The April Fair is one of the most international and popular of Seville’s fiestas. It was created in 1847 as a cattle fair, and over time the festive atmosphere that had grown up around the occasion took over the business aspect, and it became a permanent fixture in Seville’s social calendar. For a week more than a thousand “casetas” or tents installed in the fairground area become the second home of the city’s inhabitants, a place where people come together to have fun and share experiences until the early hours of the morning.The fair generally begins two weeks after the Semana Santa, or Easter Holy Week. This year it happens to be from May 6, 2014 to May 11, 2014. The fiesta officially begins at midnight on Monday with the “lighting test”, the illumination of the thousands of mult
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Indians mostly welcome and celebrate spring with a festival of colors (Holi), which incidentally a night before also has an occasion to light a fire to burn the evil spirits. Similarly, Valencia welcomes the spring with its Fallas festival. Monumental, yet transitory cardboard statues are carefully built over the course of months, to then be devoured by fire in a unique spectacle. In nature it resembles more like Dussehra celebrated in India just before winters. Las Fallas is Valencia's most international festival. In the week of 19 March, the city fills with gigantic cardboard monuments, called ninots, for a competition that is marked by art, ingenuity and good taste. The origin of the celebration goes back to the carpenter's parot: these were wooden lamps used to light their w...
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