Discover Spain's Costa Blanca & Valencia is your independent guide to one of Spain's most beautiful Mediterranean regions. Explore beaches, festivals, scenic walks, coastal drives, historic towns, local events, attractions and travel guides covering Valencia, Gandia, Dénia, Jávea, Moraira, Calpe, Altea and many more destinations across the Costa Blanca and the Valencian Community.
Experience a stunning Mediterranean sunset over Playa de Gandía / Gandia, Valencia, Spain, captured in beautiful 4K drone footage.
Following passing rain showers, dramatic storm clouds linger over the southern coastline while golden evening light bathes Gandia Beach, the marina and the Mediterranean Sea. The changing skies create spectacular colours and reflections, making this one of the most beautiful times to enjoy the Costa Blanca coastline.
This cinematic aerial video showcases Playa de Gandía's wide sandy beach, the bustling marina, fishing port and seafront promenade as day turns to night. From peaceful coastal views to vibrant sunset colours, it's a relaxing journey above one of Valencia's most popular seaside destinations.
Located on Spain's Mediterranean coast, Playa de Gandía is famous for its Blue Flag beach, lively promenade, marina, restaurants and summer atmosphere. Just a short distance from the historic city of Gandia, it offers the perfect combination of traditional fishing heritage, modern tourism and spectacular coastal scenery.
Whether you're planning a holiday, remembering your visit, or simply relaxing with beautiful drone footage, enjoy this peaceful golden hour flight above one of Spain's finest beaches.
A list of the channels and frequencies affected by the recent "satellite shuffle" between Eutelsat 28A and Astra.
Below is a list of the channels and frequencies affected by the recent "satellite shuffle" between Eutelsat 28A and Astra.
Note that for some people in some areas of Spain, channels on the Astra 2F UK beam may be unavailable, as your satellite dish may be too small to receive these frequencies.
As a general rule of thumb, if you can receive Channel Five, then you should be able to receive those other channels on Astra 2Fs UK beam.
If you are struggling to receive those channels on the Astra 2F UK beam, then it may be possible to search for the channels on their "Final" frequencies, as some of the channels are actually operating on their final frequencies.
On a Sky box, you simply go to the "Add Channels" menu option, and then add the channels to your Sky boxes "Other Channels" list, accessed via the Services Menu.
Hopefully by the 10th October, all channels will be on their final frequencies, and the Sky Guide and the Freesat Guide channel lists are all correctly "mapped" to the new frequencies.
Dia del padre (Father’s day) is celebrated on the 19th of March. It falls on St. Joseph’s day. Celebrations for Father’s day depend on the city you’re in and in some parts of Spain, like Valencia, there’s a grand celebration on this day called “Las Fallas.”
Las Fallas is undoubtedly one of the most unique and crazy festivals in Spain. Las Fallas literally means “the fires”. Valencia is busy preparing the festive atmosphere from early in the month with the mascletas, noisy firework displays that take place every day at 2pm in Town Hall Square. Then it is time for the traditional planta of the fallas. People work all night to erect more than 700 statues in the city’s streets and squares. Some even start setting up days before – these huge statues can reach up to 20 metres in height.
You can enjoy these impressive scenes until the crema, when they are set alight amidst a fascinating spectacle of light, music and fireworks. All are burnt except one ninot which, elected by a popular vote, is saved from the flames to form part of the collection at the Fallero Museum.
Another of the most exciting moments of the Fallas is the floral offering to the Virgin Mary. When the Fallas parade starts in honour of the Virgin, there is a mountain of flowers 14 metres high. Open-air celebrations, parades, competitions and other activities complete the festive programme. Valencia, usually a quiet city with a population of half a million, turns into a town of over three million flame-loving revelers during Las Fallas.
If you can get up to Valencia for a few days, or even for the main day, on one of the coach trips, we would definitely recommend it.
Estival Tour Travel Agency are offering a coach trip to Valencia, staying in a 3 star hotel for two nights half board and including insurance, for only 143€, with pick up here at La Zenia. Or alternatively 41€ per person for 4* hotel and B&B.
For the more adventurous, they can organize train tickets and hotel accommodation in the city centre, all to suit budgets and requirements.
