Fair Stories in charcoal

It’s eight o’clock on Wednesday morning and the Plaza de la Constitución still smells of hose water. The only people about are a street sweeper on her third pass and the set-up crew. And me. I’m a cable tie: a twenty-centimetre strip of black plastic, with tiny teeth along one side and a little square head at the tip. I come in a bag of a hundred, all identical, until someone puts a hand in and picks you.

I was picked by Inma, who has the bag hanging from her belt next to a pair of pliers. She carries me up the ladder to the top of the stage, where the banner is waiting: six metres of canvas with red letters announcing the Torrox Fair 2026.

She threads me through the eyelet in the canvas, wraps me round the stage pipe and pulls. Zzzrip. Click, click, click. Each little tooth slots into place and never comes out again, because cable ties have no reverse gear. A screw works loose; a nut changes its mind over the years. When a cable tie says yes, it means yes.

Then come the pliers. Inma snips off my spare tail flush with my head, so no ugly little stub sticks out in the photos. It’s like asking for a trim and leaving the hairdresser’s with a buzz cut. The cable tie next to me, who also has a short one, says it suits me. We cable ties are very supportive of each other.

From my corner I watch the square being put together. Two of Inma’s colleagues line up the barriers, clang, clang, like someone setting out chairs for a wedding. An electrician goes up in the platform basket to aim the spotlights and asks “Is that hitting you?”; from below they answer with a thumbs-up. A Local Police patrol walks by, takes a look and carries on its round. Then coffee and churros arrive, and the crew gathers for five minutes in the shade of the lorry. Not one more.

At half past eight a local man walks past with a baguette under his arm, stops, tilts his head and pronounces:

“It’s crooked.”

Every town has a man like that; it’s a public service. Inma climbs up again and gives the right-hand corner a tug. The man nods, satisfied. I haven’t moved a millimetre, for the record.

I do the maths: there are more than a hundred cable ties on this stage. We hold up cables, spotlights, garlands, banners and an orange extension lead that nobody knows where it came from. If one day we all decided to let go at once, the Gala would be a heap of things on the floor. Just as well we don’t know how.

And tonight there’s work to do. At seven, the Fair Gala, with the dance schools stamping on the boards. At twenty to nine, the Queens and the Mister. At half past ten, the opening speech. At eleven, the lights go on at the fairground; at quarter past eleven, the rockets; and at half past eleven, the first headline act, with speakers that will shake the canvas like a sheet on a washing line.

Tonight’s photos will show the dresses, the crowns and the confetti. If someone zooms in a lot, really a lot, they’ll see a tiny black dot at the top of the banner. That’s me. I’m in every photo and nobody recognises me. Same as the crew.

At nine, Inma gives the canvas one last tug, the way you adjust a child’s rucksack at the school gate. I hold. She nods, pockets the pliers and goes off with the others to fetch more barriers. When the fair is over she’ll come back to release us: you don’t untie a cable tie, you cut it. I’ve made my peace with that. But until then, the easterly wind can blow as hard as it likes. Nobody’s moving me from here.

At half past nine on Wednesday morning, when half of Torrox is still asleep and the other half is ironing ruffles, I’ve already been at the Complejo La Granja for a while, inside a little tartan bag, bumping into my two sisters every time my owner shifts his weight. I’m a pétanque ball. Chrome-plated steel, seven hundred grams, competition grooves. And a mission in life I’ve never quite accepted: getting close to the jack.

The jack is a little wooden ball the size of a walnut, painted a garish orange, that spends the whole tournament sitting still and giving itself airs. Everyone looks at it. Everyone measures it. And I, who weigh twenty times as much, am supposed to go and pay it homage like a courtier. Well, I don’t feel like it.

My owner is called Antonio. He’s seventy-four, wears a promotional cap from an animal-feed warehouse and has a technique he calls “my father’s”, which consists of crouching, closing one eye, muttering something that sounds like a prayer and releasing me with a flick of the wrist. Opposite, the rival team: two brothers in matching polo shirts with the seriousness of a World Cup final. One of them has a magnet tied to a string to pick up the balls without bending down. Cutting-edge technology.

First throw. Antonio launches me lovingly. I, with the best intentions in the world, bounce off a tiny pebble, swerve and stop two hand-spans from the jack, looking the other way. “Oh, it’s gone long!” he moans. I haven’t gone long, Antonio. I’ve gone with dignity.

Second throw. One of the brothers places a ball so close to the jack they look like sweethearts. Discreet applause. A man with a flask of coffee remarks, “Textbook, that one.” From my exile, I feel something very much like envy.

Then comes the moment that changes my career. Antonio takes off his cap, scratches his head and says to his partner, Pepe: “No point getting close here. Here we have to shoot.” And he picks me. Me. He wipes me with a cloth handkerchief, blows on me, looks me in the eye and whispers: “Come on, beautiful, the fair starts today.”

Shooting, in pétanque, is the opposite of pointing: you go for your opponent’s ball and knock it out with one clean hit. That’s my thing. It’s the rock and roll of pétanque.

I leave his hand in a perfect arc, cross the cool morning air, land right on top of the lovestruck ball and — clonk! I send it off for a stroll to the fence, while I stay planted in its place, snug against the jack, as if I’d been there all my life. The experts call it a “carreau”. At home we call it poetic justice.

