Most cities have a busy night. Elche has one where the street lighting is deliberately switched off.
On the 13th of August, for the Nit de l’Albà, close to three tonnes of powder and more than 88,000 fireworks go up over the city. Minutes before midnight the display stops, the lights go out, and the Palmera de la Virgen is fired into a completely dark sky. It is extraordinary, and it is the single most awkward two hours of the year to be locked out.
What is actually in the way
Not the fireworks. The logistics around them.
The August fiestas run from the 7th to the 15th and the centre fills up for the whole stretch. Most of the historic core around the basilica is pedestrianised at the best of times — the van stops at the edge and the tools come in on foot — and during the fiestas the pedestrian area effectively grows, with closures and diversions that change from day to day. A distance of four hundred metres can take twenty minutes.
Then, on the night itself, add the fact that nobody can see anything.
If it happens to you
Say where you are in relation to the closures, not just your address. “Calle X” is not much help on the 13th. “Calle X, the Corredora end, past the barrier” is.
Expect the approach to take longer than the distance suggests, and be suspicious of anyone who promises otherwise on that particular night.
Have a light. Your phone torch is fine. A locksmith working a cylinder needs to see it, and the street will not be helping.
Do not assume it is hopeless. The city does not shut; it is just slower, and it is one night.
The version where it does not happen
Elche is a city where a lot of flats sit empty in August while their owners go elsewhere, and a lot of others fill up with family. Both of those are when the spare-set situation gets tested.
Two unglamorous habits cover almost all of it. Leave a set with somebody who is physically here in August rather than somebody who is in Madrid. And if your door has been needing a shove or your key has been stiffening since spring, deal with it in June — a lock that has been giving you warnings all year will choose the loudest night of the calendar to stop entirely.
There is nothing mystical about that. It is simply the night the most doors get used, by the most people, in the dark.
If this is where you have got to, the page you want next is the 24-hour line.