Frigiliana's Patronal Weekend

We had the best possible reason for leaving the chaplaincy house early and taking ourselves out for the day. A preferred candidate for appointment as Chaplain was to come and see the house before making the final commitment. So, we drove up to nearby Frigiliana, with a view to having lunch at 'La Bodeguilla', where we ate and enjoyed excellent cooking a couple of times when we were last here, a year ago. 

The meal was a long slow lazy afternoon pleasure, punctuated by the odd sound of explosions from the hillside above and a single burst of fireworks from a finca below us on the hillside. These were, presumably part of technical rehearsals for the village patronal festival of San Antonio, about which our waitress informed us. The saint's day is Monday 13th, so why not have a fun fair and an open air concert and a disco or two, to liven up the early summer night air?

Frigiliana has lots of small shops with a variety of interesting craft works, pottery, linen, jewellery. There are also a variety of small to medium sized restaurants tucked away behind the streets, each with its own terrace and view across the verdant valley and enclosing mountains. Some of the older streets are very steep, and merciful not accessible to traffic apart from two wheelers. The winding narrow main thoroughfare still carries traffic. Vans and larger SUVs in particular make pedestrian passage difficult and on times risky. Nobody seems to want to park up and convey their goods or passengers over the last half mile by other means. Such a pity, because this is damaging for quality of life for locals as well as visitors. Why better equals bigger in the modern automotive design portfolio seems to go unquestioned, when it comes to environmental and social impact.

We browsed the shops before lunch, and again after lunch. I took but a few photos only. I already have hundreds of the streets to enjoy from previous visits.

Back in Nerja, fences in public spaces are being mounted with chip-board panels to take posters to host forthcoming municipal elections. It seems that each year we've been here in June there's some sort of election campaign going on. I wait with interest to see which round of elections are due to take place this time around. Back in Blighty, dialogue of the deaf over the EC referendum continues almost to the point of overshadowing the European Cup competition, which starts this weekend. My vote has been cast in the former. The latter fails to grab my interest, except to observe that somewhere or another rival football fans are fighting each other again.