Just got back - refreshed (for a 5 day break) from a bizarre and loud Spanish fiesta called Las Fallas - “the fires”. From shady pagan origins the Valencians have reworked the celebration to include parades and flower offerings to a giant statue of the Virgin, and spend a week throwing firecrackers at each other, having fireworks twice daily and displaying giant paper mache statues of strange, satirical cartoony creations on each and every plaza in the old town. On the final night of the fiesta the statues are burned under the watchful(?) eye of some 400 firemen. Pictures are coming shortly… watch this space.
Oh, and opimistically I opened the video section of this site to try and shame myself into uploading some odds and sods.