Valencian ovens and pastry shops are filled these days leading up to October 9 with marzipan in the form of fruit and vegetables from the Valencian garden, but also with firecrackers, a must-have for any self-respecting Valencian festival.
Xiulet and tronador accompany the fruits on the trays that lovers of the Valencian Community give each other by tradition and the reason lies, legend has it, in the abolition of the privileges that Philip V undertook in the Kingdom of Valencia after the War of Succession .
And until the entry of Jaume I and his troops, Valencia was Arab territory and there was a tradition of consuming sweets, more than in the rest of Europe and, as the journalist specialized in gastronomy Paco Alonso explains, during the festivals they were Gifts in the form of sweets made with almonds and sugar are common.
Its consumption ended up being linked to the annual celebration of October 9, the date of the conquest of Valencia by Jaume I a century before and whose commemoration was established by Pere el Cerimoniós a century later, in 1338.
Celebrated for centuries, with the War of Succession and the abolition of the Fueros, the celebrations of Valencian customs and traditions declined and the festival was lost. Legend has it that it was the bakers and pastry chefs who thought of producing the elements of Valencian pyrotechnics in marzipan. And so it comes to our days.
Precisely bakers and pastry chefs star in the poster of the Valencia City Council for this year's popular Sant Donís festival, also known as Valencian Valentine's Day. In the poster, signed by the artist Iván Tortajada, it is female hands that place xiulets and tronadors in a heart-shaped oven.