Expat author Jason Webster explains why the ever-changing city of Valencia is the perfect setting for his novels - and for him.
If I’d had a choice about where to come and live in Spain I probably wouldn’t have plumped for Valencia. But that was over 10 years ago, and the city was a very different place then.
Only in recent years has this Mediterranean city - the third largest in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona - emerged from an ugly-duckling image it has suffered for decades. Not without reason did the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan dub it ‘the world capital of anti-tourism’ forty years ago, revelling in the city’s griminess, perverseness and lack of attention to the needs of visitors.
“To be alone in Valencia,” he quoted Lady Harlech as saying at the time, “is to be permanently twenty minutes this side of suicide.”
Punished by Franco for being the capital of the Republic during the Spanish Civil War, and unloved by much of the rest of the country, Valencia was a backwater, a jewel so encrusted with dirt that almost no one could see the treasure that was lying underneath - least of all the Valencians themselves.
But all that has changed. As I write, the very first high-speed trains are arriving in the city from Madrid, bringing passengers in from the capital - over 350 km away - in barely an hour and a half.
Yet this is only the latest in a long string of recent developments that have transformed Valencia into the most exciting city in Spain. Madrid may be the centre of power, and Barcelona a cultural mecca, but Valencia offers the light and vibrancy of a major Mediterranean port, without the stress of an oversized metropolis.
Perhaps the most emblematic symbol of the new Valencia is the City of Arts and Sciences - a vast space-age complex of buildings designed by Valencian wunderkind Santiago Calatrava, one of the most feted architects around. An opera house, a science museum, aquarium and showcase tennis court have all been constructed, attracting visitors from all over the world, and are frequently used as the backdrop in adverts for new sports cars.
The attractions of the older part of the city have also been given some much-needed attention. When I first arrived, chunks of the Moorish city walls and wonderful 19th century town houses were close to falling down. Valencia felt neglected and down-at-heel. Now, however, a great number of these buildings have been restored and painted, their facades shining bright pinks, reds and blues.
For this is a city that loves colour, pageantry and show, in all its forms. Fallas, the biggest fiesta of the year here - and one of the most important in the country - heralds the coming of Spring. And Valencians like to mark the changing of the seasons with a concentration of fireworks, "fire-cracker concerts" and bonfires that would pull at the heart-strings of any self-respecting arsonist. Tonne after tonne of gunpowder is ignited in a seemingly endless display of pyrotechnics, both during the day and at night. While on the last day of the festivities, eight-metre-high statues of wood and papier-mâché, standing at almost every crossroads, are set ablaze, often scorching nearby buildings - and anyone foolish enough to stand too close.
There’s more to the city than a strong pyromaniac tendency, though. Valencia is the home of Spain’s national dish - paella. Here, the real thing is made with chicken and rabbit, not seafood - although there are fish and shellfish versions. But with the sea close by, and surrounded by a belt of fertile market gardens growing everything from oranges and artichokes to spinach and olives, this is an ideal place to test for oneself the health-giving benefits of the famous "Mediterranean diet".
Yet despite all this abundance and renewal, all is not rosy in Valencia. There is a dark side to the city, one that rarely comes to light or is seen by the visitor or recently arrived expat. Which was one of the reasons why I decided to write a series of detective novels set here. Having set down my roots over ten years before, I wanted to describe the place that had become my home, but to do so in a way that expressed the nuances, the shadows and tones of grey as well as all the colour and the attractions. Today no one could insist that this is a capital of "anti-tourism", but the dirty, edgy city that Tynan saw hasn’t gone away, not entirely.
Accusations of corruption in the city’s politics are so common now they barely warrant front-page attention. All that money that was used to help revamp the place was also used to line a few pockets, it would appear.
Then some of the decisions made in the name of progress have been very controversial. The Cabanyal is an old fishermen’s quarter north of the port area, running parallel to the beach. Here tightly packed houses from the turn of the century display facades of delicate ceramic work, with blue, green and turquoise zig-zag patterns or checker-board effects, with decorations showing sea creatures or the faces of water spirits. The area has been described by more than one visitor as an "open-air museum", a showcase of Art Nouveau design. Yet the Town Hall wants to bulldoze a great hole through the neighbourhood to extend a modern avenue through to the seafront. Local people have staged protests, and there have been clashes with the police, but the plans continue.
