Morrissey Booked Valencia During Fallas, Then Called the Noise Impossible

Morrissey called off his concert at the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofia in Valencia on 12 March, writing on morrisseycentral.com that the show had become impossible through lack of sleep. He said any form of sleep or rest through the night had been impossible because of festival noise, loud techno singing and megaphone announcements, and that he had been unable to rest in the city because of it.

He was more pointed about the hotel. He named the Plaza Manises and described it as an indescribable hell, adding that it would take him a year to recover and that this was an understatement. On the cancellation he drew a distinction that will not comfort anyone holding a ticket: the show is not cancelled, circumstances render the show impossible.

The detail he did not address is the calendar. Fallas is not a surprise. It runs to the same dates every March, it draws around a million people to Valencia, and its defining feature is the mascleta, a percussive daytime firework display staged deliberately to be felt as much as heard. Booking a concert in the middle of it and then citing the noise is a scheduling decision rather than an ambush.

It was also the sixth cancellation of the tour, after St Petersburg, San Diego, St Louis and Atlanta. One count puts it at 38 of 84 scheduled performances abandoned between early 2025 and January 2026, which is the number that turns a story about one bad night into a story about whether the tour is a going concern.

For Valencia the episode lands awkwardly. The city spends the year defending Fallas against the charge that it is too loud for anyone to live alongside, and has just been handed an international artist making exactly that argument. The difference is that residents knew what week it was.