Peace after the fiesta

Peace and tranquility has returned to the plaza

I enjoy sitting first thing of a morning in the courtyard, a cup of tea in hand with just the insects buzzing and the birds twittering, a gentle breeze wafting the heady scent of the Jasmine around and a reasonably cool 26C before it hots up (currently 33)

A week before, the council come around and strim all the edges to the road, paint the stage, then the bins and the charanguito (pop up bar) get delivered and next years festeros stock it up

The festeros arrive early Friday evening and decorate the plaza and set tables etc up 

,Friday evening we had a reasonable band providing music after the ´meal´ although they didn´t start until after 11pm and finished around 2.30am.

Snacks such as monkey nuts, plates of pickled veg with olives, gherkins, onions etc are laid out with water melon slices followed with the traditional cake and Muscatel wine, with everyone tucking into their picnics.

 The beer and wine is also free, although no one takes advantage, the charanguito sell spirits, soft drinks and coffee and the proceeds go towards next years fiesta.

After the meal, the tables are cleared and the dancing begins

This is the beer station

Saturday follows a similar vein, although the band wasn´t quite so good and they were still packing away at 3.45am

Sunday morning is the church service followed by next years festeros being given huge slabs of cake with a red carnation in it. Iced lemon drinks are served (rather like slush puppies) then the childrens races with a prize for every child, the winner of the adults races are given a live rooster, quite what they do with them afterwards I don´t know! 

There is a lull until early evening when the traditional Spanish dancers give a display

The video was taken from our courtyard balcony, birds eye view!

The duo played for a while during the meal and again afterwards
They were upbeat and really enjoyable to listen to



They do like their sequence dancing and were happy to play whilst people wanted to dance. This was about 1am

I must admit I did give up by midnight and headed home, absolutely bushed

As usual, everything had been cleared away and collected by Tuesday, with just the streamers to take down

Our friends came up from the nearby town of Jalon for a couple of the evenings and said we were lucky as their fiesta goes all week long with music not finishing till 6am, don´t know how they do it.
No wonder everything here either closes for August or are on reduced hours. Even any building work, unless it´s a public building, is forbidden

I think the pool beckons
take care
xcx