Fiesta at Montenegro

Friday was our fiesta day, celebrating Santa Fatima.  A group of women from Yegen and Yator cleaned and polished the chapel in the days leading up to fiesta, they also bought some paint to re-do the door.  Three of them arrived with one scraper and one paint brush - had we got any they could borrow please?   Thursday afternoon they arrived with flowers to decorate the chapel and then came down to our house to cut fresh roses, ivy and periwinkle - but without any secateurs - could they use mine please?

The ayuntamiento sent a JCB down from Yegen to clean and tidy the pista, and they also put up 4 large wooden poles on the era to support some shadey mesh fabric for everyone who was eating their picnic there during the afternoon.

Anyway the sun shone for us all,  we did a head count during the service and I got up to about 60 people when they had to stand and then I couldn't see where I'd got to.  A friend also did a headcount and he reckons there were about 100 of us altogether.  Not bad for a cortijada with 5 adult residents!

So first  the service, then the procession then a picnic. People tend to form family groups and then share out their food, we sat with friends and neighbours and shared food and wine.  I'd made a very English picnic - egg mayonaise and cucumber sandwiches, cheese and pickle ones, strawberries and cream and home-made Pimms to drink.

Later we went down to Paco's cortijo for wine and habas for tapas, then on to another Paco's cortijo, finishing off at about 11pm.  Sampled a few glasses of wine along the way and - needless to say - had a slow and lazy day on Saturday.

Lorenzo bought his guitar and sang during the afternoon.