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Name: Streets of Valencia
Address: Valencia, ES
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Streets of Valencia

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Streets of Valencia

Paul | Streets of Valencia 🍊🕶️

Private walking experiences in Valencia
History, culture, food and photography.
(4)

01/09/2026

I actually cooked tonight, Linguine Bolognese with lots of Gran Padano cheese🍝 comfort food!

01/09/2026

THE DAY VALENCIA DISAPPEARED UNDER WATER: THE GREAT FLOOD OF 1957

If you walk through the Turia Gardens today, it is difficult to imagine that this peaceful green ribbon through Valencia was once a river capable of terrifying the city. But on 14 October 1957, the Turia burst its banks and Valencia suffered one of the worst natural disasters in its modern history.

Heavy rain had been falling across the province for days, particularly inland and upstream. During the night of 13 October, warnings began reaching Valencia that an enormous volume of water was heading towards the city. Shortly after midnight the Turia overflowed, and in the early hours of the morning the first great surge of water swept into the streets.

Then came another. At around 2.30pm on 14 October, a second and even larger flood surged through Valencia. At its peak, an estimated 3,700 cubic metres of water per second were passing through the city. To put that into perspective, that is roughly one and a half Olympic swimming pools of water every second.

Entire neighbourhoods were inundated. Campanar, Marxalenes, La Saïdia and the maritime districts were among the worst affected, while water also reached deep into the centre of Valencia. In some streets it rose to more than five metres. Houses collapsed, cars and possessions were swept away and families climbed onto roofs and upper floors waiting to be rescued.

The official death toll was 81, although the true number has long been debated. Thousands of people were left facing destroyed or badly damaged homes, and when the water finally disappeared it left behind an extraordinary quantity of mud. The enormous clean-up operation that followed became known as the Batalla del Barro, the Battle of the Mud.

But the flood also changed Valencia forever. Authorities decided that allowing the Turia to continue flowing through the middle of a growing city was simply too dangerous. The resulting Plan Sur diverted the river south of Valencia into the huge artificial channel that you can still see today.

That left a rather important question: what should Valencia do with the old riverbed?

There were plans to turn it into a major urban road, but Valencians fought for something very different. Eventually the old Turia became the Jardín del Turia, the extraordinary park that now stretches through the city and has become one of Valencia’s most recognisable features.

01/09/2026

JAMIE OLIVER PUT CHORIZO IN PAELLA TEN YEARS AGO AND VALENCIA HAS STILL NOT FORGIVEN HIM. BUT WAS HE ACTUALLY WRONG?

There are certain things you can do in Valencia without attracting too much attention. You can walk slowly down the middle of a pavement. You can order a cappuccino after lunch. You can even squeeze a few drops of lemon onto your paella, as I discovered recently, although apparently you do so at your own risk. But there is one line that no sensible person crosses.

You do not put chorizo in paella.

Jamie Oliver crossed that line spectacularly in October 2016 when he proudly presented his “version” of paella to millions of followers. Chicken thighs. Rice. Vegetables. And then, sitting there in the pan like a hand gr***de with the pin already removed: chorizo.

The reaction was magnificent. Thousands of Spaniards descended on his social media accounts, with plenty of the outrage coming from people defending the Valencian origins of the dish. One response became legendary: “Remove the chorizo. We don’t negotiate with terrorists. First warning.” Others started sending Jamie deliberately ridiculous versions of British food in retaliation. Spain was politically divided at the time, but for one glorious moment Jamie Oliver had achieved what politicians couldn’t: he had united the country. Against Jamie Oliver.

The strange thing is that Jamie hadn’t actually produced something disgusting. Chicken, rice and chorizo probably tastes pretty good. That wasn’t the point. The crime, according to the prosecution, was calling it paella. Here in Valencia, paella isn’t shorthand for “rice with some nice things thrown into it”. It is a dish with deep roots in the region, connected to the rice fields around the Albufera and generations of families who have cooked it together.

And Valencians take those roots VERY seriously. This isn’t simply lunch. Paella is Sunday afternoons, family gatherings, wood fires, grandparents, enormous pans and at least three people standing behind the cook explaining that he’s doing it wrong. Every family seems to have its own little rules, but somehow everybody also knows exactly what everybody else is doing incorrectly.

Jamie, however, refused to surrender. When the controversy reached The Graham Norton Show, he admitted the reaction had been extraordinary and then committed what might be considered a second offence. He said it tasted better with chorizo. At that point I think we can safely assume his application for honorary Valencian citizenship was placed in a drawer.

But perhaps there is a serious question hiding underneath all the fun. Food changes. Recipes travel. Families adapt dishes. Restaurants experiment. There isn’t a culinary police force standing at the entrance to the Mercado Central checking shopping bags for unauthorised sausages.

So maybe Jamie Oliver wasn’t guilty of destroying paella at all. Maybe he simply made a tasty rice dish and gave it the wrong name.

Or maybe that sentence alone is enough to have me deported from Valencia.

And be honest: would you actually try Jamie’s version?

01/09/2026

Cloudy skies this morning…

01/09/2026

7 THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER SAY TO A VALENCIAN…UNLESS YOU WANT AN ARGUMENT

After the international incident I accidentally caused at the weekend by putting a few drops of lemon on my arroz del Senyoret, I thought it might be useful to establish a few other ways to upset the Valencians. Purely for educational purposes, obviously.

