Fallas IoT Tracker: Monitoring Valencia's most Famous Tradition

Every March, the city of Valencia transforms into a vibrant canvas of art, tradition, and celebratory chaos during Las Fallas. For those unfamiliar with this UNESCO-recognized cultural event, imagine an entire city dedicating itself to a month-long celebration culminating in a spectacular display of craftsmanship and controlled pyrotechnics..

At LORIOT, we find ourselves in a uniquely advantageous position. Our Valencia office sits in the downtown area, right at the epicenter of these traditional festivities.

This proximity offers us more than just front-row seats to the cultural spectacle—it presents a perfect real-world laboratory for demonstrating how IoT technology can monitor environmental changes during large-scale urban events and how data can help citizens and administrators make informed decisions.

But first, let’s understand more about the Fallas tradition

Las Fallas is a UNESCO-recognized celebration that traces its origins to the Middle Ages when carpenters would burn their wooden scraps on the feast day of their patron saint, Saint Joseph.

Today, it has evolved into an elaborate celebration with several distinct components that unfold over several weeks. The festival begins with La Cridá (The Call), where the Fallera Mayor, the festival's queen, invites everyone to join the celebrations. This marks the start of daily events that build toward the festival's climax.

During the 19 consecutive days of Las Fallas, Plaza del Ayuntamiento becomes the stage for Mascletàs, daytime events focused entirely on creating sound compositions through precisely timed explosions.
Each mascletà lasts approximately 5 minutes, building to a crescendo called the "terremoto" (earthquake)—an apt name as the ground literally trembles beneath your feet during the finale.

A video, better than a picture, can help to understand what it is all about for those who have never experienced it.



In parallel to the sound, the art also becomes alive with hundreds of Fallas monuments installed in diverse city points. These elaborately sculptural designs are handcrafted and made of wood, papier-mâché, and other materials.

Each monument is created based on a theme-usually satirizing political figures or social issues-and can reach a height of 30 meters. They are displayed for the visitors and, at the end of the festival, on March 19th, they are burned in a final ceremony called La Cremá (The Burning). This spectacular finale represents renewal as the old year's troubles go up in flames, making way for spring and new beginnings.

For Valencians, Fallas represents the heart of their cultural identity – a time when communities come together and traditions are passed to new generations. This unique celebration also draws over two million visitors annually, making it one of Spain's largest tourist attractions and a significant economic driver for the region.

However, while Fallas are a beloved tradition, they are also the subject of intense debate about the significant environmental and health impacts they have on citizens. Noise levels that can exceed 120 decibels (comparable to a jet engine at close range), changes in air quality due to gunpowder combustion and the burning of monuments, and finally the increase of consumption and people.

For us at LORIOT, Fallas presents an irresistible scenario to demonstrate how IoT technology can provide valuable environmental insights during this cultural event.

Our privileged location in downtown Valencia offers us a unique opportunity to collect real-time environmental data and provide a different perspective on this spectacular celebration.

And now make tradition and technology meet!

Our decision to monitor the impact of Fallas stems from several motivations:

• First, this project demonstrates how IoT technology can provide valuable environmental insights during urban events without disrupting the cultural experience. Far from being a comprehensive scientific experiment, our little project aims to allow us to better understand our environment through technology.
• Second, everyone knows the mascletà is exceptionally loud, but what about the rest of the day?—Our 24/7 monitoring and the diverse aspects of Fallas: the crowds gathering for parades, traditional music and drumming that fills the streets, helicopters buzzing overhead for event coverage, and the vibrant nightlife that extends well into the early morning hours, give us the ideal conditions for consistent data collection and observation of changes during the events.
• Third, our office location, just a few meters from the plaza, provides a controlled environment for sensor placement, ensuring data integrity while experiencing the event firsthand. Few IoT case studies have such convenient access to a phenomenon worth measuring.

Finally, we believe that understanding environmental factors during cultural events can help inform future urban planning, public health measures, and potentially even the evolution of traditions themselves to become more sustainable while preserving their essential character.

Our Use Case

To capture this urban phenomenon, we selected a combination that would give us insight into both the acoustic and atmospheric impacts:

• The Dragino LHT65N-VIB LoRaWAN sensor became our electronic ear, mounted securely to an exterior window frame. Originally designed for industrial vibration monitoring, it's sensitive enough to detect the concussive waves that roll through the city during each mascletà. It also measures temperature and relative humidity in the air.
  
  

  

• Meanwhile, the Dragino AQS01-L LoRaWAN CO2 sensor serves as our electronic nose, positioned near a partially open window to sample the outside air without being overwhelmed by office conditions. This allows us to track how the combustion products from thousands of explosives temporarily alter the local atmosphere.
  
  

  

• We've also deployed the Milesight WS302 LoRaWAN Noise Level Sensor to capture precise sound measurements throughout the festival. This specialized sensor provides accurate decibel readings across multiple frequency ranges. Its high-precision microphone and advanced digital signal processing ensure we capture the full acoustic profile of the festival.
  
  

  

All three sensors connect to our LoRaWAN network, transmitting data to LORIOT's cloud platform for initial processing. From there, the data flows into the Cloud Studio IoT platform, where we've created customized dashboards to monitor environmental changes in real-time.

Beyond the Bang! What we want to achieve

This Fallas festival gives us an opportunity to explore fascinating questions about urban environments and temporary disruptions.

· How quickly does air quality recover after pyrotechnic events?
· What are the hours with the most noise during the day?
· What is the level of vibration during the 19 days of festival?

One of the most crucial questions we need to consider is: how can individuals make the most of this information?

Our goal with this data is to provide a clearer understanding of how traditional celebrations interact with urban spaces, potentially aiding simple yet significant decision-making.

What's particularly fascinating is our investigation into the relationship between subjective experiences and objective measurements. We’re looking at how the variety of festival activities and the flow of people align with the environmental data we gather.

As we write this, the Fallas are in its first days and our sensors are already monitoring and building a dataset as rich as the festival itself.

In our upcoming article, we'll discuss the valuable insights we've gathered from our dataset obtained during our little experiment of monitoring this unique festivity from our office balcony. We’ll share our findings, highlight recurring patterns, and reveal some unexpected discoveries that emerged from observing this traditional celebration through a technological lens.

The Fallas festival is a powerful reminder that cities are more than just functional spaces, they are dynamic, ever-evolving communities where tradition and modern life intersect. By leveraging IoT technology, we are capturing real-time insights into how these celebrations shape the urban environment.