The silence lasts half a second. Then Pepe shouts “Get in!”, the man with the flask spills coffee all over himself and the brothers in matching polos stare at each other as if someone had changed the rulebook. The one with the magnet takes ages to retrieve the expelled ball. He finds it under a bench, deeply shaken.

We didn’t win the tournament. We came third, behind a team of ladies who pointed with surgical precision and snacked on magdalenas between throws. But on the way home, inside the little tartan bag, Antonio kept telling everyone he passed: “Did you see that carreau? That ball has flair.”

Now I rest on the hall cabinet, between the keys and the medical card. My sisters say I think too much of myself. Maybe. But this year, for the first time, I got close to the jack. My way.

I’ve spent four fairs at the top of the raffle stall at the Llano de la Almazara. Four. I’m a panda, one metre twenty tall, with a red bow tie and an embroidered smile that, over the years, has become a little fixed. The sign on the stall says, in neon letters: “EVERYONE WINS!”. And it’s true. Everyone wins. It’s just that nobody ever wins me.

People win the dolphin keyring. People win the multicoloured comb. People win the set of plastic cups with fruit on them, which has a suspiciously high success rate. People win a squeaky rubber duck that has changed hands more often than a five-euro note. But not the panda. The panda is the dream. The panda is up there so people keep buying tickets.

Today is Wednesday, Children’s Day. The rides are cheaper and, until nine at night, they run without noise, which is a lovely thing: the rides spin, rise and fall in silence, with the lights on and the children laughing, and at last you can hear what people are saying. Although, at a raffle stall, that isn’t always a good idea.

“Daddy, the panda!”

Here we go. It’s started. A boy of about six, his face painted like a tiger, points at me. His father looks up, looks at the sign, looks at his wallet and does a mental calculation you can see on his forehead. He buys five tickets. Keyring, comb, comb, cups, rubber duck. He buys five more. Keyring, keyring, a pen with a feather, cups and a fridge magnet shaped like a flip-flop. On the third round, the mother appears behind him with two candyflosses and a look that could freeze the Mediterranean.

“How much have you spent?”

“Not much,” he says.

They’re twenty euros down. I know because from up here I know everything.

In the end the boy leaves with a dolphin keyring, a comb, two sets of cups and the rubber duck, which he has already named Paco. And he leaves happy. Much happier than if he’d won me, since I wouldn’t have fitted in the car. The father looks at me one last time, with a mixture of resentment and respect. See you next year, champ.

The afternoon goes by. Couples go by, gangs of friends, and a man who insists “this is rigged” and buys ten tickets to prove it. He wins a comb. He leaves satisfied, theory confirmed.

And then, almost at nine, when the rides are about to make noise again, a grandmother arrives. Tiny, with an enormous handbag and a granddaughter by the hand. She doesn’t ask about the panda. She doesn’t even look at me. She buys a single ticket, “just to try”, and opens it with her fingernails, slowly, without her glasses.

The stallholder reads it twice. He drops the microphone. He picks it up. He clears his throat.

“Ladies and gentlemen, the paaaandaaaa!”

The whole stall turns round. The granddaughter screams. The grandmother, who hasn’t understood a thing, asks, “What have I won, love?” And they lift me down from the top with a hook, after four fairs, to applause, like an astronaut returning to Earth.

The granddaughter carries me. She’s the same height as I am, so it’s more like we’re hugging, lurching across the fairground and dodging legs. As we pass the bumper cars, the tiger-faced boy sees us and lets out an “Oh!”. Paco the duck squeaks.

Now I live in an armchair in a house in town, with a blanket over my legs. They call me Don Panda. It’s not very original, but it’s mine. And every time someone comes through the door, the grandmother says: “I won that at the fair. With one ticket.”

Everyone wins. You just had to wait.

We are the teacher’s rehearsal shoes. Canvas that was once pink, split soles so the foot can bend as it likes, and a patch of duct tape on the toe that is now part of our personality. Today, at seven in the evening, the Fair Gala begins in the Plaza de la Constitución, and we are where we always are: at the side of the stage, behind the black curtain, where not a single spotlight reaches.

We’ve been rehearsing since July at the studio: a full-length mirror wall, a little handprint at knee height and a fan that turns its head as if saying no to everything. That mirror has seen the four-year-olds; the twelve-year-olds, who look at themselves in the glass more than at the teacher; three lads who came along with their sisters and now arrive first; and the Tuesday group, people who took up dancing when they retired and haven’t missed a class, not even on dentist days.

The teacher corrects in short phrases. “That chin.” “Arms — you’re not hanging out washing.” “Look at the audience; the floor already knows the dance.” And we follow: five, six, seven, eight, the same step a hundred times, until it sticks to our soles like a catchy song.

And then there’s Alba: five years old, a bow the size of an open hand and her own internal clock that always runs half a beat behind. When the group turns, Alba thinks about it. When the group finishes, she does the last spin on her own, very serious, with the tip of her tongue sticking out. And the teacher applauds as if it had gone perfectly. If anyone asks whether she should be corrected, she answers without stopping counting: “Rhythm can be learnt. What she brings, can’t.”

