The museum collection of l'Arca de les Falles (Arcaf), the association for the recovery and conservation of falla art built around the private collection of JCF secretary general Nico Garcés, has gained a real rarity: the heads of the three bullfighters from one of the most remembered scenes of the sixties — the falla "Pirateríes" planted by the commission Plaza del Pilar in 1966.

The scene, by Juan Huerta, showed five matadors and assistants plus a picador doing the paseíllo with razors in hand, a satire of the rigged bullfighting of the day. It made history twice over: it was Plaza del Pilar's first win in the Special Section, and the group was not saved by popular vote but by the pardon of the Fallera Mayor of València, María de los Llanos Borso di Carminati, after which it was exhibited at the Fallas Museum.

The scene survived in publications that served as almanacs — the Historia Gráfica de las Fallas, the Fotos Fallas de Bayarri album or the collections of scholars such as Josep Joan Coll — and even made the cover of the magazine El Coet that year, a rarity since the magazine was usually illustrated with sketches. Now the three heads, "cast from the same mould", have reached Arcaf after decades in the hands of the falla's painting master, the legendary Daniel López, who donated them.

Sixty years on, falla art has recovered one of its cult pieces. The association, which occasionally shows its treasures on social media, proves once again that the fiesta's heritage does not only live in museums: sometimes it reappears, all of a sudden, in a box.

Sources: