What a noise!

I LOVE a good Mascleta.

Sound, not colour is the principal idea behind these daytime fireworks displays that pyrotechnicians lovingly create so that those in the know can detect cadences and rhythms in the noise.

Originally they were let off in front of Valencia’s city hall at the culmination of the Fallas fiestas in honour of San Jose on March 19, although these days there is a daily Mascleta from March 1 onwards.

And nor is it merely a theory that Covid-19 was spread through the city in 2020 by the thousands who crammed into the Plaza del Ayuntamiento each day until the Fallas were cancelled on March 10, four days before lockdown.

It’s now possible to see – and hear – Mascletaes much further afield than Valencia and they won’t be limited to Fallas. Furthermore, the kind of village, town or city that loves a good Mascleta will also subject you to a Desperta during their fiestas.

People who have caroused all night either wake up early or don’t go to bed at all and parade through the streets, accompanied by a brass band if their funding can run to it, throwing firecrackers on the assumption that if they’re awake, everybody else should be too.

A Desperta was actually my introduction to deafening, not pretty, fireworks in Benidorm on a package holiday more years ago than I can remember.

Arriving shortly before dawn after departing from Luton when it still resembled an RAF aerodrome, I was no sooner asleep than I was woken not only by whooshes, bangs, crackles and blasts but also the screams of woman in a neighbouring room which were as unnerving as the explosions.

She explained afterwards that she had lived through the war and while she slept the noise had taken her back to the East End and the Blitz.

All of which confirms that there’s many a good Mascleta but every Desperta will always be a bad one

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