Giant 1,500kg dragon puppet to walk through Sagunto's streets on 19 August
Theatre company La Fam Teatre will bring its touring show Quimera — a six-metre, fire-breathing dragon puppet — through the streets of Sagunto on the night of Wednesday 19 August, near the Roman Theatre.
The town is getting ready for an unusual night. On Wednesday 19 August, at 9pm, La Alameda de Sagunt will be the starting point for Quimera, a street theatre show built around a giant articulated dragon puppet. The creature stands six metres tall, stretches twelve metres long, and weighs 1,500 kilograms. Made of iron, wood and leather, it will move past the Roman Theatre (Sagunto's ancient amphitheatre) before heading through the town's streets toward Puerto de Sagunto (the coastal district), breathing fire while four performers try to keep it under control.
The performers driving the puppet are Santi Martínez, Víctor Segarra, Juanan Lucena and Segi Heredia, who also directs the piece. The show is produced by La Fam Teatre, a theatre company that premiered Quimera in 2025, meaning the stop in Sagunto is only part of its second touring season, according to information published by the company itself.
Quimera is not La Fam's first mechanical giant. It follows Aquiles, a somewhat smaller articulated puppet — just over five metres tall and around 800 kilograms, compared with the six metres and 1,500 kilograms of the new dragon — which debuted in 2021 at the Mérida Festival (Spain's classical theatre festival) and whose success paved the way for this second creature. Both shows explore the same idea: whether humans can truly control a beast of this size without losing their grip on it.
Behind the four performers who guide Quimera through the streets, a much larger team is at work: around twenty people build, cover and set the sound for a puppet of this scale before it can go outdoors. That technical complexity is, according to the director, part of the show's appeal — there is no fixed script, and each resident can decide how long to follow the dragon, whether for ten minutes or the full hour-long route.
For Sagunto, the event adds to a summer cultural calendar that mixes large-scale shows with the Roman Theatre's regular programme. For a few hours, the spectacle will turn an ordinary street — with parked cars and residents out for a walk — into the stage for a myth performed outdoors and free of charge, with no ticket required. The company, based in Vila-real (Castellón) and active since 2014, already toured other parts of the Valencian Community with Aquiles last year, and now repeats the formula with an even bigger creature.
According to Valencia Plaza, with additional details from La Fam Teatre on the premiere date and dimensions of its shows.