Constructing 'Las Hogueras'

It takes many months to design and make the painted wood and paper sculptures and then days to put together the huge sections of the sculptures in situ that will then burn like bonfires on the night of 24th of June in just 20 minutes!

They do it for the love of the festival of Las Hogueras de San Juan.

In my previous post I talked a little about the history of the festival and why they burn these elaborate sculptures.  Each one depicts something that the neighbourhood want to criticise so that they can feel the satisfaction of burning them at the end of the fiestas.  Nowadays the scenes are usually full of effigies of political figures or celebrities that the common people are unhappy with around a large central figure or concept.  They are beautifully done and the detail is amazing.

These sculptures can be up to 25m in height and they are an engineering feat in themselves, with the artist having to consider the constraints of the location, such as lamp posts and street signs, the pavements and slopes of streets, the buildings close by (and I do mean close!)... Even how to get them there from the workshop. They also have to take into account how the sculpture will burn so that it falls in on itself and not towards the crowd which can be thousands of people!  Firemen are on hand at every bonfire to ensure the complete safety of the spectators, and they also join in the fun (more on that in a later post!).


I have taken some photos of just a couple of the 90 or so Hogueras dotted around Alicante in the construction stage so that you can appreciate the hard work that goes in to making these works of art.