IoT meets Culture: Insights from monitoring Las Fallas

Every March, the city of Valencia transforms into a vibrant, noisy celebration of tradition, fire, and community during Las Fallas.

In our previous article , we explained how we deployed specialized IoT sensors in our downtown Valencia office to monitor the environmental impact of this UNESCO-recognized festival. As an IoT company that strongly believes in a data-oriented approach, we saw this as the perfect opportunity to capture a different face of the festival and dig deeper into its impact in the city.

Armed with our sensors placed in our office next to the main square of the city, we monitored and analyzed noise levels during the festivities.

We've analysed the data and are now ready to share our findings. We confirmed some expectations and discovered new ways to enhance our lives, celebrations, and coexistence.

In this second article, we'll walk you through the insights our sensors captured.

Curious? Keep reading!

Noise and the Weather: A Surprising Outcome

Contrary to the festival's typical sunny March weather, 2025 brought unusually persistent rainfall throughout much of the month. This even led to the suspension of some official acts of celebration due to the weather alert.

We initially hypothesized that rainy days would significantly dampen both attendance and noise levels. However, the impact was smaller than anticipated. On Tuesday, March 18th, considered one of the main days for going out, it rained nearly the entire day, yet noise levels were only slightly lower than on other peak days.

This suggests something profound about Las Fallas: the power of tradition and scheduled events appears to outweigh environmental factors in determining participation and activity levels.

The Five Loudest Days: When Valencia is fully awake

Our sensors clearly confirmed the significantly higher noise levels during the last, five main days of Fallas.

While the sound level throughout the day remained more or less the same as on a typical workday (except for the peak around 2:00 PM due to the mascletà), the acoustic activity of the city increased dramatically during the last five days—March 15-19— when the heart of the city was fully awake reaching 85 db approx (10 more db than the previous days). The data shows:

• Only a short window of relative quiet between 3:30 AM and 11:00 AM.
• Two consistent peaks during the five days: The 2:00 PM mascletà and the midnight fireworks shows at Plaza del Ayuntamiento.
• Evening noise levels until 3:30 am from street celebrations, music, and gatherings

This acoustic intensity demonstrates the nature of Las Fallas during its last days, creating a unique environment that takes over the entire urban landscape.

or us, these insights aren't just interesting. They’re useful.

Our Fallas monitoring experiment is not only a demonstration of an environmental monitoring IoT solution, it provides actionable insights that can help the organizations to create a comprehensive experience for all the community.

Finding the Balance: How Noise can Create a More Inclusive Festival

As vibrant as Las Fallas are, they also present an interesting duality: While the festival continuos activities across Valencia represents a living expression of cultural heritage and identity, it also reveals real challenges that can create limits for diverse segments of the Valencian population:

• People with sensory sensitivities
• Families with infants and young children
• Elderly residents
• Pet owners (and pets)
• Healthcare facilities

So the question is: How can data help make the experience more inclusive, without compromising the cultural integrity of the festival?

Our noise data from this year gives us a real starting point and becomes an informative tool to make better decisions. With precise noise data now documented, city planners and festival organizers can bridge the gap between tradition and inclusive accessibility.

Traditionally, the focus during Fallas has been on maintaining the festive atmosphere. But with objective, real-time data, we can start thinking about shared space and shared experiences, where the goal is not to silence the celebration but to make room for everyone.

Our analysis found that, at our location, noise levels significantly decreased between 5:00 PM and 8:00 PM compared to other times.

This pattern tells us something important:
This period is already a natural "quiet zone" in the daily rhythm of Fallas.

Of course, these findings are based on our sensors near the city center. Noise patterns can vary greatly between neighborhoods, so a city-wide network of sensors would be ideal for gathering more granular data. With neighborhood-level insights, public administration could create customised guidelines, rules, and recommendations that reflect the real experience of each community.

This approach creates an opportunity for a comprehensive mapping and real-time information systems that can help city planners, festival organizers, and citizens to:

• Identify and recommend quiet windows of time during the day to safely take dogs for a walk without exposing them to sudden bangs or stressful noise, while families and elderly residents also enjoy the city center or attend events that don't involve explosions. All without requiring to give up significant festival activities.
• Designate quiet zones in diverse neighborhoods to help individuals with noise sensitivities to have a secure space during the festival.
• Define time-specific noise forecast maps for tourists and residents to plan their festival participation around predicted quiet periods, ensuring that more people can enjoy the cultural activities.
• Optimize service and infrastructure resources - Urban planners and event organizers could use the data to better allocate resources like public transportation, emergency services, and waste management during peak periods while avoiding over-provisioning during the documented quiet hours.

A Low-Impact, High-Return Idea

The goal is not to diminish the celebrations but to ensure that everyone has the opportunity to enjoy Las Fallas according to their needs.

This does not necessarily mean fewer fireworks, just a smarter schedule. And the opportunity to develop future city policies that are flexible, localized, and based on real-time urban data.

Traditions evolve. They always have. With the help of data and technology, Las Fallas can evolve in a way that stays true to its spirit while becoming even more inclusive.

It's not about turning the volume down, it's about turning the awareness up.

A heightened awareness of the real situation may in fact also help private citizens to make the best choice for them.

Here a few exaples:

• For dog owners and sensitive individuals: The last five days of Fallas are significantly louder and more intense. If possible, consider leaving the city or avoiding central areas during this time.
  

  

• Avoiding the mascletà rush: Noise levels begin rising around 12:30 PM and stay high until about 3:00 PM, a much larger window than just the 5 to 10 minutes of fireworks. If you're trying to avoid the intense environment, it's best to steer clear of the city center during this window.
  

  

Looking Ahead: A Challenge for Next Year

This year, we confirmed what we already suspected: our sensors work, and the data they collect can lead to real, actionable insights. Next year, we would love to go even further. Imagine using real-time sound data to guide community-friendly firework schedules, pet-safe time slots, or even smart noise alerts for vulnerable populations.

Our experiment is only an example of how IoT helps to create more comprehensive systems based on real-time monitoring that empower both active and passive participants of Las Fallas.

At the intersection of tradition and technology, there’s room for harmony and inclusivity.