Today we’re not alone. Behind the stage, all the town’s dance schools and groups gather, and at floor level it’s a footwear assembly: flamenco shoes with nails that clatter even standing still, spotless trainers for modern dance with laces that look ironed, ribboned espadrilles for the traditional dances. All on the same little patch of floor, and nobody treads on anybody.

You can hear the nerves too. A girl goes over the choreography under her breath. A boy ties his laces for the fourth time. A mother searches for the hair tie she’s wearing on her wrist. At each side of the stage stands a teacher, and they all do the same as ours: a deep breath, a kiss on the forehead and an “enjoy it” said like an order.

The music starts and out they go. And here’s what nobody knows: we dance too. From behind the curtain, the teacher marks every step with her feet, tiny. Five, six, seven, eight. When they turn, we turn. When they raise their arms, she raises hers halfway, as if helping from afar.

On the last turn, Alba is left on her own, half a beat behind, as always. But today there’s a whole square watching. She finishes her spin, plants her feet and opens her arms. And the Plaza de la Constitución does what the teacher has been doing since July: it applauds as if it had gone perfectly. Because it has.

At the bows, the little ones tug the teacher out onto the stage. She resists, but only a bit. And so, for the first time, we step onto the boards with our duct tape on show, in front of half the town. Nobody looks at us, of course. They’re all looking at the teacher, who is crying and says it’s because of the lights.

Later comes the crowning of the Queens and the Mister, and the prizes, but that’s another story. First rehearsal in November. Alba has already announced that next year she’ll be on time. The teacher has told her not to rush; we’ll wait for her.

The dark wooden castanets had been silent for years, hanging from a hook on the frame of the window overlooking Calle Alta. Held by a red cord faded by the Torrox sun, they had become just another ornament, on a par with the chemist’s calendar and the ceramic plate nobody dares take down. They were my grandmother’s. And my grandmother, may she rest in peace and dance in glory, played them like machine-gun fire: at village weddings people said that if they sat her near the band, the drummer got depressed.

Every October, when the trumpets and drums of the fair began booming down the hill towards the square, that room went quieter than ever. Outside, rockets, street bands and a man testing a speaker with the eternal “yes, yes, testing, one, two”. Inside, two pieces of wood watching me from the window like a dog that knows you won’t be taking it for a walk today.

That fair afternoon, the wind coming up from the sea slipped rudely between the geranium pots. The gust knocked the varnished wood against the window frame: a dry, clumsy but clear clack. Just one. But in Torrox, a clack in the middle of the fair is a declaration of intent.

Below, a group of neighbours in polka dots were climbing the hill laughing on their way to the dance, fans at the ready for battle. Hearing the crack, Paqui — who has an ear for rhythm the conservatoire would kill for — looked up, clapped quickly and shouted up to the balcony:

“Come on, let’s hear that roll, it’s fair time!”

“It was the wind!” I replied, leaning out.

“Well, tell the wind to come down and dance, there’s plenty of room!” another one finished, and the rest doubled over laughing onto their ruffles.

I stood looking at the castanets. They looked back at me. Or so it seemed — at fair time you can’t trust anything. I took them down carefully, undid the knot in the cord and slipped the loops over my thumbs. I hadn’t tried in ages. The last time, aged nine, one slipped out of my hand and hit the cat right across the back. The cat didn’t set foot in that room again until Easter.

I took a deep breath. I remembered my grandmother’s voice: “The roll starts in your little finger, not in your fear.” And I let out the first beat.

It came out clean. Trrrria. Against the warm evening air, as if the wood had been waiting years for the signal.

From the street came an ovation bigger than at the opening speech. The neighbours cheered, someone shouted “Olé, your grandmother!”, which, come to think of it, was exactly right, and a little boy walking past with a SpongeBob balloon stopped dead with his mouth open. I got carried away and strung together another roll, then a clumsier one, then one I don’t even know the name of but that sounded glorious to me.

The wood, warm from the sun, stopped being a mourning ornament. It got its voice back. And memory, which had spent years being sorrow, put on its polka dots and went out into the street.

By the time the lanterns of Calle Alta began lighting up one by one, I was already heading down the hill behind the neighbours, castanets on my thumbs and grinning from ear to ear. On the way I passed the cat, peering out of the next window. It gave me a resentful look. Some wounds not even the fair can heal.

I’ve been sitting on a garnet velvet cushion since seven in the evening, behind the stage in the Plaza de la Constitución, surrounded by cables, water bottles and a lady from the organising team who looks at me every five minutes as if I might run away. I won’t run away. I’m a crown. A tiara, to be exact: silver-coloured metal, twelve little stones that sparkle as if they were real and a coat of glitter someone added yesterday “so it shines under the lights”. The glitter, by the way, is already everywhere: on the cushion, on the table and in the lighting technician’s moustache. Glitter never goes away. Glitter is forever.

Tonight is the Fair Gala and, at twenty to nine, the Queens and the Mister of 2026 will be chosen. I still don’t know whose head I’ll end up on, and for a crown that’s like not knowing which house you’ll live in for the rest of the year.

