Fallas week in Valencia: what to expect and when to book

Valencia gives one week of the year to fire, and it gives the same week every year. A group that lands on the wrong side of those dates walks through a different city and never knows what it missed.

The week is 15 to 19 March, and it does not move

Fallas starts on 1 March. The week that decides everything runs from 15 to 19 March, because the festival is fixed to 19 March, the feast of Saint Joseph. The monuments go up in the streets on the night of 15 March. They burn on the night of 19 March. UNESCO listed Fallas in 2016.

That is the whole planning problem in three sentences. From 1 to 19 March the mascletà fires at two in the afternoon every day, so a group arriving in early March still hears Valencia at full volume. It just walks past empty junctions, because nothing has been built in them yet.

What each part of the week looks like

The first half of March belongs to the noise. The mascletà is a daytime firework display built for the ears rather than the eyes, and the city fills for it at lunchtime and empties again afterwards.

The night of 15 March changes the city. The monuments arrive on trucks and stand up at street junctions across Valencia, some of them taller than the buildings behind them. From the morning of 16 March until the evening of the 19th the whole centre is an open air gallery that a group walks rather than queues for.

Then it burns. On the night of 19 March the monuments come down in order, and the crowd stands close enough to feel it. Nothing is kept. The city is swept and back at work within a day.

What this does to a group’s day

Three practical things change during that week.

The centre closes to traffic. We plan coach drops and pickups at the edge of the closed zone and walk the group in, which means the walking distance on a Fallas day is longer than on a normal Valencia day. Comfortable shoes matter more than they usually do.

Lunch moves. The mascletà is at two in the afternoon, so a group that wants to be there eats late, and we build the day around that rather than against it.

Nights are loud. Hotels inside the ring are the ones with the short walks and the short sleep. We say which is which when we quote, because a group of colleagues and a group of grandparents want opposite answers.

Book the rooms a year out

Valencia sells out for that week. We hold rooms from the previous spring, which is the only honest way to promise a group a bed in the centre. A group that asks in January for the March a few weeks away finds very little, and what is left is far out and expensive to reach. A group that asks in April for the following March chooses its hotel.

If your dates are not fixed yet, tell us the year. A held room can be released. A room that was never held cannot be found in February.

If March will not work

The Valencia region reads best from April to June and from September to October. Those months give walking weather without the heat of July and August, and the coastal hotels are not full.

Our seven day template out of Valencia covers 469 km by coach, which keeps most days short enough to walk. It crosses the Albufera rice fields to El Palmar for paella valenciana where the dish comes from, poles a boat along the underground river at the Coves de Sant Josep for 800 m and then walks 250 m of it, climbs to the thermal pools at Montanejos, and runs down the Costa Blanca through Dénia and Calpe to Alicante.

That trip is quieter than Fallas and easier to book. Many groups come for it first and come back in March once they have seen what the city is like the rest of the year.

What to send us

Send the dates, or the month and the number of nights. Tell us the guiding language, English, Lithuanian or Spanish, and whether the group wants the mascletà every day or once. We work from Valencia, we contract the hotels and the local guides ourselves, and we answer with one final figure rather than a list of options you have to price yourself.