El Veranillo de San Miguel.

Late September in Andalucía is known as El Veranillo de San Miguel - the little summer of Saint Michael - and although we are officially in autumn,  the sun is shining - mostly - although there are some weird clouds around.  Large fluffy ones,  some look like they've been combed out,  some starter space-ships,  and away back beyond Válor are some looming dark ones.  But generally nice,  around  25° today but although I didn't swim this afternoon, I did lay out on the sunbed catching a few rays and doing the inevitable back exercises.

Yesterday was San Miguel and it was celebrated in a few villages within earshot of us,  mainly up in Mecina Bombaron.  Starting on Saturday late afternoon,  all day Sunday and most of today,  there have been church bells ringing,  fireworks booming,  early morning brass marching bands,  loud music once or twice,  and looking at the fiesta programme, we are in for a midnight treat of fuegos artificiales - a firework display to you and me.  Most of the fireworks so far have been of the more bang than beauty type. 

We belong to Mecina,  it's where we pay our rates,  known here as IBI,  which stands for  Impuesto sobre Bienes Inmuebles.  But it's a long way round to Mecina and we can sit by our pool and watch the fireworks from the comfort of a chair,  with a bottle of wine by our side,  and not have to worry about getting home.  And probably get a better view of all the fireworks as well.

If you happen to look at the link to the fiesta programme,  it has all the fiestas for the year, plus the ones in Yegen and El Golco and here in Montenegro as we all belong to the same Ayuntamiento.  With some pictures too,  including our Santa Fatima.

Another link,  this one a translation into English.....more about the fiestas rather than the actual programme of events.

And as I write this,  the first of the evening fireworks has just gone up,  they start about now,  I think more of a  "reminder/get out of bed/end of siesta/get your party clothes on"  type of firework rather than anything actually about to start.  Although at 6pm - that's a Spanish 6pm which could be anytime - there is  a

Carrera de cintas para bicicletas, motos y burros con trofeos para los participantes.

which translates literally as  race tapes for bikes, motorcycles and donkeys,  with trophies for the participants,  hopefully not all at the same time!  When they were going to have a race in Yátor which sounded like this,  we were told the tape went down the road and ribbons were tied onto it,  the participants had to pull the ribbons off the tape as they raced down.  Maybe someone knows more about this than I do,  as I said before it's a long way round to Mecina to find out!