From the cushion I see everything. I see the candidates touching up their make-up using their phones as mirrors, breathing deeply and encouraging each other with a camaraderie many would envy. I see a mother fixing a bun with three hairpins held between her teeth. I see a grandfather who has sneaked backstage on the excuse of “bringing a bottle of water” and hasn’t left in twenty minutes, more excited than if he were the candidate himself.

And I see the Mister candidates. One practises his smile in front of a switched-off speaker. Another rehearses under his breath what he’ll say if he wins. And all of them glance at me sideways with an envy I know well: the Mister gets a sash, and a sash, between you and me, is not the same thing. A sash is an accessory. I am an institution.

The dance schools start up and the stage shakes. My cushion vibrates. My little stones jingle. The lady from the organising team holds me with her hand, just in case, and I take the opportunity to give her a little more glitter. She’ll remember me until Christmas.

Then the moment arrives. The presenter raises her voice. The obligatory drumroll sounds, the one that sounds the same at every gala in the world, as if there were a single drummer hired for the whole planet. You could cut the tension with a knife. One candidate squeezes another’s hand. In the front row someone shouts a name and half the town shushes them.

The name is announced. Applause, screams and a group hug on stage that nearly knocks me off my cushion. Hands lift me, carry me towards the light and, for the first time in my life, I look straight at the whole square. Hundreds of phones pointing at me. Lanterns. A little boy on his father’s shoulders with a candyfloss bigger than his head.

I land on a hairdo full of hairspray that holds like a city wall. I settle in. I wobble a little to the left. The Queen laughs, steadies me with her hand and whispers to the girl next to her: “If it falls off, I’ll die.” I don’t fall off. Hairsprayed hairdos are my speciality.

From up here I see the Mister showing off his new sash with a look of pure happiness, the water-bottle grandfather crying his eyes out and the lady from the organising team shaking glitter out of her hair, resigned.

A year of events, photos, parades and the odd shoebox awaits me. But tonight, at the very top of the Plaza de la Constitución, with the whole fair at my feet, I know whose head I live on. And I shine. Oh, how I shine.

I’m a stepladder. Seven steps, yellow fibreglass legs and a sticker at the top forbidding anyone to stand on the last one. I’m not aluminium because electricians don’t trust anything that conducts. I don’t even conduct the van: I travel on the roof rack, tied down with two bungee cords.

Wednesday, half past nine at night, and my legs are planted in the sandy ground of the Llano de la Almazara. An hour and a half until the lights go on. The rides have already turned up their music — until nine they keep quiet — and the Children’s Day kids are running from the carousel to the bumper cars. The fairground, on the other hand, is still dark: thousands of bulbs waiting and four electricians with head torches checking they’re waiting for a reason.

The big entrance arch isn’t my job. They check that from the crane, which gives itself airs because it reaches everywhere. The crane crew say that up there, third row, to the left of the coat of arms, there’s a bulb that keeps asking whether yellow suits it. My job is what doesn’t get into the photos: fuse boards, garlands, small arches, the stalls’ sockets.

Since five in the afternoon, Lucía has climbed me fifty-three times. I’ve counted; it’s the only thing a ladder can do while being stood on. Up she goes, looks, tightens a terminal, comes down, folds me, hoists me on her shoulder and opens me up ten metres further on. Behind her comes Andrés, the crew chief, with a notebook and a tester that beeps like a little bird. All that bending makes his knee creak. Mine is the hinge. We understand each other.

A boy with a dolphin balloon asks Lucía if she’s the one who switches on the fair. “I make sure that when someone switches it on, something happens,” she answers. The boy decides that’s grown-up stuff and runs off.

At quarter past ten the rebel shows up: a bulb on the garland crossing the street of stalls, right above the candied almonds. In the test it comes on, goes off, comes on again and has second thoughts.

“That one’s pulling our leg,” says Andrés.

First, the power is cut. Always. It’s the first thing an electrician’s ladder learns, before its own serial number. Andrés pulls the lever down, steps on my foot with his boot, which is our way of shaking hands, and Lucía climbs. One, two, three, four, five, six. She unscrews, looks and laughs: “It’s not blown, it’s loose.” “Like all of us at this hour,” Andrés replies. A quarter turn, lever up, and the rebel shines steadily, very well-behaved, as if butter wouldn’t melt. Lever down again: it’s not time yet.

At quarter to eleven they fold me up and lean me against the van, between a coil of cable and a flask of coffee gone cold. People are arriving at the entrance arch: pushchairs, gangs of friends, families with cardigans in case it gets chilly. Nobody looks this way. Four high-vis vests in the dark are no great show.

At eleven the countdown sounds and the fair lights up from bottom to top. There’s a very long round of applause. Trade secret: electricians don’t look at the lights. They look at the fuse board. Andrés has his torch fixed on the circuit breaker, like someone waiting for a penalty. One, two, three seconds. Nothing trips.

Now, yes. Andrés switches off his torch, Lucía takes off her helmet and the four of them look up with the small smile of people who know how many times they’ve climbed to make this happen. Nobody applauds them. They don’t mind. Lucía gives my side rail two little pats: “Good work, partner.”

At quarter past eleven the rockets go up. For today, others can do the climbing.

