Falla Amics del Mar in Canet d'en Berenguer: first woman president in its history
In Canet d'en Berenguer, a neighbour of Sagunto in the Camp de Morvedre district, Elisabet Peris will be the first president of its only falla. She succeeds founder Vicent García and needs a workshop for the monument.
The Amics del Mar falla (a neighbourhood Fallas festival committee), the only one in Canet d'en Berenguer, will have a woman as president for the first time. Elisabet Peris Maezty, 46, takes over from Vicent García, who founded the group and has been its only president so far. García announced last March that he wanted to step aside so he could enjoy the Fallas without the duty of running them.
The first problem Peris must solve is practical: the committee has no premises to store its material and work on the monument. Its members build the falla themselves by hand, which is unusual among other committees. For the next edition they want a bigger structure, and that requires a workshop. The new president wants a taller falla and says its theme will revolve around children. With that aim she has already met the mayor, Pere Antoni Chordà, to explain what the committee needs.
Peris knows the group from the inside. She joined in 2021, after finding out that Canet had its own falla, and began by organising activities; in 2025 she joined the board. Her appointment was nonetheless unexpected: the day before the vote the intended candidate withdrew, and the other members encouraged her to take the post. She works as a department head at MediaMarkt. Asked whether she already regrets it, she jokes that not yet. She plans to stay for two years, because she thinks the role is wearing and that changing the person fairly often lets new ideas in.
Chordà welcomes the handover. He recalls that, in these years, the falla has brought Canet a festival that did not exist before, and he sees Peris as the right person for this stage.
Her bond with the Fallas predates Canet: as a child she took part in the March festivities of Sagunto, which is where her fondness for them comes from. Within the committee she has focused on children's activities, to the point of describing herself as the mother of all the boys and girls during the Fallas. She praises García as a deeply involved and motivating president, the driving force that allowed Amics del Mar to become established.
The committee was founded in 2019 by a group of friends who love the Fallas, with García in charge. It is based in the beach area and brings together about a hundred members (falleros) in a municipality of 8,297 inhabitants, according to the INE (Spain's national statistics office) on 1 January 2025. Many spend their holidays in Canet and come from different parts of Spain and even from abroad, so the group is a meeting point for residents and summer visitors, and several of them discovered the Fallas through it. The municipality, which used to be called Canet de Murviedro, takes its present name from Francisco Berenguer, a feudal lord of the 16th century.
Beyond the March celebrations, Peris has another project: a summer music festival with bands from Canet, open to everyone who wants to step on stage. She argues that Amics del Mar has a close relationship with music and that the town has many good bands.
According to El Periódico de Aquí, with additional data from Wikipedia on Canet d'en Berenguer.