Fun facts about the Comunidad Valenciana to celebrate its 'regional day'

EACH region in Spain has its own day of the year where it celebrates itself, rather like a birthday but without the age increase involved. Sometimes, a 'regional day' just involves a public holiday, a day off work where everything is shut, although others might feature parades and parties.

The 'celebration of oneself' that typically makes the headlines in recent years is Catalunya, on September 11, in light of the massive flags carried by massive crowds and massive letters reading 'Independence', but not all 'regional days' are used as a political platform – at least, not nowadays.

For the Comunidad Valenciana, 'regional day' started off as political: One October 9, when King Jaime I, or King Jaume I as he is known in these three Mediterranean provinces, entered Valencia city and freed it from Muslim rule.

Back in 1238, Spain was divided into two Kingdoms – Aragón in the east and Castilla in the west – and the peaceful reign of the Moorish leaders had become more turbulent after the first 500 years, with tugs of war happening across the country.

It would take until 1305, though, before the Kingdom of Valencia was established.

It was first celebrated on the 100th anniversary, and became an annual party with fireworks thereafter, with plenty of sweet treats: Silk handkerchiefs, knotted and filled with locally-made marzipan in the shape of fruits and other food items, and chunks of turrón, would be given by admirers to their sweethearts.

This is because the date is also the Saint's day for Sant Donís, or San Dionisio, said to be the patron of lovers and who, according to legend, walked six kilometres holding his own detached head in one hand.

On the 500th year anniversary of that historic October 9, though, the Monarchy banned the usual fireworks – but, determined not to be without them altogether, the silk handkerchiefs were filled with firework-shaped marzipan pieces, a tradition which has carried on for nearly 300 years, even after real ones started exploding in the street again.

Many municipalities in the Comunidad Valenciana do not organise any kind of celebration for October 9, other than perhaps a token regional flag hanging from the town hall balcony, and where these do take place, they are fairly low-key, perhaps just with a short recital by the local marching band of a Te Deum; otherwise, the date mainly just stands out for residents because it gets them a day's rest from work – except, like 2021 and 2022, where it falls on a weekend – and because they have to remember to stock up at the supermarket on October 8 before the entire high street shuts for 24 hours.

Perhaps, though, with the Covid pandemic's having curtailed practically every type of fiesta and street party since the beginning of 2020, next year's October 9 might go completely the opposite way and be the biggest and noisiest festival in the region in centuries, just because they can.

Until then, though, here are some fun facts about the area the size of Wales made up of, from north to south, the provinces of Castellón, Valencia and Alicante, with Spain's third-largest city almost slap-bang in the middle (Valencia, home to around 775,000 people), just to give it a bit of extra visibility on its 'day'.

The region's biggest festival, the Fallas, is really just a public waste-disposal exercise

March 19 is Father's Day in Spain, because it is Saint Joseph's Day on the Catholic calendar – San José or, in the Valencian language, Sant Josep – and, as the original Joseph, Jesus' 'terrestrial' father, was a carpenter, local craftsmen clearing out their workshops would pile up their surplus wood off-cuts outside and make them into bonfires.

Partly a tribute to Joseph the Carpenter, and partly a spring clean – given that the spring equinox is on March 21 – the fire-lighting became a ritual over the centuries, but did not morph into the gigantic week-long festival we know today until relatively recently.

Wood still comes into it, acting as the frames for huge papier mâché statues, the height of a block of flats, pastel-coloured, in cartoon caricature design; each neighbourhood in towns that celebrate the Fallas (most of those in the province of Valencia, Dénia and Pego in that of Alicante, and a handful in southern Castellón) has its own full-sized statue and a much smaller, children's one.

The big ones satirise current affairs, politicians and famous people – any Royal, minister, mayor or MP who has not seen a rubbery spoof-up of themselves on a falla, as the monuments are known, tends to feel offended at being left out, not the other way around – and the small ones are cute, pretty and mirror fairytales or kiddies' story characters.

On the night of March 19, they are burnt down in succession after the Fallera Mayor, or falla queen for her local monument, 'rescues' a figurine or ninot for the town's permanent exhibition.

For first-timers at the Fallas, this final act of destruction feels like a travesty and a tragedy – but given how falla artists make a full-time living for 10 months of the year building the monuments, and storage is impractical due to their size, it ensures the continuity of creators' jobs and of the festival itself.