I came out of the cardboard box barely forty minutes ago. I still have that sharp smell of new plastic, freshly torn seal and cable that has never tasted electricity. My working life began with no trial period and no running-in: in the blink of an eye I went from the darkness of a warehouse to sitting on top of a metal stand, presiding over the main stage in the Plaza de la Constitución. From shelf to stardom in one afternoon.

It’s half past ten on Wednesday night. Looking down from this height takes your breath away, even though I, technically, don’t breathe. The square has become a human tide threatening to overflow the lanes of Torrox. Hundreds of heads squeeze together under the strings of bulbs, the paper lanterns tremble in the sea breeze and the murmur of the crowd rises in dense waves, heavy with the smell of candied almonds and freshly fried churros. Every eye in town is pointing straight at me.

A moment ago, the sound technician gave me two sharp taps with the pad of his thumb to check I was working. Pom, pom. It echoed in my membrane with the violence of a thrown stone and I feared the solder joints in my base would come loose live on stage. Then he blew. He blew. Who taught this man that you blow into a microphone? I held firm, without a hint of feedback, with the dignity of one who knows he has a mission.

At quarter past ten I’m properly christened: the councillor for Festivities and the mayor come up to give their welcome, and I hold my own like a veteran. But the big one comes later. At half past ten, the opening speech. And this year it isn’t given by one person: it’s given by a whole local song-and-dance group, every last member.

They come up on stage in single file, in their gala costumes, shawls neatly placed, castanets peeking out of their pockets and that mix of excitement and nerves you can see even in their heels. There are lots of them. There’s one of me. I do the maths and break into a cold sweat: if each of them comes within three millimetres of my grille, I’m going to need a holiday after tonight.

The speech passes from hand to hand. One voice describes the fair of the old days, with paper lanterns and dances until dawn. Another remembers those who are no longer here, and the whole square falls silent. Another tells an anecdote that makes even the sound technician laugh. I jump from palm to palm like the baton in a relay race, and in every hand I feel a different pulse: one trembles, one squeezes and one holds me with so much affection I almost get emotional.

Towards the end, someone beats time with their knuckles on the lectern. The castanets start up. And the whole group launches into a local copla, in several voices, which rushes into my grille like a gale and comes out of the speakers turned into something I can’t explain. For the first time in my short life I understand what a microphone is for: not to make things louder, but so that everyone can be heard at once.

Then they all gather close, crowded round my silver dome, take a breath together and shout in chorus:

“People of Torrox, let the fair begin!”

The impulse shoots like lightning down my copper spine to the speakers in the square. The crowd erupts in a unanimous ovation of clapping, whistling and cheering that makes my circuits tremble. Someone lets off a rocket. A baby wakes up. A grandmother in the front row shouts “Gorgeous!”, and I don’t know whether she means them or me.

My baptism of fire has been a resounding success. From this moment on, the voice of a whole town passes through my throat: opening speeches, raffles, lost-child announcements and the occasional “would the badly parked car please move”. I am the opening-speech microphone. And I intend to hold out until the very last “¡Viva Torrox!”.

I am bulb number 4,817 on the fairground entrance arch, third row from the top, to the left of the coat of arms. Not a glamorous position, I admit. The ones in the middle get all the photos. But from up here, at the Llano de la Almazara, you can see the whole fair: the rides, the nougat stalls, the sleeping big wheel and a sea of people waiting for us to light up.

Because tonight, at eleven, they switch us on. The authorities. With a speech and everything. And for a fair bulb, that’s like a debutante’s ball.

We’ve been hanging here for a week. A week of westerly wind, curious seagulls and workmen on a crane saying things like “that row isn’t getting power” or “give it a tap, let’s see”. They gave me two taps. It worked. I won’t go into detail.

Next to me is number 4,818, who is very nervous. She’s spent all afternoon asking whether her filament will show, whether yellow suits her and whether there’s any chance they’ll swap her for one of those modern ones. “The modern ones have no soul,” I tell her, although technically we’re both modern. You have to encourage people.

At half past ten a rumour runs along the cable, like a low-voltage current. The mayor is already in the square. The councillor has the speech in his pocket. There’s a button. A big red button, they say, like in the films. Number 4,818 is convinced that if they press it wrong, we’ll all explode. I explain it doesn’t work like that. She doesn’t believe me. Number 4,816, on the other side, has no opinion: she’s been blown since Tuesday and nobody has noticed. She’s living the fair in the dark, with admirable dignity.

Below, people start looking up. Children with balloons. Couples holding hands. A gang of lads with their shirts untucked taking photos with the unlit arch “for the before and after”. A lady with a pushchair tells her husband, “They’ve put up more bulbs this year,” and I swell with pride, although we’re the same ones as last year.

The moment arrives. A strange silence falls, like when the lights go down in the cinema. Someone starts the countdown. Ten, nine, eight… I feel a tingle in my screw base. Seven, six… Number 4,818 shrieks “I don’t want to!”. Five, four… A huge moth lands on me right now, like a fan sneaking onto the stage. Three, two…

One.

The current rushes through me all at once, from base to tip. We all light up together, in a cascade, from the bottom up, as if the whole arch were breathing. Below there’s a very long “ohhh!”, a good old-fashioned fair “ohhh”, followed by applause that reaches all the way to the big wheel. The moth shoots off, dazzled, to rethink its life.