And of course, as with almost any modern city, Valencia has its own fair share of problems with drugs and the sex trade. In fact, the city had an official red-light district as far back as the Middle Ages. And as you drive along the local roads today you will often find a lonely building somewhere, the word "club" in fluorescent lights over the door. Don’t be fooled: this is not the local equivalent of White’s or the Atheneum, but a brothel.
Despite its faults, though, I have developed a deep attachment to Valencia. I came originally because I had fallen in love with a Valencian woman; today she is my wife. And although, in that sense, the choice of where I was to come and live in Spain was made for me, I now know I would have it no other way. Valencia is, and will continue to be, a great Spanish city. And there is more than enough material here for many more crime novels to come.
One of my most favourite time in Spain is Fallas time.
Just the whole fiesta always has me amazed, and how relaxed everyone can be when they close down main roads in town for a week or more to build a Fallas, have a party, throw fireworks and banger at each other, the Fallas Queens in their dresses, then burn the lot down in a big fiesta on the 19th March in a big "up yours" to Elf n Safety.
One from 2007 in a small street in Valencia:
Its always an experience going down to Valencia and seeing the 2pm Mascletà. Thousands of people flock to the city centre out side the town hall for the 2pm spectacular. You feel the ground shacking as the "bomb" go off, and you cannot help wondering about how the glass in the buildings around you stays in!
The Mascletà is covered on TV, and they even have a decibel meter level on the screen to show you how loud it can be.
The Fallas can be huge, and have been in preparation for many months, and usually have a humourous side to them, usually at the expense of polititians or world events.....
Then they wait until the firemen arrive. Not to put out the burning fallas, but to spray the nearby buildings with water to stop them from burning whilst the fallas burn away. Sad to see all that time money and effort go to waste, but good when the huge cheers from the crowd happens as the fallas topples over onto itself.
Something you would not see in the UK at all, and was one of the times that I liked to visit Spain before I moved over here.
The schedule of events for the Fallas 2010 fiesta is now available.
FEBRUARY 28th (Sunday)
At 07.00 a.m. Despertà (awakening sound fireworks) along Paz street toards the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
At 12.00 p.m. Music Band Parade from the Plaza de la Virgen towards the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square) several music bands march playing typical pasodobles. The parade finish approximately at a quarter to 2 p.m. and at that time all the bands will play together the Pasodoble “El Fallero” (the Fallas anthem)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
At 8.00 p.m. Cridà. La Crida marks the official opening of the Fallas Festival. Crowds of onlookers and all the Fallas Committees gather beneath the Serranos Towers, one of historical Valencia's best-known monuments. After a spectacular inaugural display of light, sound, music and fireworks, the “Fallera Mayor” of Valencia (elected festival queen), surrounded by her Court of Honour and the city authorities, invites everyone to enjoy the imminent fiesta, proclaiming its excellence and virtues.
MARCH 1st (Monday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
MARCH 2nd (Tuesday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
MARCH 3rd (Wednesday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
MARCH 4th (Thursday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
MARCH 5th (Friday)
At 02.00 a .m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
MARCH 6th (Saturday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
At 06.00 p.m. Great Mascletà Neapolitan style (sound fireworks) in the Las Arenas beach between Las Arenas Hotel and the Red Cross First Aid Post.
At 10.30 p.m. Ninot Parade. Itinerary: Departing from Marques de Sotelo street towards the Plaza del Ayuntamiento and around the square passing by the City Hall main entrance and back to Marqués de Sotelo street. After the parade opposite the City Hall. Night Mascletà.
MARCH 7th (Sunday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
At 5.30 p.m. Children’s Ninot Parade. Itinerary: Departing from La Glorieta, by Paz and San Vicente streets towards the Plaza del Ayuntamiento by the City Hall, ending in Marqués de Sotelo street. After the parade opposite the City Hall. Night Mascletà.
