Valencia Trader

Kite Festival Valencia

Valencia once again hosts XIII Festival Internacional de Cometas, the International Kite Festival from 10-11 April 2010, at which it is expected more than 200 people will participate.  The kites will be flying both days from 10.00 - 18.00 hrs.

Between the Saturday 10th and Sunday11th  April 2010, the Paseo Maritimo holds the International Kite-flying Competition “Ciudad de Valencia”.
Wind permitting, the kites will brighten the dark Valencian night with their multicoloured and fluorescent lights, and during the day , with the sea as a backdrop, more than four thousand kites will dance in unison in a colourful three-ring circus.

The Chinese invented kites, as well as gunpowder, paper, the compass and the abacus, more than 2000 years ago. But kite-flying was not considered a pastime; it was a way of scaring off evil spirits, asking for plentiful harvests and as a strategic weapon in war.

Much later, the silk and spice merchants spread the art of kite-flying from China to Japan and India and from there to the Mediterranean. It was then when it became a hobby brought from the East to the West. Ancient drawings still exist of kites in the shape of a dragon, one of the animals held sacred for many Eastern cultures.

For centuries kites have been in the shape of birds and other animals, inventions of the past and gadgets of the future, huge and tiny, mountains and clouds, and they have filled the sky with all the colours of the rainbow. 

For more details, go to:- Festival Cometa