Luckily, there’s another free concert series put on by the University of Valencia’s music faculty, that includes some Sunday noon-hour concerts in an auditorium at the Botanical Gardens. All you have to do is show up and they let you in. As it happened, there was also one of those on today, a concert by a wind quintet called Quintet Cuesta. Some of the UV concerts are by very young musicians, some still completing their formal studies. But this was a group of seasoned professionals, players in local orchestras. They even have a few records out. It’s not my favourite combination of instruments - flute, oboe, French horn, bassoon, clarinet - but what the heck, it was free. So I grabbed a bike, rode over there - it’s only a few minutes away from MuVIM - and got a decent seat.
It was a good, if short, concert, with a wide variety of music, from classical (Mozart) to contemporary (a composer younger than me). The latter piece was…different: an interplay of weird squeaks and squawks from the various instruments, occasionally relieved by short passages of almost melodic music. It wasn’t as bad as I’m making it sound, kind of amusing in fact. I think it was probably challenging to play. The band seemed to relax a bit after that one. They looked a fairly dour bunch when they first came out.
Anyway, I forgot to relate this in the last post.
Monday, 19 February 2024: No pause in festival season here.
The police tape was still flapping in the breeze from Saturday’s Carnival parade when new temporary barriers went up on our street to accommodate the cherrypickers and workmen erecting light standards. The street will be festooned with festival lighting for Fallas, which is the next big item on the Valencian calendar. The poles to support the lights are secured by guy wires, some of which attach to apartment balconies. There are none attached to ours, but Karen came inside a couple of times because the workmen got uncomfortably close.
The lights are already up in some neighbourhoods. And last week, they erected floodlights down the block at the corner of Literato Azorin. That’s where one of the big fallases, the storeys-high wood and painted styrofoam sculptures, will appear. I thought we might see some work beginning on constructing them by now, but we’ve seen nothing so far. We will very soon if past year’s are anything to go by.
It was another lovely sunny day - not that warm, according to The Weather Channel, but we don’t trust its reported temperatures anymore. It said it was only 9C when I went out for my fast walk in the morning, but it felt a lot warmer. We were sitting outside on the balcony, baking in the sun in our shirtsleeves, before noon. No wind today. Other than a quick outing for grocery shopping, that was about all we did until late in the afternoon when I finally went out on my own for a wander. Karen was happy to stay home in the sun. At that point, some of the pixel boards were saying it was 24C. We don’t trust them either, though.
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| Look way up: gargoyle atop Silk Exchange |
I biked into the historic centre and wandered, taking pictures. I started off by noticing the gargoyles on the Silk Exchange, the 15th century building where the once thriving local silk industry transacted its business. I’ve photographed the gargoyles before, but they caught my attention again today because the late sun was shining on them. Then I dove into the narrow streets and tried, with only middling success, to get myself lost. I was struck again by how many more people there are on the streets than there have been in years past - even on a Monday - and how many are clearly visitors. Valencia has been discovered.
When I got home, I was surprised how late it was - after 6:30. It’s staying lighter longer.
Tuesday, 20 February 2024: The workmen were back early today, erecting more light standards for the festival lighting. We missed this last year because we’d gone back to England by this point. We sat outside a good part of the day, baking in the sun on our little balcony, reading, and watching the workmen in their cherrypickers stringing lights. Some were working less than 20 feet from where we were sitting. They worked fairly quickly and had most of the lights up, other than around the intersections by the end of the day.
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A little after five, when the sun had deserted our balcony, we went out for a walk around the neighbourhood to see if there was any sign of the beginning of construction on the fallases. There wasn’t, but we saw other lights going up on other streets, including on Cuba, one block over from us. We remember the lights on that street being fabulous when we were here one year - possibly the first year we stayed in Ruzafa, in 2011. They did a music and light show that was well attended each time it played. We heard another year we were here that they had discontinued that light show for some health and safety reason. We’ll continue to monitor the neighbourhood for approaching signs of Fallas.
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| A block and a half from our apartment |
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| Shop front pottery atelier |
We walked through the market area over to Regne de Valencia, then looped back to our apartment. I’d love to know the story behind this picture. Somebody had left two, not entirely unattractive oil paintings, unframed, each about 18 by 14 inches, propped in window frames at the back of the church by the market. They appeared to have been left for anyone to take. They weren’t fastened down. There were no signs explaining why they were there. Was it some kind of thought experiment - to see who, if anyone, would claim them? Or just somebody disposing of stuff they no longer wanted? Karen says some of her mixed media art groups are advocating this kind of unbidden donation of art pieces. Maybe it’s a new thing.
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