The exaggerated cost of the municipal falla for Valencia's Fallas 2024

Falla Plaza Ayuntamiento Valencia 2024

It is the second most expensive monument in the whole city.

 

A few wooden columns and two doves joined by an olive branch. This is how simple and straightforward is the municipal falla that is being displayed in Valencia's Town Hall square for this festive season. Failures 2024. Gone are the years when the falla paid for by the Consistory was the emblem of the city and the pride of a festival which, although it may not seem so, is a World Heritage Site. Nowadays, projects such as those carried out by Manolo García with the peculiar technique of the vareta, reaching up to 40 metres in height, are longed for. The most expensive municipal falla is bound to disappoint if Valencians and visitors create expectations based on the budget. 

 

No one can doubt the work of Pere Baenas, a master fallero who has won several first prizes in the Especial category and who has shown that with creative freedom he is capable of creating iconic fallas. You only have to look at his work on El Pilar and Convento Jerusalén. The debacle of the municipal falla began several years ago. After the 2015 elections nothing has been the same in the Fallas.

 

Under the yoke of Compromís 

 

The Valencia City Council, led by Compromís, and with the complicit and interested attitude of the PSPV-PSOE, changed the format by which the municipal falla was chosen. The councillors would no longer choose between the projects presented. The usual absolute majorities of Rita Barberá's PP were staged in that the work voted for by the Popular Party was the one that was burnt in the square on the night of 19 March. 

 

The simple majority of Compromís in 2015 and the hypothetical possibility that PSPV and PP would coincide in deciding the municipal falla project led councillor Pere Fuset to invent a totally controlled election process. True, the decision ceased to belong to the politicians; from that moment on it was Fuset, and only Fuset, who would choose those who were to determine the municipal falla projects.

 

By 'chance', from that moment onwards, recognised Fallas artists began to present themselves in the hands of designers who were completely alien to the Valencian festival. The case of Okuda was the most famous. The pandemic left the 'La meditadora' falla designed by Escif unseen, so the debt is settled in a peculiar way in these Fallas 2024, although in the Town Hall the left is no longer in charge.

 

Poisoned gift

 

At the end of April, about a month before the municipal elections, the group of 'experts' decided by Pere Fuset made their decision on the candidatures presented for the municipal fallas. Of the 'losing' projects, no details are usually revealed, although it is known within the fallas world that some artists have recycled fallas that aspired to be municipal and have ended up in the streets of the city.

 

So the experts chosen by Fuset decided, with total freedom and without any kind of political interference, that the municipal falla for 2024 would be the work of the master Pere Baenas with the design of Escif. As Compromís lost the elections, a situation that was already intuited at the time of choosing the winning project, the poisoned gift was served and prepared with very good taste. It is also true that it must be taken into account that the 'traditional' deadlines were met, since if the new Consistory and its respective councillors had waited for the constitution of the new council, we would have reached September without a fallero artist, which would have been unfeasible for the contracting of a fallero monument.

 

Obviously it won a style of falla that can only happen with a Compromís councillor choosing the jury one by one. The excuse of the increase in the budget makes the expectations collapse even more if it is possible to see the work in the street. 

 

The most expensive and shortest fault

 

20 metres high, one of the lowest municipal fallas, and a municipal budget of up to 239,000 euros. If we look at the prices officially declared by each Fallas commission (another thing is what is actually paid to the artist), the municipal falla that Fuset 'gave' to the PP is the second most expensive falla of all those that are planted in Valencia on the night of the 15th to 16th March. It is only 6,000 euros away from the most 'top': the 245,000 euros of Convento Jerusalén, which paradoxically is made by the same artist, but with a design by the legendary Alejandro Santaeulalia. Fuset already warned in April: "It doesn't mean that the falla has to be bigger, but that we improve the retribution of the fallero artists".

 

The explanation that could be used to try to understand the excessive budget for the work that comes out of the workshop is that the proportion of money shared between the designer and the fallero artist is unknown. In all of Valencia fallera, it is the artisan who chooses the illustrator, either because he is part of his team or because of occasional collaborations. But in this case it is a joint proposal. In addition, according to the Valencia City Council, the winning proposal has been made with "100% sustainable and ecological" materials. 

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