continuing ...

If you look at the balconies, 
you can see the bars used to protect homes.

In Paterna we celebrate la Cordà the last Sunday of august, the same day that we celebrate Stm. Crist de la Fe i Sant Vicent Ferrer, this is part of our tradition and thousands of persons come to this event to witness something unique in the world because of its magnitude and beauty.

The drawers, full of coets and femelletes of different types and models, are placed in the narrow Main street in 120 meters long and 8 meters wide, between the Main Square and San Antonio Street. In each drawer there are three persons, one of them is veteran and is the one who have to take out the coets in a way to keep a constant rhythm. There are about one hundred fifty persons taking part of this, they normally belong to penyes or are neighbors. 

When the Coeter Major walk with the green flare means the beginning of la Cordà, and around 35,000 coets with an average intensity of 1,500 coets per minute. After the intensity experienced, the smokedisappears. Again el Coeter Major , this time with a red flare crosses the Main street and that means theculmination of so sublime event. La Cordà has ended, but not the festival of fire and gunpowder that will continue, with appropriate security measures, until dawn.

For the latter, in the summer of 2001 the government team adopted the determination of establish some basic rules allowed for use of fire more secure, especially after  la Cordà. In this respect the Mayor issued aproclamation during that year, in which regulated the use of rockets and femelletes, enabling el Parc Urbà de la Torre i el Palau, that is known from that time as "coetòdrom”. The result has been highly successful,achieving in recent years drastically reduced the number of wounded in the "recordaes" and implementedwithin the enclosure avantdit popular festive iconography.

I leave a link here to see a documentary about  la Cordà, I hope you enjoy it!

http://vimeo.com/12023796