That a comment on social networks becomes a throwing weapon is no longer news, but in Valencia everything that has to do with the Fallas often ends up being the headline. This has happened with the comment of the councilor of Más Madrid Rita Maestre, who yesterday criticized the mascletà that will be fired in Madrid after the agreement between its City Council and that of Valencia, stating that "Almeida calls it mascletà, but it is a mountain of firecrackers in a protected space. In his head it sounded spectacular.
In some sectors the comment has not gone down particularly well and the Valencia City Council has come out this Friday in defense of the shot, alluding not only to the local economic engine that is pyrotechnics, but also to its protection as Intangible Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO. . For the spokesperson for the Valencia City Council, Juan Carlos Caballero, these statements “represent ignorance of our festivities on the part of the Madrid councilor, but it is even sadder that councilors of the Valencia City Council enter the game to obtain political gain, since the mascletà in “Madrid is an act to promote Valencian pyrotechnics.”
This afternoon, at the end of the Government Meeting, Caballero stated that "we find it regrettable and it seems to us that it attacks the Fallas and, therefore, against our identity and our traditions because I believe that Más Madrid does not know that the Fallas are events declared intangible heritage of Humanity.”
According to the councilor spokesperson, “the gunpowder, the mascletà, the Fallas artists, the music bands, the pyrotechnics and everything that the festival represents is protected by UNESCO. "Pyrotechnics is a sector that affects 28 companies and has a turnover of 65 million euros and that generates direct and indirect jobs for nearly 1,000 people."
On social networks, the comments follow Maestre's comment, who shortly after corrected it in some way by writing another message making it clear that a mascletá is a "popular spectacle in traditional Valencian festivals such as Fallas" and "Almeida's occurrence is a shabby imitation and decontextualized with triple the amount of gunpowder in the surroundings of Madrid Río and Casa de Campo, a protected space.
Compromís, for its part, has assured that "as Valencians we are never going to accept as good expressions that are unfortunate to refer to a first-rate cultural phenomenon such as a mascletà for Valencians," added Pere Fuset, former councilor of Fiestas and former president of the Fallera Central Board, according to the EFE Agency. However, he has thrown a cap on Maestre by assuring that "we would never allow a mascletà to be shot in the middle of the Albufera and therefore, we can be sensitive about what a shot means in any natural environment."
Likewise, the PP has asked them to "focus on València" because "it seems that they are obsessed with bringing that mascletà to Madrid for three times as much gunpowder as is fired in València and, furthermore, doing it to celebrate Almeida's electoral victory and Català" while, "along the way, those mascletàs of the neighborhoods that reached these Fallas and that the PP has suppressed this year have been lost."
