Paula Carbonell Sevila: "Experiencing the Band Entry Increases My Desire to Enjoy the Bonfires"

Paula Carbonell Sevila celebrates two decades of involvement in the Alicante Bonfires. She does so with a new role, as a candidate for the 2025 Bellea del Foc, representing her bonfire, Doctor Bergez-Carolinas, during the past year.

This Alicante native takes pride in being a foguerer. "I have grown up in this festive, loving, and hardworking environment." She also boasts that the Bonfires "are my daily life," acknowledging that "there is no healthier and more beautiful way to grow up and develop than being part of all this."

Emotions run high every June with the first note of the band entry, her favourite parade. "It excites me because it's the first event where we all parade dressed in 18th-century attire." The atmosphere in the streets of Alicante during this day, due to the "eagerness" for the Bonfires, "increases my desire to enjoy."

The enjoyment lasts throughout the main days, with special emphasis on the nit de la plantà. Paula Carbonell shares an anecdote she recalls every 20th of June. A few years ago, she and a friend were tasked with "cleaning two large buckets full of stones."

Both hurried to carry out the order. "We scooped the stones with basins, put them in water, and then placed them in a clean bucket." It was later, with "our nails and fingers destroyed," that the other foguerers realised what they were doing. "They asked us what we were doing since the stones would be on the ground and would get dirty again."

After hearing the surprise, both burst into laughter "to avoid crying, as what a job we had been doing!" she recalls. Since then, every nit de la plantà, the foguerers "look at us and say 'Come on, it's your turn to clean the stones,'" and once again, they laugh at that anecdote at the Doctor Bergez-Carolinas bonfire.