious!)

I should add, the service was also excellent.
They take pride in their food.

Fallas, a photo teaser, part 2: ... And then they burn it all!

In part one of this teaser series of entries on Fallas I went on about the centerpiece of the festival: the hundreds of art works or "fallas" you will see all throughout the city. But it's not all about the fallas. Fallas is also about falleros and their families, who this weekend will be presenting the "fallera mayor" and "infantil" for each "casal" to the public, thus officially commencing the Fallas season here. 

So Fallas is also about them and their many parades, ceremonies, seasonal snacks, fireworks, and fire, fire, fire! So let me continue on from where I left off... This was a family of falleros that I stopped on the Pont de Fusta to take a photo... I post it for you so that you can see the kind of detail on their traditional fallero outfits.

It is especially fun seeing so many kids throughout the city dressed up in fallero attire! Note the spiral hair braid, which is the traditional Valencian hair arrangement (and which must have been the inspiration for Princess Leia's Star Wars do). They wear a crescent comb in the back of their heads, from which they drape the veils as you can see here.

Here is a group of falleros, i.e. one of the many casals (the neighborhood group which hosts each falla), parading to the Virgin with their ofrenda.

"La ofrenda" – The offering of flowers to the Virgin in the Plaza de la Virgen. It happens on the afternoons of March 17th and 18th. All the falleros throughout Valencia parade to the center of town, the falleras carrying flowers for the Virgin Mary.

Here you can see how they take the flowers and place them around the Virgin Mary wooden structure so as to form her dress.

And below here you can see a "before" shot of the Virgin's scaffolding. In all honesty, this religious ceremony is a fairly late addition to the Fallas festival, according to one source added during the Franco dictatorship in an effort to cover clean up the frequently caustic politic commentary traditions of the older festival. Maybe this is why the Ofrenda ceremony still seems largely out of sync with the non-religious activities that characterize the rest of the festivities.

Here is one example of the hundreds, if not thousands of "churrería" stands that have popped up all over central Valencia this week... all selling buñuelos and churros for the fallas spectators. [Guiri alert!: In 2010, when I had first gotten back to Valencia after having been away for 8 years, I was shocked during Fallas by the sudden appearance of mojito and caipirinha stands. These are _not_ traditional drinks, neither for Valencia nor for Spain. These have appeared in recent years to take advantage of accommodate all the drunk foreigners visiting from out of town. The falleros are surely getting plenty drunk, too, but probably not on these drinks.]

Here is a guy making "bunyols de carabassa" ("buñuelos de calabaza" in Spanish), a fried pumpkin dough dessert, which is a typical street vendor snack during Fallas. It's delicious! I highly recommend you try it, and make sure you get them fresh, just pulled from the fryer and not sitting cold.

Here I am trying the other typical staple during Fallas - "un bocata blanc i negre". It is a sandwich that all the fallero tents cook for their members, which has "morcilla" (black pudding, a.k.a. blood sausage), "longaniza" (a white sausage), and haba beans. (This blanc i negre was eaten at Baldo, an excellent sandwich restaurant located just off the Plaza de Ayuntamiento near all the action.) I'm also dressed up in typical Fallas attire with the blue and white "mocador" ("pañuelo" in Spanish, or scarf) and "blusó" ("blusón"), a traditional overshirt spectators would wear.

And of course what Valencian event can happen without people making paella valenciana? Here you can see the falleros preparing paella the classic way, over an open fire on the street, for their community dinner together next to the falla. I cannot overemphasize how much the falleros basically live, eat, and don't sleep together for the four main days of Fallas festivities.

The final major element of Fallas are the "Castillos", translated literally "castles," but which refer to the nightly fireworks contest. Every night, on March 15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, there is a show over the river… each show successively longer and more grandiose, culminating in the March 18th, "la nit del foc", "the night of fire." 

The best fireworks companies from around the world compete to put on the best show… and the result is a show which rivals (or maybe surpasses) the best 4th of July fireworks shows in the U.S. This was for a long time an irritating reality for me, being married to a Valencian when we lived in the States. Every time she and I went to a 4th of July Fireworks show, my wife would say afterwards, "That was alright, but it was really short. I though it would be more impressive." For our last 4th of July in the States, before moving back, I took her to the Washington, DC show, which that year was the third largest in the U.S. Finally, she said she thought it would live up to Valencia's standards. (Note, however, that she didn't say it was better.) The 2010 nit del foc fireworks show was put on by Caballer, who everyone says is one of the best in the world.

One of the things I've been struck by with all of the fireworks shows, both the city's large nightly ones, and the fallas' individual smaller displays, is how much lower to the ground they are. While parts of the shows involve the high in the sky fireworks more familiar to 4th of July shows, those are alternated with segments that are low to the ground... fireworks going off at what seems like only 100 feet above!

And then, on the last night, March 19th... they burn it all!

Yep, that's right. The last stage of the festivities is "la nit de la cremà", the night of the burning. This is when they burn all the fallas across the town, even the prize-winning, hundreds of thousands of euros fallas. (Pictured burning here is a ninot in the Ayuntamiento falla.)

There is a sequence to the burning tradition. At 10PM each falla burns its falla infantil, "early" so that the kids can watch. At 10:30PM the falla infantil which won this year is burned, and then at 11PM they burn the Ayuntamiento's falla infantil. And then they repeat that order later with the falla mayor: 12AM all the fallas burn except two, 12:30AM the winning falla mayor burns, and then 1AM the Ayuntamiento puts on a show and burns its falla. With each cremà, the falla first gives a brief fireworks show, and then lights a string of "traca" fireworks which explode in a series leading up to light the falla, starting the bonfire. Wild!

The most impressive part of la cremà is the extraordinary preparation and fire control that is exercised... here you can see firefighters ("bomberos") with their water hose keeping the burning fallas under control. With every falla burning there is a stationed firefighter squad. Which is why there are firefighters from all over the world invited to Valencia to help out... including from the United States! (This careful control of the falla bonfires is in stark contrast to the kids who have been throwing petardos, hand fireworks, all around the streets for several weeks, without cease. There is no place in Spain more (in)famous for its fireworks culture and insanity than Valencia.)

... But believe it or not this is all just a small sampling of the full fallas experience. I've only shown you a fraction of the fallas for that year. A smaller fraction of all the falleros and their outfits. And you can't experience a mascletà properly over the internet. Your bones have to shake and your ears rattle from the vibrations to know what one is really like. For that matter, I haven't even taken you into the next level of explanation, the minutia of detail in attire and its significance, the neuroses of obsession in ritual and superstition with which falleros manage to infuse the whole event.

¡Ay, caramba!: Last year there was a debate over whether falleras by tradition _had_
to wear the "banda" sash (shown on the right), or were _allowed_ to wear a newer fashion,
the so-called "caramba" (on the left). You can get a taste of this level of Fallas gossip
and intrigue at the Fallas Valencia page of Las Provincias.

Still hankering for more? Maay-be I'll post some videos I took of Fallas 2010 a little later down the road... so stay tuned! But what you really ought to do is come here and experience it yourself!

And we are already starting to get a sneak-peak at this year's 2012 Fallas at the
Exposición del Ninot, which you can see images of at this El País photo album.