Nightlife in las Fallas

Just as you have walked the entire city and you think this is it for a day…. Well, it’s only just beginning. This festival is all about party and the real party is, of course, at night. Mobile discos, garden concerts, special club nights, buses with dancers and huge crowds awake till dawn. For a large proportion of people, Las Fallas are all about the night.

Streets

Walking the streets at night a different thing alltogether, and for many this is what the Fallas are all about. Where else can you get a whole city as a nightlife venue...

The nights of the Fallas are totally insane. Armed to the teeth with all kinds of alcohol the crowds pack the streets to the limits. Imagine your biggest clubbing night and multiply it by a 1000 - this is Las Fallas. A couple of million people are partying together - this is absolute drunken mayhem.

The night is when the crasiest things happen and the most acquaintances are made. After battling you way though a sea of people, with a cloud of pure alcohol vapour over it, you finally fall into a less busy street with a stream of urine flowing through its center. A transvestite dressed as Fallera Mayor and with 1m high platofrms instead of boots flirts with blindly drunk passers-by. Suddenly bodies scatter in panic out of the arch on your right. In a second a loud explosion shakes the building and makes your ears ring. Suddenly you are in an ambush - explosions are all around, and the malicious borrachos (fireworks tubes which move around with powerful regular thrusts of spark inferno) send everyone running for cover. As you run for your life out of this kill zone, your path is cut off by a pasacalle of traditionally dressed falleros... still bopping along to the medieval flute and trumpets at 2am, like they haven't been doing it for the last 10 hours. Once they pass, you are back on the main street, where the sea of bodies came to a halt because a big bunch of people got out their bongos and made the crowd shake in jamming frenzy. Some lost soul is getting home in a van. There is no way. Stuck in the middle of the crowd, the van first gets a few slaps, then a few pushes, and finally nearly gets flipped by the mob. This all has happened in the last 5 minutes, and the nigth is still young...

Steeet Discos and Concerts

Las Fallas is when clubbing moves outdoors. At about midnight, and even before, the mobile discos in different spots of the city start entertaining the crowd.

They take different shapes. Usually it is a stage with a rock band or a house DJ on it. The drinks stalls are right there to keep you from drying up (naturally, at quite a price - buy a bottle before if you want to save money). In some streets you will see large white tents similar to casal fallero but this time you can enter for free and dance away. You will also see open double-decker buses hanging around the city with dancers on them.

The discos are throughout the city, normally on a square or a wider street. We can give you only a possible location, since they move a lot over the years. They tend to keep to the ambience of nightlife in the area. In Aragon, for example, you will find younger, student crowds. In Canovas you will be amongst the mainstream locals of all ages. Ruzafa keeps to its cosmopolitan, alternative vibe. Plaza Vicente Iborra will have a lot of LGB crowd, since in normal times it is the gay bar area. In the Centre, Plaza Patriarca is known to attract big mainstream crowds and in Carmen you are likely to find something in Plaza del Carmen, Plaza Doctor Collado and by Torres de Serranos.

These discos will wind down around 4 am.

Venues

All of the usual nightlife venues are, of course, making full use of the Fallas Festival. Many will throw special Fallas nights with extra quality. Most locals view the Fallas as simply a good excuse to party so many will go where they usually go on weekends, but extra late and extra heavy. So all the usual going out areas - Carmen, Canovas, Juan Llorens, Aragon (see Nightlife in Valencia) are far from abandoned for the sake of walking the streets. They are buzzing as normal, even busier and crazier than usual.

Naturally, you will want to make use of the street parties as that is where the “real” festival is. You can go to a bar at home, right? But if you are a real night person, it is worth making a note of a good place to go once the crowds start dispersing at 5am and you are screaming for more.

Big Concerts

There are also two locations for big day / early evening concerts throughout Las Fallas Festival - in river Turia and in Jardines de Real. Unfortunately, they will be out of bounds to you - although entry is free, places are limited and they go in a flash way before 15th March. The only way to get to those is if you have a friend in Valencia who can pick them up for you before your arrival.

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