Fallas

I found a 3rd case study. It's on Las Fallas in Valencia, Spain. It's a fire festival to St Joseph, the patron saint of carpentry. It culminate for one week in March of partying, fireworks and exhibition of Fallas (large, grotesque monuments), which at midnight of the last day of the festival are simultaneously set on fire in public squares all around the city. These Fallas are up to 30 meters in height! So you see it's no small flame. 

It's interesting to see the recurring themes in each festival. I am getting a clearer understanding of the Extraordinary city. I'm also gaining confidence that my claim of two simultaneous cities is not that strange. 

I'm particularly taken with Las Fallas at the moment. I really want to go there for it. It's such an offense to a Western perspective - burn the damned things down! There is also an intricate social infrastructure that surrounds the celebration. That's one of the recurrent themes in these case studies - this dense informal networks that organize the events. In all of the cases it is apparent that this system, though invisible for most of the year, is actually extremely active in the social structure of the city year round. 

Good things these case studies.