Few committees can tell their story through their own neighbourhood's façade. Blocs Platja celebrates 75 years of falla this Saturday 7 November with a gala titled Una historia que merece ser contada, after several preliminary events. The Marítim committee dates its beginnings to the falla planted in 1953 under president José Peris Celda, though there are earlier references from 1946 and 1947.

The neighbourhood explains the falla. The Bloques de la Playa are one of the most recognisable pieces of post-war Valencia architecture, built in the 1940s alongside the narrow-gauge tram tracks as part of a housing programme to offset wartime losses. The city's planning record acknowledges that the complex, especially the Virgen del Castillo block, is a rare case for the period: "unlike most, the work has good finishes, the homes are generously sized and the main façade of the central block has a certain monumental air".

That is where the name comes from. The earliest references speak of Regiones Devastadas-Ramón Laporta: the first after the state agency, the second after a second housing block now called Las Sufragistas. The committee later became Virgen del Sufragio-Virgen del Castillo, too long for everyday use, and settled on Blocs Platja.

A pause in 1957 and the leap of the eighties

The timeline has its gaps. After four initial years the committee went without a falla in 1957 and 1958, picking up again in 1959. José Alamar was its first historical president. The early period was modest; the first bright moment came in the 1980s under Manuel Martínez Mollá, and it has been repeated in the current decade, which the committee reaches in its best form yet, with large monuments by Mario Gual and Víctor Hugo Giner. Blocs Platja is also known for staging a maritime edition of the Cant de l'Estoreta each January or February, which has coexisted happily with the pioneering version in Plaza del Árbol and reaches its 37th edition this year. An anniversary, in short, told with a falla and a neighbourhood.

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