Daytime fireworks are coming back to Valencia after almost three weeks. Plaza de la Reina will host a 24-kilo mascletà by Pirotecnia Aitana on Sunday 25 October at 14:00, to mark the closing of the Jubilee Year of the Holy Chalice. The display will round off the free concert by Hakuna, held in the same square at 12:30, organised by the city's Tourism department together with Valencia Music City.

It will not take place at Plaza del Ayuntamiento, where the housing-rights encampment has been in place since the summer. The city council has chosen an unusual venue for the firing — Plaza de la Reina only hosts fireworks on special occasions, as it did last year for the feast of Sant Vicent Màrtir. Tourism councillor Paula Llobet defended the event: "the mascletà will put the finishing touch to Hakuna's concert with gunpowder, as Valencians do." The Fallas councillor and president of the JCF, Santiago Ballester, recalled that "the mascletà is one of the most deeply rooted expressions of Valencian festive culture and its gunpowder is part of our identity."

Sunday's programme has other moving parts: the Valencia Half Marathon also takes place that day, so traffic access along Calle de la Paz will reopen at 11:03. The closing events of the Jubilee Year also include an open-air mass on Saturday 24 at 17:30 in Plaza de la Virgen, a eucharistic procession to the Cathedral, and the official closing mass on Thursday 29 October at 19:00 at Valencia Cathedral.

Sunday's mascletà thus brings daytime gunpowder back to Valencia's squares, after the 9 October display could not go ahead because of the encampment at Plaza del Ayuntamiento and was not rescheduled to another procession venue.

Sources: