Fuengirola

=**FUENGIROLA FIESTA**= Religious festivals are a bit of a mystery to us so we weren’t sure what we were going to see when we caught the bus down to the town of Fuengirola. We’re still not quite sure of everything we saw but it was an unusual experience. Knowing that the mass prior to the parade started at 10:30 we thought we were being rather clever not leaving Mijas until then but, as we really should have realized, the service didn’t finish until almost 12:00. We stood at the back of the open-air mass (held outside the church) for a while but it was all Dutch or rather, Spanish, to us so we wandered away and waited where everyone else seemed to be waiting. Sure enough, the parade eventually started to wind its way past us. It was a very stop-go affair with people flowing past carrying religious “thingies” and then, for no particular reason, it would all come to a halt for a few minutes and then, inexplicably, it would move on. The “piece de resistance” was a huge silver box like raft with a statue of the Virgin Mary atop carried by about 70 young men. Maybe they were the reason for the stop-start as they put the whole thing down for a breather after not that many metres! Following the parade we headed, along with almost everyone else, to the festival grounds which had all the usual fairground attractions (although pretty big!) plus lots of halls which we finally gathered were eating and drinking places which also provided entertainment in the evenings (some of which we gather is the locals dancing). The number of women, aged from 3 to 83, wearing brightly coloured flamenco styled dresses was amazing. Obviously on these special fiesta days the glad rags come out and its party time! We tried the "plate of the day" at one of the halls - we think it consisted of warm boiled squid in a watery mix of peas and carrots, followed by a stew of chick peas and bits of offal - yummy ! Gail couldn't eat anything but the bread! Unfortunately we had to head back to Mijas before it really got started as we were leaving early the next day but we both thoroughly enjoyed what we saw and experienced.
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