Today at 2pm, pyrotechnic company Vicente Caballer staged a special mascletà in the Plaza de Ayuntamiento, in honor of the day of Our Lady of the Forsaken. That old gal, she sure do love some firecracker!
The huge metal cage which normally encloses mascletàs (and protects the public) was not there today. And the crowd was relatively small. So, we were able to get very close and had an unobstructed view of the exploding noisemakers.
As the terrified group of shivering Dutch girls in front of us would surely attest to, this mascletà was insanely loud. Juergen and I were just starting to go through withdrawal symptoms after our daily dose of deafening noise during Fallas, so this was nice.
After the show, as the enthusiastic crowd applauded the pyrotechnicians for their excellent work in abusing our ear drums, I thought to myself, “Valencians are weird”.