Falles groups from Camp de Morvedre mark their big community day with paella and music
Local Falles committees from the Camp de Morvedre district spent Saturday at a community day with children's workshops, a TikTok contest, and the traditional Paella Contest organised by the Federació Junta Fallera de Sagunt (FJFS, the Sagunto Falles federation).
Falles committees from across the Camp de Morvedre district came together on Saturday, 5 September, for a community day organised by the Federació Junta Fallera de Sagunt (FJFS) — the body that coordinates Sagunto's Falles groups (neighbourhood associations that build the traditional bonfire monuments and organise the local festivities). The event combined culture, food and music around the area known as la Gerència.
Activities kicked off at 6pm with workshops for children, prepared by the different committees. At the same time, the FJFS Culture Delegation ran its TikTok contest, won by AC Falla Plaça Rodrigo, ahead of AC Falla Els Vents in second place and AC Falla Santa Anna in third. The abbreviation "AC Falla" identifies each Falles committee — a non-profit neighbourhood association that builds the year's satirical monument and organises the festivities for the street or district it's named after. Dozens of these committees exist across Camp de Morvedre, spread between Sagunto, Puerto de Sagunto and the district's smaller towns. The TikTok contest, an increasingly common fixture on Falles calendars, aims to connect with each committee's younger members and give the work they do throughout the year more visibility on social media.
Music kept the evening going with a performance by the brass band Breaking News, before the celebration moved to Ulls Negres avenue and Jerónimo Roure street. From 7:30pm, committees got to work cooking their paellas for the federation's annual contest, turning the two streets into a lively open-air kitchen for several hours. The judges eventually named AC Falla Plaça del Sol as the winner, with AC Falla El Romano taking second place and AC Falla Avinguda 3 d'Abril – Vall d'Albaida finishing third. The Paella Contest is part of a deeply rooted Valencian tradition, where cooking outdoors in wide pans over wood fires is as much a social ritual as a culinary one: each committee sets up its own fire right in the street, and the cooking time becomes an occasion to chat, sing and share a glass of wine with neighbours while waiting for the judges' verdict. That format — communal cooking, a street closed to traffic, and a neighbourhood atmosphere — repeats itself in dozens of towns across the Valencian Community throughout the year, though few federations keep it as a fixed date on their September calendar.
The celebration didn't end with the paella contest: a raffle and a bingo game followed, before the orchestra Jarana took over and kept the party going until 4am on Sunday. Raffles and bingo are common fixtures at Falles gatherings like this one: besides extending the party, they help each committee raise funds for its activities throughout the rest of the year.
Gatherings like this one in early September aren't part of the main festive cycle in March, when the central Falles events take place, but they serve an important purpose: keeping ties between committees alive throughout the rest of the year, building momentum ahead of the Falles season itself, and giving younger committees or those from neighbouring towns a chance to become better known within the wider federation. From this season opener through to the March Falles, committees across Camp de Morvedre typically string together fundraising dinners, neighbourhood street parties and the public unveiling of the monument sketch — events that rarely make the news the way the Trobades do, but which keep each committee's community life going through the quieter months. For many residents, a day like this one, even though it falls outside the official March calendar, is often their first real contact with their neighbourhood's Falles world, especially for families joining a committee for the first time.
The Trobades (gathering) and Paella Contest once again turned the area around la Gerència into a meeting point for Falles committees from across Camp de Morvedre, in a day the federation highlights for the strong turnout and the sense of community it builds between committees from different towns in the district.
According to El Periódico de Aquí — Sagunto / Camp de Morvedre.
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