Valencia is the European city with the most traffic lights per inhabitant

Crossing a road in this huge metropolitan area should be easy and safe; in practice, it only became so a few years back when the city council imposed a 30-kilometre-per-hour limit, meaning if you caught the pedestrian crossing in the last few seconds before the 'red man' replaced the 'green man', you no longer had to make a run for it.

But it's still a lot easier to get across a busy urban-centre highway than in any other European city – and perhaps one of the most frustrating for motorists in a hurry to drive through – given that Valencia has a whole 1,100 sets of traffic lights at pedestrian crossings and junctions.

That's approximately one traffic light per 705 residents, the second-highest in density of these on earth, after New York.

The population of sea creatures at the Oceanogràfic exceeds that of people in most coastal towns

When the Covid pandemic forced authorities to shut the borders of towns of 50,000 inhabitants or more at the beginning of 2021 at weekends, the sharks, turtles, fish and similar at the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia only narrowly escaped being 'confined'. Compared with, say, Jávea, on the Alicante-province coast, which has around 30,000 residents, and its near neighbour, Dénia, with about 44,000 – both of which are major international holiday hotspots – everyone living in the latter could own one creature at the Oceanogràfic and still have enough left to share with a neighbouring village, whilst every two people in the former could adopt three between them.

Europe's largest aquarium and leading sea-fauna veterinary centre, spanning over 100,000 square metres – about 25 acres – the Oceanogràfic houses more than 45,000 living marine animals, all kept in conditions that mirror their natural habitats as closely as possible so they do not suffer the stress of knowing they are in captivity.

Over 500 different species call the Oceanogràfic home, as does the only complete family of Beluga whales on the continent of Europe.

It's home to Europe's biggest palm-tree forest

Among the wealth of changes the Moors left behind – ranging from medical science and irrigation through to farm crops, architecture and recipes – was a whopping woodland in the heart of a city.

Elche, just south of Alicante airport – famous for being one of the mainland's key shoe-industry hubs and for its prehistoric Iberian bust, known as the Dama de Elche ('Lady of') – is home to an urban forest of an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 palm trees.

Totalling around 1,236 acres, the majority of which are date palms, only a handful of palm forests on the Arabian peninsula beat it in size in global terms, and no other in Europe, Africa, Australia or the Americas comes anywhere close.

Unsurprisingly, it's a UNESCO heritage site, having been awarded this status on November 30, 2000.

The only town that's the title of two different TV series in two different countries

If you're from the UK, you've probably stumbled across the comedy television series Benidorm, and if you're in Spain, ditto – but a different one.

The British sitcom, on ITV, ran for 11 years from its début in 2007 and was shot entirely on location, meaning Brits living in the Alicante province area who were able to view it tended to enjoy it even more than their counterparts in their home country, since they recognised the real-life places shown. Benidorm Palace, the nationally-famous, massive cabaret club, Levante and Poniente beaches, and even the centre of the attractive, quaint, neighbouring town Altea in the case of a middle-class couple whose accommodation mix-up meant they ended up, reluctantly, transferred to the fictitious Benidorm-based Hotel Solana.

Created by Derren Litten and winning numerous UK National Television Awards (NTAs), two TV Choice Awards and a BAFTA, this love-it-or-hate it serial played up to every available stereotype: Jake Canuso plays hunky, muscular and womanising bartender Mateo Castellanos, who fights off unwanted attention from middle-aged ladies, whilst Tim Healy plays transvestite Lesley, an obligatory pair of swingers lodge there year-round (Kenny Ireland as Donald and Janine Duvitski as his wife Jacqueline), whilst most of the action centres on the working-class Garvey family who are at the Hotel Solana on a budget break.

Dad Mick (Steve Pemberton) is claiming sick benefits from the UK government, which funds the trip, whilst harassed mum Janice (Siobhan Finneran) runs around after her lazy husband and hyperactive kids; mother-in-law Madge (Sheila Reid), a chain-smoking good-time girl, hires disability scooters to get around the resort and streets, even though she is completely able-bodied; she just cannot be bothered to walk anywhere.

Unfortunately, Madge's character forced the real-life Benidorm town council to order a ban on disability scooters to anyone other than either the elderly or those who were able to show proof they were actually disabled, since the TV show inspired young British visitors to go tearing around the pavements on them after a drink.

But it certainly raised Benidorm's profile, and provided some income for locals of all nationalities who were chosen as extras.