MARCH 8th (Monday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
MARCH 9th (Tuesday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
MARCH 10th (Wednesday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
MARCH 11th (Thursday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
MARCH 12th (Friday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
MARCH 13th (Saturday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
At 10.30 p.m .“International Folk Parade” around the “Plaza del Ayuntamiento” (City Hall Square). After the parade opposite the City Hall. Night Mascletà.
MARCH 14th (Sunday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
At 06.00 p.m. Closure ceremony of the “CHILDREN'S NINOT EXHIBITION” (children's figurines).
MARCH 15th (Monday)
At 08.00 a .m. Plantà (setting up) of all “FALLAS INFANTILES” (children's fallas)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
At 06.00 p.m. Closure ceremony of the “NINOT EXHIBITION” (adult's figurines).
At 00.00 a .m Plantà (setting up) of all “FALLAS” (adult's fallas)
At 01.30 a .m. Fireworks on the Paseo de La Alameda (between Exposición Bridge and Las Flores Bridge).
MARCH 16th (Tuesday)
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
At 04.30 p.m. From the stage outside the City Hall building, Awards Ceremony for Children's "Fallas".
At 01.30 a .m. Fireworks on the Paseo de La Alameda (between Exposición Bridge and Las Flores Bridge).
MARCH 17th (Wednesday)
At 09.30 a .m. From the stage outside the City Hall building, Awards Ceremony for "Fallas" in all participating sections. At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square). At 04.00 p.m. First day of the Flower offering to our Lady of the Forsaken (“Virgen de los Desamparados”) along Paz street and San Vicente street thousands of falleros march towards the Plaza de la Virgen. The flower offering finishes around 1 a .m. in the morning.
At 01.00 a .m. Fireworks on the Paseo de La Alameda (between Exposición Bridge and Las Flores Bridge). MARCH 18th (Thursday)At 11.00 a .m. Homage to the poet Maximilano Thous , at the monument in his honour located at crossroads of Sagunto street and Maximilano Thous street. After finishing, a “Mascletà” will be staged. At 12.00 p.m. Homage to the “Maestro Serrano” , taking place at the monument dedicated to his memory in Reino de Valencia Ave. After finishing, a “Mascletà” will be staged. At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square) At 04.00 p.m. Second day of the Flower offering to our Lady of the Forsaken (“Virgen de los Desamparados”) along Paz street and San Vicente street thousands of falleros march towards the Plaza de la Virgen. The flower offering finishes around 1 a .m. in the morning. At 01.30 a .m. Nit de Foc, the most important fireworks display in The Fallas Festival on the “Paseo de la Alameda” (between Exposición Bridge and Las Flores Bridge) MARCH 19th (Friday) At 11.00 a .m. On the “Puente de San José” (Saint Joseph Bridge), flower offering made by the “Fallas” Queens and their Courts of Honour in front of the statue of the Patriarch. A “Mascletà” will follow.
At 12.00 p.m. Mass in honour of the Patriarch St. Joseph, in the Cathedral Church, staged by the Central Fallas Council and the Carpenters Guild with the attendance of the “Fallas” Queens of Valencia and their Courts of Honour. Mass sung by the "Cathedral Choir" and the orchestra from the Conservatoire José Iturbi from Valencia.
At 02.00 p.m. Mascletà (sound fireworks) in the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (City Hall Square).
At 07.00 p.m. Cabalgata del Fuego (Fire Parade) along Colon Street with a spectacular firework show in Porta de la Mar Square.
At 10.00 p.m. Cremà or burning of the Children's Fallas.
At 10.30 p.m. Cremà or burning of the Children's Fallas having obtained First Prize among the Fallas of the Special Section.
At 11.00 p.m. Cremà or burning of the Children's Falla in the “Plaza del Ayuntamiento” (City Hall Square).
MARCH 20th (Saturday)
At 00.00 a .m. Cremà or burning all the remaining adults Fallas in Valencia.
At 00.30 a .m. Cremà or burning of the adult “Falla” having obtained First Prize among the fallas of the Special Section.
At 01.00 a .m. Bouquet of aerial fireworks in the “Plaza del Ayuntamiento” (City Hall Square) and Cremà or burning of the “Falla” in this square.