Number 4,818 shines like never before. I think she’s crying a little, although in a bulb that looks like a reflection. “Do I look all right?” she asks. “You look beautiful,” I tell her. And it’s true.

The only one still dark is 4,816. But, you know, among so much light, a dark gap has its charm too. A little boy points at her and says to his mother: “Look, that one’s winking.”

And that’s how we stay for five nights in a row, lighting up kisses, stumbles, churros and reunions. Third row, to the left of the coat of arms. If you walk under the arch, say hello. I’ll be watching you.

They call me “the sheet-music folder”, and I let them. But sheet music, actual sheet music, I don’t have any: not a stave, not a treble clef. I carry lyrics. Thirty-two sevillanas and rumbas in bold, each in its own plastic sleeve, and a blue spine with a sunflower sticker that’s been peeling off for two fairs now.

What I really carry is pencil. A year of rehearsals noted in the margins. “Breathe here.” “DON’T rush,” underlined twice. “Second row comes in.” An arrow going who knows where. And on page eleven, the ring of a milky coffee from February that is now part of the song. The pencil lives hooked on my ring, its rubber worn down from so much changing of minds.

I belong to Loli. Loli knows all the lyrics. Forwards, backwards and with her eyes closed, which is how she sings. She hasn’t looked at me in a rehearsal since March. But she won’t go up to sing unless she’s holding me open in her hands. Just in case. In this choir, “just in case” has been around longer than the tambourine.

Thursday, first day of the fair, twelve noon, Caseta del Mayor, in the Jardines de Picasso. The thirteenth gathering of seniors’ rociero choirs. The town choir arrives, and the one from Torrox Costa, and those from Nerja and Vélez-Málaga. Scarves round necks, flowers in hair, freshly ironed blouses and four guitars tuning at once, each convinced that the one out of tune is the one next to it.

And the other folders arrive. A red one from the coast, its sleeves wavy with damp. A polka-dot one that never stops showing off. And one from Vélez so fat it no longer closes and is held together with an elastic band. We look at each other the way folders do: at the margins. The Vélez one has more pencil than me. I’m not telling anyone.

Our turn. Loli takes her place in the second row, opens me, breathes deeply and the conductor counts in with his chin. First sevillana. I’m open at page seven. They’re singing number three. Doesn’t matter. Loli sings with a smile too big for her scarf, and I tremble a little in her hands with every “¡olé!” from the audience.

While the others sing I discover something: we sing almost the same songs, but each choir breathes in a different place. We take a breath before the chorus; the Nerja lot, just after. I’ve spent a year noting where to breathe and it turns out the air gets shared out however suits each one.

In the end, what has to happen happens: all four choirs end up on stage at once, squeezed onto a stage built for one, singing the same sevillana. Nobody opens a folder. No need. Loli closes me, holds me against her chest and sings as if she had written the words herself.

Then come the Latin dances: cumbia, salsa, pasodobles. Loli leaves me on top of a guitar case and dances a pasodoble with a man from Vélez who keeps time even with his eyebrows. Then a salsa with two neighbours from the coast. Loli, who in rehearsals never leaves her floor tile, spins more than the big wheel at the Llano de la Almazara.

When the music stops, she picks me up from the case and looks at me for the first time all day. She takes the pencil from the ring and, on the last page, below the final sevillana, writes in round handwriting: “Here, all together.”

It’s the loveliest note I carry. And the only one that won’t need rehearsing. At six in the evening other choirs sing in this same caseta. Loli says she’ll come just to listen. She’s already put me in her bag. Just in case.

I don’t know who I belong to. I say it without drama: for a folding table it’s perfectly normal. White top, tubular legs that fold inwards and a catch that only patient people understand. Underneath, in marker pen, it says “RETURN TO” and, after it, the names of six associations crossed out one on top of another. The last one isn’t right either.

I’ve been lent out so many times that I no longer go back: I just get passed on. A peña leaves me at the door of a club, the club puts me in a brotherhood’s van and the brotherhood lends me to the school parents. The only thing that’s mine is a piece of biscuit-box cardboard, folded in four, for the wobbly leg. Everyone who sets me up knows about it.

My CV fits in my stains. A ring of chocolate that won’t come off even with bleach. The sticky-tape trail of the sign-up pen, because at fair time pens migrate. And a sticky corner from when I sold charity raffle tickets for a hamper with olive oil, turrón and a blanket. It was won by a little boy who went home wearing the blanket, like a sofa superhero.

On Tuesday I was at the board games at the seniors’ centre. Me as the table; them playing. They’ve never let me roll a die. On Wednesday, at the Complejo La Granja, I took down the pairs for the pétanque tournament, who signed up in beautiful handwriting and with the seriousness of a notary’s office.

Today, Thursday, it’s the Caseta del Mayor, in the Jardines de Picasso. At midday the seniors’ choirs sing and then there’s cumbia, salsa and pasodobles. I wait folded up at the back, next to a shoebox full of medals, and when the pasodoble plays my hinges tremble. It’s in my iron.

