^{[photo courtesy Spanish-Living.com]}

Meet L’Hemisfèric, one of the five attractions that make up the dazzling, ultramodern City of Arts and Sciences (known as Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències in Catalan, or Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias in Spanish) in Valencia, Spain. This “city,” completed in 2004 by renowned Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, includes an opera house, a garden, a science museum and an oceanographic park. The cherry on top of this sensory overload sundae is, of course, L’Hemisfèric: an entertainment complex boasting the trifecta of IMAX theater, laserium and planetarium. And if you’re into creepy nicknames, feel free to call it the “Eye of Knowledge.” (According to Spanish-Living.com, “The eye even blinks with the aid of a steel and glass shutter operated by hydraulic lifts.”)

^{[photos courtesy Hipocondriaca, . Bambo]}

As it turns out, right now would be an excellent time to make a trip to Valencia, as the whole town is gearing up for Las Fallas. Held on March 15-19, this annual celebration welcomes spring in the very best way: with FIRE and NOISE. During the festivities, celebrants construct enormous firecracker-stuffed puppets (called ninots), usually grotesque or satirical figures, which get paraded around the streets and placed in tableaus (fallas). Every day at 2pm, pyrotechnicians try to out-muscle each other in La Mascletá, a fireworks competition that focuses on sheer bone-rattling percussive power instead of sparkly lights. (They refer to the finale as the terremoto, meaning “earthquake.”) As you might expect, the whole thing culminates in an epic conflagration: Nit del Foc (”The Night of Fire”). According to Valencia City Guide:

All Fallas burn all over the city the following night (including the winner of the competition) in a tremendous spectacle of fire and joy. Valencia is at that moment like Nero’s Rome, a city in flames.

And indeed, so it would seem:

^{[photos courtesy vanguardista, Fabio Gava]}

For more dazzling Las Fallas snapshots from Flickr, go here. [Thanks to Neatorama for inspiring for this post!]

Charcuterie connoisseurs, rejoice: Spain’s famed jamón ibérico, a luxury cured ham, has arrived in the States. Up until this point, the USDA has shunned this product on account of being skeeved out by its curing methods, as making it basically involves hanging hunks of raw salted pork out to dry for anywhere from 9 months to 2 years or more.

However, due to the efforts of Don and Ruth Harris (co-owners of online Spanish gourmet store La Tienda), a family business in western Spain has tweaked its facilities and curing process to meet the USDA’s standards. The first jamón ibérico hit US stores in December 2007, while the prized bellota variety is scheduled to make its stateside debut in July 2008.

The bellota ham is to Spain roughly what Kobe beef is to Japan. It’s made from pigs who spend their pampered — albeit short — lives wandering around “specially maintained oak forests,” gorging themselves on acorns. Here’s a particularly vivid description of the setup, from this WSJ article:

Jamon Iberico “bellota,” which La Tienda also will be importing, can be thought of as the holy grail with a halo. It comes from Iberian pigs that toward the end of their free-range lives eat up to 20 pounds of acorns (bellotas) a day. Noting the premise that calm pigs have the best meat, Harris describes how, on their last day, these pigs “have Mozart played to them and are given hot showers,” then are gently euthanized (”sacrificed” is the Spaniards’ term) with carbon monoxide.

Wow. Of course, salivating gourmands can always turn to La Tienda as a source for this porcine ambrosia. But if any of you Boston-area foodies need a jamón fix immediately, the kind folks at Formaggio Kitchen will gladly help you out.

Really, the lifting of this restriction really couldn’t have come at a better time — after all, Hardee’s was dangerously close to running out of sodium-larded meat products to cram into its burgers. (Then again, with this pork fetching $100 a pound, you’re probably not going find it under your Monster Thickburger bun anytime soon.)

[Thanks to Apartment Therapy; photo courtesy Flickr user su-lin]