Whoever approaches the Valencia City Hall square these days, surely packed with hundreds of people, will find at the top of the fence that surrounds the perimeter of the mascletà four high, raised ninots. It is a scene rescued from the meditator's failure, the one that the pandemic forced to plant in pieces in 2020 and that ended up burning secretly.
It was never planted properly and the authors considered that it has a great "symbolic load." They are migrants jumping the mascletá fence, but they are also those people who escape from another life, a duality with which the municipal proposal plays to honor peace in a falla, municipal sources explain, "full of hope."
The scene is only part of the tribute that the artists pay to peace, represented with two large doves that have presided over the main Valencian square for days and that are fighting over an olive branch. "War feeds on duality, peace feeds on duality," explain the pages of the municipal Llibret that the City Council has published and gives away for free at tourist information points.
The document shows how many other fallas throughout the history of Valencia have also addressed the theme of war and peace, as explained in an article by the journalist and member of the Associació d'Estudis Fallers, Joan Castelló.
Along with the plea for peace of the municipal falla, you can see already completely planted since yesterday the children's proposal signed by Ceballos and Sanabria and Marina Puche, designer of last year's municipal falla, which does pedagogy of sustainability and green spaces of the capital.
"Arrive in Green" is the motto of this proposal that is out of competition but will be one of the most visited. Its location attracts the attention of tourists and Valencians because it is located in the nerve center of the Town Hall Square. With a nod to the European Green Capital that Valencia holds this year, the falla recreates scenes in which, through imagination and reading, a greener and more sustainable city is discovered, with less air pollution and more spaces for citizens. .
There are other tributes to current issues in this year's Fallas, such as the one made by the Castellón-Segorbe fallera commission, dedicating its entire proposal to Paralympic sport. For this reason, tomorrow, Sunday, there will be a tribute to Valencian athletes with disabilities, such as David Casinos, Inma Palencia, Pilar Javaloyas, Eugenio Jiménez, Amparo Baixauli, Mónica Merenciano, Vicente Gil, Maurice Eckhard, Nagore Folgado and Sergio Martos, who will be given the commission insignia.
Likewise, the “Tens Temps” project of the Palleter-Erudit Orellana falla pays tribute this year to older people and raises funds for the Aging and Physical Exercise Research Group of the INCLIVA Health Research Institute, of the University Clinical Hospital of Valencia, coordinated by Dr. José Viña, who also directs the FRESHAGE group (Age and Exercise Research Group), of the Universitat de València, with the collaboration of the Universitat Politècnica de València and the European University of Valencia.
The Fallas monument makes visible the involvement of older people in new technologies. To do this, they have the Polytechnic University of Valencia, which, together with Metric Salad, has developed a mobile application whose objective is to raise awareness among the community of the importance of nutrition.
In the casal, these days the fallera commission has held a series of activities this week focused on older people such as frailty tests, cardiovascular health checks and stroke prevention, memory strengthening, active aging, yoga workshops, sports activities and eye exams.