At half past one two volunteers come to set me up. Opening me has its ceremony: you pull the catch, push the leg with your knee and say “there we go” twice, because the first time it never is. Then someone crouches down to find the cardboard. The cardboard is always there. On top, a sheet ironed in some house in town and two clothes pegs.

And the trophies arrive: golden, plastic, with a tiny player on top who always looks about to say something. The big ones at the back and the small ones at the front, like in wedding photos. They weigh next to nothing. What weighs is everything else: the caseta packed, people standing at the back and a grandson asking out loud which one is his grandma’s.

At two the prize-giving begins. With each name, someone stands up, crosses the caseta to applause and comes straight towards me. A pétanque pair lifts the tallest trophy as if it were the European Cup. In every photo there’s a hand resting on my edge. I hold. That’s what the cardboard is for.

The trophies go off to display cabinets and coffee tables. Nobody applauds me, and I understand. What stings is that nobody applauds the people who brought me either. They arrive first, with keys to storerooms that aren’t theirs, and leave last, their hands smelling of iron. In between they set up, take names, serve and stack chairs when the music stops. They’re not on the fair poster. Everything else is.

At four nobody folds me up. They drag me three metres and put a flowery oilcloth on me: at half past six there’s hot chocolate. A lady gives me two little taps and announces that on Friday she wants me for the paella napkins. Before leaving she bends down, finds a space under the six crossed-out names and writes in marker pen: “TO WHOEVER NEEDS IT”.

It’s the first time anyone has got my address right.

Nobody in their right mind would call a wheel of churros with chocolate at five o’clock on a Thursday afternoon breakfast, but in the middle of the fair clocks lose all sense of shame. My bearer, a woman with an energetic stride and a bun so tight it doubles as a facelift, decided that before fulfilling her sacred duty the body had to be fed. “You can’t pray properly on an empty stomach,” she declared. And so I spent my first twenty minutes of social life lying on a table on the Paseo de las Moreas, dodging drops of hot grease and clouds of frying smoke that nearly wilted my carnations ahead of time.

I should make clear that I am not just any balcony posy. I am a formal offering to the patron saints of Torrox. Twelve spotless white gladioli, half a dozen crimson carnations and a green silk ribbon now travelling pressed against a sweaty forearm. At the florist’s they treated me like a prince: fresh water, cellophane and a “that’s turned out lovely” from the shop assistant. And now I smell of churro stall. Such is the life of a bouquet.

During the snack, a waiter looked at me and asked if he should put me in water. My owner said no, I’d hold up. Hold up I do. But a drop of chocolate fell on one of my petals and nobody wiped it off. I wear it like a medal.

The real drama began when we set off up the hill. The procession to the Plaza de la Constitución is a thick river of devotion, little shawls and well-meaning shoves. At ten past five, a distracted man in sunglasses stepped backwards while chewing a churro and very nearly beheaded my three gladioli on the right-hand corner. My owner dodged him with a swerve of the hip a bullfighter would envy. The man didn’t even notice.

Two corners further on, a little boy with a tractor-shaped helium balloon tried to tangle the string between my stems. For a few agonising seconds, the tractor and I formed a single aerostatic unit. If a bit of easterly wind had blown, I’d have turned up in Nerja. The boy’s mother undid the knot apologising and my owner replied “Don’t worry, love”, with the kind of smile that really means “if one gladiolus breaks, we’ll talk”.

I endured the tugging with commendable vegetable dignity, shrinking my petals every time a jet-propelled fan whizzed past shaving my corolla. At this fair, fans don’t fan: they take off.

From my lookout I can already see the platforms of the Virgen de las Nieves and San Roque silhouetted against the clear sky. The bells ring. My stems creak under the pressure of my owner’s fingers as she quickens her pace amid cheers and peals, elbowing her way through as if it were the January sales.

I’ll reach the altar smelling more of burnt sugar and lard than of wild fields, that’s for sure. But I’ll get there in one piece, with my twelve gladioli, my six carnations and a chocolate stain that, looked at the right way, resembles a flamenco polka dot. In Torrox, even we flowers know that to earn your place in heaven, first you have to survive the fair.

Some objects are born to shine and some are born to endure. I’m one of the second kind. I’m a white plastic chair, terrace model, legs slightly splayed and a scratch on the backrest from when I was used as a ladder at a wedding. There are lots like me in the Plaza de la Constitución. But on the Thursday of the fair, at six in the evening, when the Bolerazo begins, we are the most coveted thing in town. More than a patch of shade. More than a free parking space.

Because the Bolerazo of “La Movida del Tardeo” is serious business: three hours of boleros, and half the Axarquía wanting to listen sitting down. And chairs, actual chairs, there aren’t enough for everyone.

At quarter past five the first ones arrive. Three ladies with fans, the vanguard of a group of friends who call themselves “The Quick-Draw Fans”. They don’t sit: they reserve. And reserving chairs at the fair follows an unwritten rulebook more complicated than the Civil Code. A handbag on top counts as one person. A jacket, as half. An open fan, as someone who’s “just coming”. A bag of sunflower seeds reserves nothing, but it intimidates.

On me they put a wicker bag the size of a cabin suitcase. I have an owner.

