It is enough to take a walk these days through some streets of Valencia to certify how every year the quality of some Fallas monuments worsens, which responds to a constant reduction in the budget allocated to this objective by quite a few Fallas commissions. It is an old problem, which began to develop when the party was prioritized more than art - you know, the festival, mobile disco, the availability of food and alcohol in large quantities - and which causes pity to see the size, content, reason, history and posters explaining some failures given their mediocrity. There are some, and I am not exaggerating, who literally place two boxes, a sign and a doll and thus believe that their duty has been fulfilled with what gives meaning to this festival: its monuments.
With the failures something intensive begins to happen: a great effort is made in many commissions to raise income that helps pay for "the party", renting the space, the street, that the City Council gives them to install churros and buñuelos stalls, food trucks and all kinds of craft shops. La falla, that papier-mâché composition (although expanded polystyrene is now used massively) devised by a fallero artist giving free rein to his creativity, composed of irreverent, and sometimes rebellious, "ninots", is no longer a priority for many commissions. Because the money required to present something worthy to the visitor, whether a tourist or the neighbor from the next neighborhood, is preferred to fill stomachs and generate the context to dance until late into the night, with all kinds of concoctions.
The visitor hardly notices it, since his priority is to visit the falls of the Special Section and others in the city center that belong to numerous commissions and that have financial resources to cover both needs, the festival and the monument. But in Valencia there are more than 300 large fallas and as many children's ones. You have to move away from the center to verify what I'm telling you, and how this lack of quality has its parallel response in the formidable movement that is mounted so that the days of failures resemble, in some streets, an outdoor urban version of Bakalao Route, even with music close to that which was demonized in the 80s and 90s. A member of the Junta Central Fallera, the body that manages the festival, told me that there are Fallas commissions that are, simply, "an association of friends to have a party", with little or no passion for planting a Fallas monument.
The direct effect of this reality is that every year more Fallas artists abandon the profession, as commissions are reduced. I have come to see neighborhood failures that have the same "ninots" but with different arguments to disguise them. In general, children's failures are saved, which, being smaller in budget, sustain dignity better than many large ones; but its realization is not enough to sustain a sector, that of Fallas art, in the midst of a crisis, no matter how much some people fill their mouths talking about "our artists." I have always wondered why Fallas that are just a street away do not join their efforts, personnel and resources to be just a commission, to prevent the Fallero "minifundio" from ending up being the worst threat to a party that without its monuments cannot It differs from any other where public assistance is massive.
It would be interesting for the JFC, the City Council and the commissions to open a reflection on this problem, and for measures to be adopted that require, as far as possible, to maintain a minimum of decency in the monuments that are planted in the streets. Otherwise, the day will come when the monuments will be just an insignificant appendix (in some it already is) of a festival in which its protagonists have forgotten what gives meaning to our festival, its flaws. They're already late.
