The fire has reduced to ashes in the early hours of this Sunday 180 o’clock bonfires of Alicantewhich has experienced record numbers in its big weekwhich has left more than a million daily visitors and the ‘full’ sign in most of the city’s hotels.
The traditional fireworks palm tree launched from Mount Benacantil, the slope of the Castle of Santa Bárbara, has given the start to the ‘cremà’, in which 79 commissions and the City Council bonfire have calcined the monuments which, little by little, have been controlled by the 44 fire teams, which, in addition, have wet the public in the ‘banyà’.
Starting at 12:00 a.m. this Sunday, the more than 150 bonfires have gradually become fuel for the flames. They have done it in three different phases, because, given the need for the firefighters to control the extinction of all of them, the first ones burned at 12:00 a.m., while a second batch burned at 1:30 p.m. 3:00 p.m.
The first of these was the official Town Hall bonfire, the ‘Geoda’, that I wanted to be a tribute to all those who make up the Bonfires and who had demonstrated their capacity for recovery and resilience during the pandemic.
In front of a Town Hall square that has become too small and just after the palm tree lit up the sky of Alicante, the Belleas del Foc and the hundreds of attendees have observed how the monument, the work of Pedro Espadero, was burned and closed this cycle of bonfires, which in turn opens a new one.
It lasted barely thirty seconds until the top of the monument was hidden in the flames, which they have been reducing to ashes ninot by ninot and piece by piece until they reached the horse that represented the monument in the Plaza de Luceros, which has been the one that has taken the longest to be burned.
After seeing the bonfire burn, the mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala, stressed that these They have been parties “with hardly any incidents”mostly caused by the heat, while insisting that the security device for this ‘cremà’ had been prepared for up to two million people “and we have to be there, there”.
“We must have gotten very close to that figure of two million peoplewhich is absolutely a record, and all this without practically incidents”, highlighted Barcala, who has described these festivities as “record-breaking”, before hoping that all the monuments will be burned “with the greatest calm and security”.
A total of 750 firefighters, local police and Civil Protection volunteers that they have taken care of security, explained to EFE the Councilor for Security of Alicante, Julio Calero, who has stressed that there are up to 44 fire teams that have participated in the extinction of these works.
Thus, he has indicated that the 44 teams are divided into six zones so that the cremà develops progressively “and there are no incidents anywhere”.
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“In addition, we have the coverage of the palm tree from the castle of Santa Bárbara, which entails a very specific device to prevent the hillside of the castle from igniting and for what has been nine police teams, three firefighting teams and 35 people from the parks and gardens team, with autonomous teams for any incident that the palm tree could cause,” Calero stressed.
He has exposed that this device will last until 4 hours in the morning this Sunday, “although occasionally it takes a little longer because of a shack that has to be moved to another place so that it can be burned correctly,” Calero concluded.
