If it does rain, retreat into the old town and search out vintage 20th-century wall tiles in the bric-a-brac shops or sip some sunshine with an agua de Valencia, the city’s own cocktail made from freshly squeezed orange juice, vodka and cava.
After the catastrophic floods that swept through Valencia last year, Michael Hodges explains why it’s time to go back to the sunny Spanish city.
The old course of the Turia is now lush parkland and home to the City of Arts and Sciences complex, famous for Santiago Calatrava’s opera house in the form of a white-tiled ancient Greek helmet but also, nearby, Félix Candela’s wave-roofed Oceanogràfic aquarium.
On 19 March, the ninots are burned in public in an event called the cremà, but the best will be spared the flames and exhibited with others dating back as far as 1934 in Museo Fallero de Valencia.
In response, they moved the Turia south of the city (it was this re-routed river that took millions of gallons of flood surge away to the south last year).