The 'other' Benidorm launched last year in June, again filmed on location via Spain's 'channel three', Antena 3 (owned by Atresmedia Televisión), as well as in the neighbouring town of Villajoyosa and in the Basque town of Durango, near Bilbao.

A 'personal discovery' drama rather than, as the ITV show was, a slapstick situation comedy, Atresmedia's Benidorm stars Basque notary Xabier Zurita (played by Antonio Pagudo) as a professional with a comfortable, suburban routine who discovers he has an inoperable brain tumour and only three months left to live.

Deciding to spend these three months enjoying himself, Xabier moves to Benidorm, where he had enjoyed happy summers in his childhood and youth, and to seek out his old flame, María Miranda.

Once there, he gets to know Tony (played by Pablo Derqui) when they meet in a bar, and unwittingly lets slip to him that he has €3 million in savings.

Tony tells his girlfriend Candy (played by María Almudéver), and they concoct a plan for her to pose as María Miranda to get her hands on the cash.

The script was designed to allow for a second season if the first eight episodes were successful, but audience ratings proved low towards the end – just 675,000 viewers throughout – so it probably will not continue.

That said, as Benidorm ran for the three weeks between August 5 and 26, 2021, it is likely the poor viewing figures were due to its being high summer, when TV does not figure greatly among most people's daily activities; a winter launch may have been more advisable, especially as the series features sunny beach scenes which are a tonic to watch when it's cold and raining outside.

Oranges and paella...

Yes, we know these are huge clichés about Spain. But just as a reminder, paella was invented in the Comunidad Valenciana, and is only, in fact, a handful of recipes out of hundreds of varieties of what the region calls 'rice dishes', or arroces. To the untrained eye, a lot of concoctions described on a menu as arroz con ('rice with') are, more or less, a version of paella – just so you know, because otherwise you might skip something delicious by assuming it's just plain white boiled rice with a few vegetables mixed in.

Fideuà, originally from the southern Valencia-province coastal town of Gandia, is like seafood paella but made with macaroni or with bits of spaghetti chopped into inch-long (about 2.5-centimetre-long) pieces known as fideos. Confusingly, fideos can also mean noodles – the very fine variety, rather than tallarines, which are closer to what you get in a pot noodle pot.

If you see 'Spanish oranges' on sale in your local supermarket elsewhere in the world, they're almost certainly from the Comunidad Valenciana (other than those from Sevilla, known internationally as 'Seville oranges', and exclusively used for marmalade), and if anywhere advertises them as 'Valencia oranges', it does not mean they come from Valencia city or even the province of Valencia, but from the region – they could just as easily be from the provinces of Alicante or Castellón.

Oranges grow at sea-level, so you won't normally find them up in the mountains (peaches, olives, cherries and almonds tend to grow at altitudes in the Comunidad Valenciana), and although little is more refreshing on a hot summer's day than a long glass of freshly-squeezed, you probably won't get one: Oranges are harvested from around October through to June, typically at their best from November to March, when they are at the optimum balance of tart and sweet, more fruit and less peel, large and plump.

The so-called Valencia Late variety is harvested in May or June, and is still tasty but much less full-flavoured than the late autumn, winter and early spring ones, when they are also much cheaper; end-of-season fruit and vegetables tend to be more expensive, more scarce and of lesser quality.

Although oranges are associated with hot countries, it's the high concentration of Mediterranean winter rainfall – rare, but torrential when it comes – that they need, along with the very intense late-summer and September sun to give them that golden glow.

The man who invented the radio was from the Comunidad Valenciana

The wireless radio-telephone transmitter, still referred to by the wartime generation today as 'the wireless', is normally credited to Marconi, but Julio Cervera actually invented it 11 years earlier.

A military engineer from the southern Castellón-province town of Segorbe, what Cervera developed was different from Marconi's creation and the precursor of the music and chat-show stations we listen to today.

What Marconi discovered was a wireless telegraph system, for messages, but it was designed to transmit signals, not sounds; the 'sound' version of the radio was the brainchild of Cervera.

Nowadays, radio stations in Spain are out there for every taste. Europa FM for modern music, Kiss FM for pop, Cadena Dial for Spanish and international chart music from the last 30-40 years up to the present, Los 40 Principales – the top-40 music-chart show and the national equivalent of Britain's BBC Radio 1 – and, in the Comunidad Valenciana, depending upon where you are, you can find numerous local stations with news, humour and modern music, such as Activa FM or, in the English language, Coast FM, Bay Radio, Talk Radio, and plenty of others.

