In Spellbound, directed by Aldred Hitchcock in 1945, featuring Ingrid Bergman and Gregory Peck, a female psychoanalyst protects the identity of an amnesia patient accused of murder while attempting to recover his memory. The set for the dream scene was designed by Salvador Dalí.

The mascletá as we know it today seems to have its origin in an act of movement: the mascletá correguda or ‘runned mascletá’. In the mascletá correguda, long strings with fireworks (the so-called traca) are disposed along the streets of a village or neighbourhood. The fireworks are lit at one extreme and explode all along the way, allowing people to run under the exploding fireworks or along with it, ‘accompanying the fire’.

As the route could be quite long, in order to avoid monotony in the explosions, pyrotechnicians invented a new concept: to create rythm within the explosions using respectively stronger or weaker fireworks at certains points. And so the search for aesthetic enjoyment within the explosions was born.

The beginning and/or the end of the mascletá usually took place at the church square of the village or neighbourhood. Because of the traditional urbanism of these villages, the mascletá was developed in this way: a narrow run through the streets and a final apotheosis at the squares, being those the only places which would allow an important amount of fireworks.

This tradition developed through the years and led to the modern mascletás we can enjoy today at Valencia’s city hall square. Nevertheless, some villages –as the municipality of Godella does every summer– still hold mascletás corregudas as they once were. This video courtesy of Freakpyromaniacs (8′51”) serves as an excellent example of this tradition: streets taken over by a cloud of smoke and rythmic explosions that culminate in a symphony of thunder.

The mascletá is a (mostly) daytime firework show consisting on rythmic sound explosions. It is based in the use of the so-called ‘masclet’ (a kind of powerful firecracker), whose explosion receives the name of ‘thunder’. The word’s etimology lies in the Valencian word for ‘male’. It is probably related to the loudness of the sound, what was considered masculine, and to the fact that these fireworks explosions were dedicated exclusively to holy men; whereas celebrations for holy women had a lighter, more feminine character. The origin of the mascletá lies probably in the purifying character of black powder, to scare evil spirits. Today, mascletás are common in weddings and other celebrations.

The mascletá is a very austere show, it has no colours or shapes to decorate, it is based on the beauty of the pure explosion. It normally lasts for 5 to 10 minutes and follows a strict order. In this sense, we can consider them authentic symphonies of noise.

Schedule of a mascletá, as proposed on the book 'Pirotecnia en Valencia' of Ferriols, Pagola and Solá

For the mascletá, the masclets are connected by a thread structure at about 2,5 meters height. The mascletá seeks rythm and growing intensity, combining ground and air explosions, and has its summit with a deafening ground explosion called ‘earthquake’ and an explosion in the air called ‘bombardment’. The mascletá ends with the ’signature’.

Mascletá at the city hall square of Valencia, March 13, 2009 (photo Laura d'Ors)

In March, during the Fallas celebrations of Valencia, the public can enjoy big mascletás in the city hall square. These overwhelming mascletás are held daily at 14.00h by a different pyrotechnic and increase their intensity as days pass by. This video courtesy of Freakpyromaniacs (7′31”) shows the mascletá by well-known pyrotechnist Ricardo Caballer that took place on March 19, St Joseph’s Day, last day of the Fallas 2009. Because of its filming angle, it allows to see very well all phases of the mascletá. Definitely worth watching till the end, to understand the magnitude of this traditional celebration and share the mascletá’s intense emotion that lets visitors speechless, and often highly addicted.