Fiesta de San Isidro

This was one of those "surprise parades" that I didn't know was coming. Last year I just caught it from my balcony. This year I grabbed my camera, ran downstairs, and ran up the street past all the participants so I wouldn't miss anything.

The Fiesta de San Isidro celebrates the patron saint of the farmers, Saint Isidro. It is celebrated on the 15th of May (so I'm a bit late with this post) and they came into town with tractors pulling festively decorated wagons.

The horses were almost all very spirited and beautiful, and of course everyone was dressed in their finest traditional Spanish outfits.

Saint Isidore (Isidro) was born about 1070 and was a farmer his whole life. He was very generous, and had a number of miraculous stories and miracles attributed to him. For example, it is said that his son fell into a well, and when he and his wife Santa Maria prayed, the water level rose until they were able to get their son out of the well.

Other stories told of how he would go to mass and pray every day while angels did his work, and how when he did work, angels worked on either side of him, so he was able to do the work of three men.

One last story (there are many) - he would bring people home to eat with them, and one day he brought home so many Marie ran out of food. When she told Isidore, he told her to look again, and she was able to keep scooping food out until everyone was fed.

These pictures don't go with the Fiesta de San Isidro, but were part of the International Festival (the parade was short :) ). Quite the variety of meats!

And will you take a lemon with your piglet?  You can buy whole piglets and whole rabbits (skinned) in the supermarkets. And there is always a large selection of fresh fish right out in the open that they will help you get!

Of course there were huge vats of Paella (the traditional Spanish rice and meat dish, often with a variety of seafood in it).

 This is a random food picture - a traditional cake with a real egg in the middle of it. We got it to celebrate some Spanish Saint in La Mancha when we were there the end of April.  Spain does love it's Saints and Festivals!

Here are a few random pictures of the Fuengirola beach as they prepared for the summer tourist season. Here they're digging holes for the beach umbrellas, all with that kind of natural, matty look.

They also brought in loads of sand and spread it around with tractors. A beach can never have enough sand!