Today is 9th October. Today is the Region of Valencia Day. For Valencia this fiesta is about regional pride. In 1238 Valencia was finally reconquered by the Christian army of King Jaime I, after over 5 centuries of Islamic rule. King Jaime did not just annex the Valencia kingdom to his crown, but in a very generous gesture he established the Valencian Kingdom as an autonomous region, with its own governing bodies and courts. This was the birth of the Valencian Community as we know it, and a source of great pride for the Valencians today. The programme of the official Region of Valencia Day consists of numerous and varied acts that begin on the eve of 8th October with the holding of the Pyrotechnical festival in the old course of the River Turia in the city of Valencia. On the 9th, after the official reception of the President in the Palau de la Generalitat and the honours awarding ceremony to different Valencian personages, a series of official acts that have their origin in a privilege given by King Pedro el Ceremonioso (Peter the Ceremonious) in 1365 are held. The Valencian flag, the Reial Senyera, descends from the main balcony of the Valencia City Hall, not to bow down before anyone and, next, the civic procession begins, which travels round the streets of the city until reaching the Cathedral. There the religious act of Te Deum is performed and then the procession continues as far as the Palau de la Generalitat, seat of the Consell (Council), in which the Hymn of the Region of Valencia is performed. The retinue leaves the square called Alfonso el Magnánimo, where a floral offering is made in front of the equestrian statue of Jaime I. Once this has ended, the retinue heads once more for the City Hall, bringing the act to a close with the setting off of a mascletà. Throughout the day the ludic, festive and popular acts take place in all the towns and cities in the Region of Valencia, such as ludic areas with didactic and craft workshops, exhibitions in which the public can get to know different institutional and cultural aspects of the Generalitat as a historic institution of the government of the Valencians, and also performances and traditional dances to the sound of the dolçaina i tabalet or parades of groups of Moors and Christians. The 9th October is also the Feast of Sant Dionís, traditionally considered the patron saint of those in love for which reason it is the custom on this day to give the gift of the Mocadorà, a knotted silk handkerchief filled with home-cooked marzipan sweets made by Valencian confectioners. These sweets consist of the traditional cakes known as Piruleta i Tronador - small bars of marzipan, made with equal parts of almond and sugar filled with yolk - together with small pieces of marzipan in the shape of all types of fruit and items of food. In this celebration of the official day of the Region of Valencia also commemorated is the birth of the Valencian town, given that the Aragon king granted some of his own laws called Furs (local regional laws) that would politically reign the Valencian territory until the year 1707, the date when, after the War of the Spanish Succession between the followers of Felipe de Anjou -the future King Felipe V (Philip V) - and those of the Archduke Carlos (Charles), the abolition of the local regional laws came about by the Nueva Planta Decree by the support of the Valencians for the Archduke, an event of which this year is its 300th anniversary. The Valencians recovered their government institutions with the declaration of the Region of Valencia as an autonomous Spanish region and the approval of its Statute of Autonomy, as a basic institutional regulation in the year 1982, reformed in the year 2006 by a consensus, in order to bestow upon the Valencian society greater powers and self-government. #SpanisTraditions
Posted on: Thu, 09 Oct 2014 07:00:01 +0000
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