A quick Google search will tell you the frequency for your area, or you can listen directly online.

It's home to the oldest 'Three Kings' parade in Spain

Christmas in Spain is not just one date. Spaniards make full use of the whole 12 days of Christmas – the usual family meal and the King's speech on TV is late on Christmas Eve, then December 25 is a public holiday (Boxing Day, December 26, isn't), and after New Year's Eve and the bank holiday for January 1, Spain goes in for Twelfth Night and the Epiphany in a big way. 

Still more 'for the children' than universal, presents may be exchanged between adults but will tend to be token gifts; kids, however, put out shoes filled with straw so the Three Wise Men's donkeys can rest their tired feet, plus a carrot or two for the animals, then return home from the parades on the night of January 5 to find 'stocking-fillers' or small gifts stuffed into said footwear.

January 6 is a national holiday, so children get at least one day to play with their new toys before going back to school.

They may get the bulk of their presents at home after the Magi parade, or they might get some or even all of them from the Three Wise Men themselves in their local square, when fiesta club members dressed as pages or elves hand them out publicly.

In Spain, the Magi are considered to be Kings, and ride donkeys rather than camels, so they are known as the Reyes Magos or, simply, the Reyes, and traditionally, it was they who did the present-distribution round rather than Santa Claus. The figure of Santa Claus, based upon the central and northern European tradition of Saint Nicholas, has only really been a 'thing' in Spain for the last decade or so; children's main presents still, in the majority, come from the Three Kings, with only stocking-fillers from Santa Claus, and many families who have refused to embrace what they believe to be a commercial figure 'invented by Coca-Cola' remain relatively ignorant as to the whole Father Christmas custom and either don't bother with it or consciously avoid it.

One key difference with the Three Kings, though, is that although Santa Claus and his reindeer travel in the dead of night and won't come unless you're asleep, the Magi parade through every town, or even every neighbourhood, flinging sweets at the crowds; perhaps it's for this reason that children in Spain are much older when they stop 'believing', given that they actually see their festive delivery drivers before they unwrap the goods they've left.

Three Kings, or Three Wise Men, parades are not an ancient custom; the oldest-known in Spain, and thought to be the oldest on earth, started in 1885 in the inland Alicante-province town of Alcoi, also nationally-renowned for its huge Moors and Christians festival.

Now in its 136th year, and a few months off its 137th year, nobody is alive today who remembers the first, although there almost certainly will be residents in the Alcoi area whose parents or grandparents told them about the time they watched what was quite possibly the first procession of its type on earth.

We mentioned Coca-Cola. It was invented in the province of Valencia 

The world's most-consumed fizzy drink, the one that never needs advertising even in the remotest corners of the planet, is generally held to have been created by John S. Pemberton's pharmaceutical laboratory in the USA in 1886.

But it was actually invented, drunk widely, and sold from around 1880 in a southern inland Valencia-province village you've probably never heard of: Aielo de Malferit, in the rural Vall d'Albaida district, the capital town of which is Ontinyent.

Aielo de Malferit is home to barely 4,700 people, but if its family-run drinks factory had not sold the patent to its refresher, Nuez de Kola Coca, in 1953, it might have been a lot bigger, and certainly a whole lot wealthier.

It was a syrup made from kola nuts – a popular natural 'chewing gum' widely consumed in Nigeria and a mark of friendship and welcome when shared with guests – and leaves from the coca plant, which grows in the Andes and is either chewed, infused, or sold in teabags in Perú and Bolivia.

This was then diluted, like orange squash, for a delicious thirst-quencher which sold by the bucketload in Aielo de Malferit.

The US firm Coca-Cola was unable to distribute in Spain without first buying out the patent of Nuez de Kola Coca, given that it was basically the same drink, except with carbonated rather than still water.

It's said the family made a hefty sum from selling the rights to its invention, but not as hefty as the one it would have made if it had still held them today.

Nowadays, coca leaves are not used in the recipe, since, as they are a key ingredient in cocaine – although hundreds of kilos of them undergo a complex distilling and chemical processing before they turn into a class-A drug, meaning Peruvians and Bolivians who drink coca tea from supermarkets do not get 'high' – they are illegal outside the countries where they grow, despite efforts by Bolivia's former president, Evo Morales, to redeem their reputation.

Although in Perú, as well as shop-bought coca teabags, the most-consumed fizzy drink – which outstrips Coca-Cola by far – is Inca Kola, a bright-green beverage that tastes of bubble gum.