Why Valencia’s Las Fallas Festival Is Literally Lit

Stokepedia

A statement from Stoke Travel regarding usage of the term “lit” and its applicability to the Las Fallas festival.

Following recent reports of one of our 40-year-old marketing executives embarrassingly describing 2018 as being “lit as fucccck”, we’d like to make some things clear.

Firstly, we’d like to distance ourselves from Barry’s remarks, and reiterate that while 2018 will indeed be the best year in living memory, both across Stoke Travel’s trips and in general, we don’t want to describe an entire year as being “lit”, or any derivatives of that term, including “lit af”, “lowkey lit fam”, etc.

Stoke Travel is very happy for our staff and guests to use these terms when applicable, so long as they’re not massive middle aged dorks like Mr Cassidy (who has been reprimanded and is only allowed to wear Hawaiian shirts to the office one Friday a month).

There is, however, one exception, and that is Las Fallas, the annual festival of fire that will take place in Spain’s Valencia from the 15th to the 20th of March. The use of the term lit and all of its derivatives, some we haven’t even heard of yet, will be acceptable when used describing this festival, because not only is it massively lit in a figurative sense, people will also literally be lighting things on fire.

The festival marks the end of winter and the coming of the warmer months, and to celebrate communities across greater Valencia build giant, beautiful statues and then proceed to burn them down, one by one, on the last night of the event. This is called La Crema and it is awesome.

Upon witnessing this sight, spectators have been known to utter all kinds of ridiculous shit, of which that’s lit is by no means the worst. In fact, using lit in this context might be the only time ever that it’s justified, unless, of course, your favourite disk jockey drops a particularly fire set.

In addition to La Crema, Las Fallas sees the whole city of Valencia take to the streets for parades, day drinking, and all night partying, making it one of the most popular festivals in all of Spain, and one of the craziest in Europe. Given the nature of the fiesta, and the bonfires that make up the main event, Stoke Travel has sanctioned the use of the word lit by everybody across every aspect of the celebration, including, “this paella is lit”, when describing Valencia’s most famous dish, and “this club is lit up”, and “I’m lit as fuck right now, some motherfucker please* pass me more sangria”.

Alternatively, Stoke Travel will also accept the term “popping” when describing the fireworks that are incessantly set off, both day and night, as well as the party in general. We encourage travellers to be playful with their terminology and consider alternating between terms, like, “the fireworks were lit, sure, but the afterparty was popping until the sun came up!”.

For those of you attending Las Fallas for the first time and dubious about whether you’ll be using such heinous terms or not, just you wait. There’s a certain infectious atmosphere that surrounds this festival and that you will find impossible to escape. After just an hour or so in Las Fallas you’ll likely turn into a lit-saying maniac after seeing the way the Valencianos, as well as visitors from around Spain and the world, take to this truly unique, very exciting festival.

It’s true, fam, Stoke Travel will be popping off in Valencia for winter’s most lit-af-are-you-kidding festival. You can meet us there, or ride with us from Barcelona. Get your crew together and let’s fucking do this!

* Manners are important, especially when requesting dank bevvies from your friends