1. PUT CHORIZO IN A PAELLA.

If the lemon got me into trouble, I dread to think what would happen if I added chorizo. Put whatever you like in your rice at home, but once chorizo enters the equation, you might want to stop calling it paella valenciana.

2. TELL THEM ALICANTE MAKES BETTER RICE.

There are certain opinions you’re perfectly entitled to have. There are also certain opinions you might be better off keeping to yourself. This is probably one of them.

3. SAY VALENCIAN IS “JUST A DIALECT OF CATALAN.”

Congratulations. What started as a perfectly pleasant conversation over coffee has suddenly become a three-hour discussion about language, history, identity and politics. Order another drink. You’re going to be here for a while.

4. SAY VALENCIA IS BASICALLY A SMALLER BARCELONA.

It isn’t. And if you want to discover just how strongly people feel about that, try saying it loudly in a crowded Valencian bar.

5. PRONOUNCE PAELLA “PIE-ELLA.”

I’ve lived here long enough for this one to physically hurt. You don’t have to produce perfect Valencian pronunciation, but please, I’m begging you, step away from the pie.

6. CALL VALENCIA “A NICE LITTLE CITY.”

Little? Valencia is Spain’s third-largest city. It has Roman ruins, medieval towers, kilometres of beaches, one of Europe’s great urban parks and neighbourhoods with identities of their own. “Nice little city” is the sort of compliment that somehow manages to sound like an insult.

7. “DO WE REALLY NEED SO MANY FIREWORKS AT FALLAS? THEY’RE TOO LOUD.”

Yes. Apparently we do. Firecrackers in the morning, mascletàs that rearrange your internal organs, fireworks at midnight and random explosions throughout the day that make newcomers wonder what on earth they’ve moved into. Complaining that Fallas is too loud is rather like moving next to the sea and complaining that it’s wet.

So, over to you. What have I missed?👇

01/09/2026

GOODBYE AUGUST, HELLO SEPTEMBER: MY FAVOURITE MONTH IN VALENCIA

September is probably my favourite month to be in Valencia. It’s also when I finally start going to the beach! I think I’ve been to the beach twice this entire August. September is different. The sea is still beautifully warm, the worst of the heat begins to ease and I’m really looking forward to those late afternoons and evenings on the beach again.

Don’t expect autumn just yet though. September is still very much summer in Valencia, especially during the first half of the month. Daytime temperatures are typically around 28°C and nights become a little more comfortable. You’ll still get days above 30°C, but hopefully fewer of those nights when the entire city feels like somebody has forgotten to turn the oven off.

September is also a much better month for people to join me on my Streets of Valencia experience. The slightly cooler weather makes exploring the city far more enjoyable, and I particularly love the early morning starts. We can get out before the crowds arrive, when the Old Town is still relatively quiet and the morning light is beautiful. It’s one of my favourite times to capture some really special photographs of both the city and the people I’m walking with.

For me, September gives you the best bits of summer without quite so much of the punishment. Warm sea, sunny days, evenings outside and a city that feels alive again. After a long, hot August, I’m more than ready for it.

How has August been for you?

Are you sorry to see it go, or are you as ready for September as I am?

01/09/2026

TORTILLA DE PATATAS: SPAIN’S SIMPLEST GREAT DISH

There are probably more impressive dishes in Spanish cooking, but I’m not sure there are many more important ones than tortilla de patatas. You see it everywhere. On the counter of the most ordinary neighbourhood bar, cut into thick wedges at lunchtime, inside a bocadillo, taken to the beach, made at home and argued over endlessly.

And for something so familiar, nobody can say with complete certainty where it came from.

The potato arrived in Spain from South America in the 16th century, but for a surprisingly long time Europeans weren’t particularly enthusiastic about eating it. It was really during the 18th and 19th centuries that potatoes became an important everyday food, particularly for poorer families because they were cheap, filling and easy to grow.

Some of the earliest references to potatoes being used in tortillas appear in the late 18th century, while a document presented to the Cortes of Navarra in 1817 talks about people stretching eggs with potatoes to make food go further. There is also the famous story that tortilla was invented for the Carlist general Zumalacárregui during the 1830s. It’s a lovely story, but unfortunately there isn’t much evidence that it’s true.

The reality is probably much less romantic. Somebody had potatoes. Somebody had eggs. Somebody had a frying pan. At some point they put them together. It was cheap, filling and tasted bloody good, so other people did the same.

And that’s really the beauty of tortilla. It isn’t grand restaurant food. It’s ordinary food that became part of Spanish life. Every family seems to make it slightly differently and every bar seems convinced theirs is the correct way. Thick or thin, runny in the middle or properly set, potatoes sliced or roughly broken up. You can start an argument before you’ve even reached the important question.

Onion.

Here’s the interesting bit. Historically, the sin cebolla people may actually have a point. Older recipes generally consisted simply of potato and egg, and onion only became widely used much later. Personally, I don’t care. Two hundred years of history can be wrong.

For me it has to be con cebolla. The sweetness and softness of the onion just makes a tortilla better. Apparently around 70% of Spaniards agree, so I’m quite comfortable with my position.

But this argument will probably still be going on in another 200 years.

So, Streets of Valencia, con cebolla or sin cebolla?

31/08/2026

Good evening from the rooftops of El Carmen 🍊

31/08/2026

Where am I?

31/08/2026

Carrer de Baix 🍊

Dirección

Valencia

Página web

https://streetsofvalencia.myshopify.com/, https://www.instagram.com/thestreetsofvalencia/?hl=en

Notificaciones

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