🇬🇧 On the night of 13 August Elx sets off close to 2,000 kilos of gunpowder and some 70,000 rockets, not from one launch site but from balconies, rooftops and squares across the whole city at once. It starts around 23:15 and for the best part of an hour the sky over the palm groves is continuous noise and light. Locals call it the night of fire.
🇬🇧 On 14 and 15 August the Basílica de Santa María in Elx stages the Misteri d'Elx, a sung medieval drama about the death, assumption and coronation of the Virgin. It has been performed here since the fifteenth century, is sung in Valencian with passages in Latin, and is the only surviving liturgical drama in Europe still performed inside the church it was written for. UNESCO listed it in 2001 in the first proclamation of Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity.