Sculptor Miquel Navarro died on Sunday 1 November at his house-workshop in Mislata, aged 81. Winner of Spain's National Fine Arts Prize in 1986 and one of the defining names of the New Spanish Sculpture, he leaves an oeuvre of iron and geometry scattered across half of Europe. He also leaves — unlikely as it sounds — a deep mark on the Fallas.

The most famous link was born of a misunderstanding. In 1984 the city installed its Font Pública, a monument that Valencia of the time did not understand and immediately renamed La Pantera Rosa. The Cádiz-Cura Femenía commission, a Russafa group then rebuilding itself, planted the following year with La Pantera Rosa... quina cosa: a scaled-down reproduction built by the falleros' own hands. They put up the fountain and a ninot mimicking an Oscar, as an ironic nod to the award being attributed to the sculptor. That serious joke ended up as the seed of the commission's trademark: wit above all.

From Mossen Sorell to the falla nicknamed 'El Parotet'

The second chapter came in 2006. The Mossen Sorell-Corona commission planted Reflexiones a la sombra de la luna, a totem crowned by a moon that invited passers-by to look around: the public surrounding it ended up becoming the monument's ninots. It turned twenty at this year's 2026 Fallas.

There was one occasion that never happened: in 1986, aged 40, Navarro was invited to design the municipal falla and said no because of his schedule. Emilio Miralles signed it instead.

His footprint is still alive in fallero street naming. The Avenida de Francia-Alfredo Torán y Olmos commission is known across the festival as 'El Parotet', after the Plaza de Europa sculpture that appears on its shield. And in 2024 the neighbouring Alameda-Avenida de Francia falla gave him its Premi de les Arts Vicente Monfort.

Mislata has declared three days of mourning and flags are at half-mast. The chapel of rest opened this Monday at his House-Workshop, beside the more than 400 works he donated to the town. Neighbours, friends and contemporaries filed past: in September Artur Heras and Manuel Boix had already gone, two more names from half a century of Valencian art.

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