Each neighbourhood of the city has an organised group of people, the Commission, that meets at the Casal faller, and works all year long holding fundraising parties and dinners, usually featuring the noted dish paella,[6] a specialty of the region.

[9] During the four days leading up to 19 March, each group takes its ninot out for a grand parade, and then mounts it, each on its own elaborate firecracker-filled cardboard and paper-mâché artistic monument, in a street of the given neighbourhood.

The ninots and their falles are constructed according to an agreed-upon theme that has traditionally been a satirical jab at whatever draws the attention of the fallers (the registered participants of the casals).

[9] In modern times, the two-week-long festival has spawned a substantial local industry, to the point that an entire suburban area has been designated the Ciutat fallera (Falles City).

Here, crews of artists and artisans, sculptors, painters, and other craftsmen, all spend months producing elaborate constructions of paper and wax, wood and polystyrene foam tableaux towering up to five stories, composed of fanciful figures, often caricatures, in provocative poses arranged in a gravity-defying manner.

[10] Each of them is produced under the direction of one of the many individual neighbourhood casals fallers who vie with each other to attract the best artists, and then to create the most outrageous allegorical monument to their target.

The dolçaina (an oboe-like reed instrument) and tabalet (a kind of Valencian drum) are frequently heard,[12] as most of the different casals fallers have their own traditional bands.

A literary contest organised annually since 1903 by the Lo Rat Penat cultural association recognises the work of local poets who write satirical verses in Valencian that explain these characters.

Preceded by a fireworks display and a son et lumierie show, the city's mayor presents the keys to the Fallera Major and her princess, and after their addresses formally declaring the commencement of the festivities, the Himne de l'Exposició and Marcha Real are played by the city band to mark the formal start of the festivity season.

For example, in 2005, the fire brigade delayed the burning of the Egyptian funeral falla in Carrer del Convent de Jerusalem until 1:30 am, when they were sure all safety concerns were addressed.

The heat from the larger ones often drives the crowd back a couple of metres, even though they are already behind barriers that the fire brigade has set several meters from the construction.

One suggests that the Fallas started in the Middle Ages, when artisans disposed of the broken artefacts and pieces of wood they saved during the winter by burning them to celebrate the spring equinox.

Valencian carpenters used planks of wood called parots to hang their candles on during the winter, as these were needed to provide light to work by.

Over the years, people of the neighbourhoods began to organise the building of the falles, and thus the typically intricate constructions, including their various figures, were born.

The fabrication of the falles continues to evolve in modern times, when the largest displays are made of polystyrene and soft cork easily molded with hot saws.

The origin of the pagan festival is similar to that of the Bonfires of Saint John celebrated in the Alicante region, in the sense that both came from the Latin custom of lighting fires to welcome spring.

In València, this ancient tradition led to the burning of accumulated waste, particularly wood, at the end of winter on the feast day of Saint Joseph.

Given the reputed humorous character of Valencians, it was natural that the people began to burn figurines depicting persons and events of the past year.

The festival thus evolved a more satirical and ironic character, and the wooden castoffs gradually came to be assembled into progressively more elaborate 'monuments' that were designed and painted in advance.

In the early 20th century, and especially during the Spanish Civil War, the monuments became more anti-clerical in nature and were often highly critical of the local or national governments,[21] which tried to ban the Falles many times, without success.

Under the dictatorship of Francisco Franco the celebration lost much of its satirical nature because of government censorship, but the monuments were among the few fervent public expressions allowed then, and they could be made freely in València.

During this period, many religious customs such as the offering of flowers to Mare de Déu dels Desamparats (Our Lady of the Forsaken) were taken up, which today are essential parts of the festival, even though they were unrelated to the original purpose of the celebration.

Despite thirty years of freedom of expression, the world view of the faller can still be socially conservative, is often sexist and may involve some of the amoralism of Valencian politics.

On 10 March 2020, the Valencian Generalitat, after a Ministry of Health report, decided to suspend and postpone the parties of Fallas and all the acts that comprise it as a result of the coronavirus epidemic as a preventive measure to stop the spread of the virus.