An earthquake-proof square
The cathedral of gunpowder will undergo a comprehensive renovation after having endured impassively, for several decades, 'mascletaes' of up to 270 kilos. The miracle has been worked on a pavement composed of 18-centimetre-thick granite stones
The municipal government of Valencia is preparing a comprehensive reform of the Town Hall square led by the architect Miguel del Rey, who with his Re-natura project will introduce numerous modifications in the most emblematic space of the Cap i Casal. Some remarkable news are related to the "gunpowder cathedral", as the perimeter is popularly known that for 19 days hosts the mascletaes of Fallas.
Specifically, the comprehensive reform project budgeted at 11.4 million euros will replace the polygonal space inherited from the old parking lot with an ellipse, recalling the form used by Goerlich in the flower market. The design has taken into consideration the 2,209 m2 of the current surface of the fire area and will maintain a similar size in the ellipse. In addition, the granite finish in this area will include volatile shapes - an evocation of the 'volaorets' firecrackers - that will avoid uniform planes on a soil very marked by the footprints of fire.
When this happens and the current granite pavement gives way to the new pieces, it would not hurt to pay intimate tribute to a floor that has been enduring for more than 20 years the rigour of gunpowder without the slightest hint of collapse, beyond the logical blackened in some cobblestones of the central space of the Town Hall Square.
The last reform of this space was undertaken in the summer of 2003. The chronicles of the time told that the machines work piecemeal inside the pedestrian area to renew a pavement seriously deteriorated by the fallaros shots. Meanwhile, the workers of the Parks and Gardens delegation slantled the bananas that lined the square in mid-August to replace them with the so-called "trees of love." The action was commissioned to the municipal maintenance contracts for about two million euros and then - as it usually happens now - was criticised by the socialist opposition considering that the square deserved a total pedestrianisation with the construction of a cultural centre in the centre.
Be that as it may, that renovation served to consolidate a pedestrian mascletódromo - for many years it was a parking lot for the whole city and later only for accredited vehicles - and renew, incidentally, a floor from which no pebbles jumped, but it was more irregular than the one implemented in 2003. The keys to the current pavement were provided some time later in the contest of ideas for the integral reform of the square, the contest that Miguel del Rey won.
Within the framework of this tender, a bidding company asked about the technical characteristics of the paving planned for the Fallas and mascletà areas, and the city council responded with some recommendations included in a report of the Municipal Service of Coordination of Works on public roads and Infrastructure Maintenance: "For the determination of the sections of firms, the Catalogue of firms and Pavements of the City of Valencia will be used. It is reported that when in 2002 the square was repaved, for the choice of the type of pavement of the area where the mascletà is shot, a test was carried out with printed concrete in order to know its behaviour during a mascletà and it was observed that it cracked. Therefore, we opted for the solution that currently exists, granite stones 18 centimetres thick, which so far have given good results," said the document dated May 2018.
Air fire
In reality, an important part of the mascletà does not detonate on the ground. The pyrotechnicians hang the thunder at different heights anchored in the cage and it is common for the terrestrial phase to concentrate on the final earthquake, for which the hardness of the solid granite is trusted, since the explosion hits directly on the stone leaving the aforementioned marks, but without the ground cracking with the shock wave. After each shot, the cleaning services apply pressurised water and leave the pavement ready for the next day.
The good results of this pavement laid in 2003 have been extended until today and the zero kilometre of Valencia remains bombproof. According to the city council at the beginning of the cycle, Valencia will shoot more than 7 tons of gunpowder these Fallas, half in the mascletaes of the Town Hall Square. On Saturday, March 14, Pirotecnia Aitana will launch the most explosive mascletà of 2026 with 274 kilos distributed in 360 seconds. The show will be called "The Beauty of Sound" and will have three airborne ensembles, two earthquakes and one certainty: the granite of the square will not break.
La catedral de la pólvora se someterá a una renovación integral tras haber soportado impasible, durante varias décadas, 'mascletaes' de hasta 270 kilos. El milagro lo ha obrado un pavimento compuesto por piedras de granito de 18 centímetros de espesor
www.levante-emv.com
