Traditional festivities, political domination and social reproduction: Case analysis of Valencia’s Fallas

ABSTRACT

The traditional festivities have been usually analysed in social sciences as a mode of generating sociability and social cohesion, not only in traditional societies but also in modern ones. However, from Randall Collins's perspective, the festive ritual is used by certain groups to define identity, strengthen stratification, and establish political domination by creating shared focus points and building up emotional energy. This perspective allows us to go beyond the notion that festive ritual as Fallas forges consensus or the simplistic interpretation of folk culture as a weapon in resisting the powers that be. Collins shows us that ritual is a social arena in which various status groups struggle for domination. Nonetheless, his perspective must be nuanced given that the organisers of traditional culture rituals do not themselves constitute a social/political elite or movement, but rather are middlemen operating as a dominant group in a relatively autonomous social sphere. This can be seen in the analysis of the Fallas of Valencia: the sociability fostered by the festive culture and the Interaction Ritual (IR) generation of emotional energy allow a socially mobilised minority to define the regional identity, to exclude those considered enemies or foreigners, and to reproduce social stratification.

KEYWORDS:

• Festive ritual
• tradition
• social reproduction
• conflict
• Fallas
• Valencia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 As Collins says, ‘more than anyone, he (Fustel de Coulanges) shows us that ritual solidarity is not incompatible and, furthermore, that it may be the basis of the class struggle’ (Collins, 1996, p. 218). From a very young age, Marx became aware of class conflicts thanks to his studies of classical antiquity, and the term ‘proletariat’ comes from the unprivileged class in Rome. Nonetheless, Fustel considered that politics was closely related to ritual. So, he opened a door to the development of an aspect of Durkheimian tradition that had not yet been considered: ‘a theory of ritual as the basis of conflict’ (Collins, 1996, p. 221).

2 This is the case of Spain’s ‘Moros y Cristianos’ festivities (‘Moors and Christians’). These festivities ritually celebrate the conquest and expulsion of the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula in The Middle Ages.

3 This is the case of the Fallas, a festivity related to the tree and fire rituals very common in all Mediterranean areas, which share the idea of performing festive rituals where a tree is planted, or a trunk or wooden structure is set up, and later burnt (Roviras & Castellet, 2017). These rituals also take place in the Catalonian Pyrenees and are called falles. They were acknowledged by UNESCO, although with opposition from certain Valencian sectors which wanted to ensure that the name Fallas was not associated with the festivities that take place in Catalonia (Bono, 2015).

4 The spatial representation of this event takes place on the balconies of buildings from which the governors officially open the festivities. The governors symbolically preside over the event: those giving the orders are located centrally above, those who receive them to the sides and below, with the ritual exception being the symbolic presidency of the ‘king and queen’ of the festivities (like the carnival king or the falleras mayores), who introduce the idea of the exceptional nature of the festive period but who have no real authority beyond their presence and their ritual speeches (Hernàndez i Martí, 2006).

5 During Franco's dictatorship, the Falla elites and the new Valencian local government defined ‘Valencianeity’ (sic) (valencianía, in Spanish), as opposed to Valencianism as a political ideology and movement. The new creed was presented as a legitimate way of being Valencian under the heel of the country’s ‘New Order’, and was characterised by a notion of regional identity that combined Spanish nationalism with an utter rejection of the regional autonomy sanctioned during the Republican period (1931–1939). The new concept took a traditionalist, folkloric reading of this identity that was compatible with the Franco regime and its ultra-conservative ideology (Flor, 2011; Hernàndez i Martí, 1996). This concept is reflected in various statements by the interviewed Falla members when defining the nature of collective identity through the ritual: ‘I think that in the end it is what makes us feel so Valencian. It is a very traditional, emotional festival. It draws upon deeply religious feelings. We worship The Virgin [Our Lady of The Forsaken] and it is a spiritual experience. It makes us feel part of a much greater family. That is why we need to keep it up, come what may’ (Interview 4).

6 Over the last few years of the mandate of the former Valencian Mayor, Rita Barberá (Partido Popular, an ultra-Conservative Party), a group that called itself Intifalla (a combination intifada and falla) protested against the Mayor. Some of the protestors included victims of Europe’s biggest underground railway accident in 2006 (43 deaths). The protestors made their voices heard in the acts chaired by the Mayor from the Town Hall balcony during the Fallas (Cuquerella, 2015). However, during these acts the Mayor publicly mocked the protesters accompanied by the Fallera Mayor and her Court of Honour, noting that she was on the balcony and they were not. Therefore, the festivities do offer limited scope for protest. However, at the same time, they also show the hierarchical effects of the IR dynamics with, as Collins (2005) points out, displays what one might call ‘the balcony effect’, in which the person presiding over the ritual from the official podiums physically demonstrates his/her higher social standing and power, accumulating emotional energy, while the proles below are passive bystanders or are excluded from the ritual (see the video Intifalla 2015 and Rita Barberá’s contempt for those at her feet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUJWumEW9DY).

7 Here one should note that the Falla canon was drawn up in the early years of the Franco dictatorship. It was during this period that Falla artists such as Regino Mas (Benifaió, 1899 - Valencia, 1968) defined a baroque, monumental style that was both spectacular and that fitted in well with Catholic iconography (Greeley, 2000). By contrast, innovative Fallas such as the one designed by Salvador Dalí in 1954, were spurned as incomprehensible and unworthy of what by then had become the civil religion of Valencian Regionalism (Ariño Villarroya, 1992a).

8 For example, the Convent de Jerusalem Falla—the association winning the second most prizes (20 per cent of all first prizes from 1945 to 2018)—is funded by the Roig business group (one of the largest supermarket chains in Spain, Mercadona, founded by one of Spain’s richest men). This string of prizes has never been criticised or questioned in the Fallas sector. Furthermore, Roig’s contribution is ostensibly rewarded: in exchange for contributions, the committee appointed the businessman’s daughter as Fallera Mayor in 1994 and his granddaughter in 2018, thus leading to social acknowledgment of the family in the Fallas world, and a legitimation of its social and economic domination.

9 It is estimated that eight per cent of the inhabitants leave Valencia during the Fallas by some form of public transport. However, there is no data on how many persons leave the city by other means or who otherwise refuse to take part in the event (García, 2019).

10 Similar instrumentalising may be seen in the co-option of the Cologne carnival by the Nazi regime, which simultaneously promoted the event at national level and imposed regulations on its organisation while driving its Nazification with the dissemination of party flags or fancy dress or references to the Jews. In the 1930s, other German carnivals joked about the extermination of the Jews and represented them hanging from a noose (Dietmar & Leifeld, 2010). In this case, we can also observe the importance that Nazi-Fascist regimes gave to controlling festive expressions of popular culture as a way to express a people’s nationalism based on the purity of identities and traditions (Wilson, 1997).