The Fallas of 2023 already have an official festivities calendar. Approved yesterday by the plenary session of the Junta Central Fallera, the agreement of the Assembly of presidents of Fallera is missing, but no major changes are expected in it. With no surprises compared to other years, the official program of events officially begins next Friday, January 27, with the Exaltation of the Fallera Mayor of Valencia, Laura Mengó, which will be again at the Valencia Conference Center.
The return to the emblematic Palau de la Música will have to wait for at least one more year, since the building has been under construction since the summer and it is expected that it will reopen in July 2023. At this year's event, yes, masks will no longer be needed, since in the exaltations of 2022 they were still used, despite the fact that whoever was parading was not wearing it. The Exaltation of the Fallera Mayor Infantil, Paula Nieto, will be on Saturday, January 28.
The first Fallas pieces will begin to be seen just two days later, on Monday the 30th, when the reception of the ninots for the Ninot Exhibition begins, again given its great success, at the Príncipe Felipe Science Museum.
The inauguration of the exhibition will be on Friday, February 3 and with it, the flame of the Fallas will ignite without rest because the official acts will take place non-stop, as will the dozens of activities that the Fallas commissions will carry out in each neighborhood of the city. The first mascletà will go off on Sunday, February 26, the day of the Crida, official welcome to the party.
Regarding the different galas that the Fallas festival celebrates to deliver its awards, on the 13th and 14th they will be those of Culture, which return to the Principal Theater of Valencia to present the winners in the Fallas theater, as announced yesterday by the Councilor for Festival Culture, Carlos Galiana.
Already in the big week of the Fallas, as always, every day there will be a mascletà, whose firing schedule will not be known until next February 2, at the XVII Fireworks Gala to be held at the Palacio de la Exposición.
Among the important novelties of this year is that the Offering to the Virgen de los Desamparos recovers its original layout, with entrances from Calle de la Paz and San Vicente, to come together again in a renovated Plaza de la Reina that after its pedestrianization will look renewed before the parade of falleros and falleras, the most massive act of the Fallas and which in 2022 was especially tarnished by the incessant rain of those days.
The big days of the festival, from March 16 to 19, are celebrated this year from Thursday to Sunday, so it will be a weekend of enormous tourist influx, a fact to take into account for the economic impact study that the MESVAL Chair will prepare those days and whose data will be known at the end of 2023.