For a good hour I defend myself alone. A man with an ice cream walks past and eyes me with intent; he sees the bag and keeps going. A young couple walks past; she moves to take me and he touches her arm and points at the wicker with the respect one shows a noble coat of arms. A little boy asks if he can sit down “just for a moment”. The bag doesn’t answer, but one of the ladies, from three metres away, does: “It’s taken, sweetheart.” She has the ears of a lynx.

At six the boleros begin. My owner is a cheerful woman in a flowery dress with a way of singing under her breath that makes my seat vibrate. She sighs in the choruses and fans herself in the verses. During “Historia de un amor” a tear escapes her and lands right on my edge.

And then comes danger. A slow, beautiful bolero plays, and a white-haired man in an immaculate shirt holds out his hand: “Shall we dance?” She hesitates for half a second. She looks at the bag. She looks at the chair. She looks at the man. And she gets up.

Tactical error. The moment she’s four steps away, a lady from another group, who has been standing for three quarters of an hour, sees me free. She measures the distance. She hesitates. But a bag only reserves while its owner is in sight, and now the owner is dancing cheek to cheek with a gentleman. The newcomer moves the bag very carefully, puts it on the ground and sits down.

What happens next isn’t in any bolero. My owner comes back, sees the scene, leaves the gentleman mid-sentence and crosses the dance floor with the determination of the January sales. There’s a quick conversation, in low voices, full of “sorry, love”, “but it was free” and “it wasn’t free, the bag was there”. The Quick-Draw Fans stand up in solidarity. So does the other group. For a few seconds, the square holds its breath.

And then, from the stage, someone who has seen it all leans into the microphone: “This one’s dedicated to the two ladies with the chair.” And they strike up “Dos gardenias”.

The whole square laughs and applauds. The two ladies look at each other, burst out laughing too and end up sharing me: one sitting and the other leaning on the backrest, singing together. At the end of the evening they swap phone numbers.

I ended the night stacked with forty other chairs, with a lipstick mark on my backrest and the same old scratch. But with the satisfaction of having united two groups of friends. Some chairs are for sitting on. And some chairs make history.

Surviving sixty years in Carmen’s jewellery box only to end up rolling under a folding table in the Caseta del Mayor was not part of my retirement plans. I am not some plastic trinket from the corner shop, the kind that turns green with shame by its second fair. I am a gold filigree hoop, solid and noble, commissioned long ago for a wedding in the church of Nuestra Señora de la Encarnación. I have seen fashions come and go, hairsprayed styles able to withstand a gale and whole generations of grandchildren who mistook me for a dummy. So having my fate sealed by a badly judged pasodoble right in the Jardines de Picasso seems to me, to say the least, an unforgivable insult.

The band was to blame. At around six in the evening, the keyboard player decided to attack “Campanera” with excessive enthusiasm. Carmen, encouraged by a little glass of anís (“just one, for the cold,” she said, at twenty-eight degrees) and by the festive atmosphere, got carried away. She adjusted the little shawl on her shoulders, tossed back her perm with a vigour unbecoming of her eighty-two years and launched onto the floor on the arm of Paco, who doesn’t dance much but holds on well.

First turn: perfect. Second turn: Carmen thought she was Lola Flores. And it was right there that the clasp on my earlobe, worn out by decades of service without a single sick day, said enough.

I came loose in silence, traced a perfect parabola through the thick air of the caseta, bounced off a plastic plate with the remains of Russian salad and landed on the cobbles with a tinkle nobody heard. Sixty years of loyalty and not even a sad little “oh!”.

From the floor, the world of the seniors’ caseta is a dangerous jungle. Your perspective changes a lot when you measure three centimetres across and you’re surrounded by a forest of aluminium chair legs, walking sticks with rubber tips and orthopaedic shoes shuffling in two-four time. In five minutes I dodged two low patent-leather heels, a napkin smeared with chocolate and the wheel of Don Julián’s walking frame, which passed within millimetres of my filigree. Don Julián, by the way, dances better with a walking frame than many do without.

Carmen didn’t notice a thing. She carried on waving her arms with ease, smiling at the neighbours and showing off her bare left ear like someone displaying a new beauty spot. My partner, the right hoop, was still hanging from the other ear, and I’d swear it was glancing at me with an air of superiority. It was always the more stable of the two. And the more pompous.

Suddenly, a black velvet shoe stopped dead in front of me. A bejewelled hand, covered in old rings and with a trembling but accurate grip, came slowly down between the paper tablecloth and the petticoat, like the claw in the arcade machine that never picks up the teddy. Only this one did pick me up.

“Good heavens, Carmen!” shouted Encarna, holding me up between her knotted fingers with the satisfaction of someone finding pirate treasure. “You’re leaving your trousseau all over the place!”

“Oh, my earring!” said Carmen, raising her hand to her ear. “I dance with so much style my jewellery falls off!”

She let out a laugh that rang out over the cymbals, gave me a quick kiss and clicked me back into place. Paco was already waiting for her with open arms, and the keyboard player, that irresponsible man, had started “Paquito el Chocolatero”.

I suppose I’ll have to hold on for at least three more songs. I’ve gripped the earlobe with all my might.

They take me out once a year. The rest of the time I hang from a nail in a kitchen, between a sieve with a history and a three-year-old calendar nobody takes down because it has a very pretty photo of the river. I’m a ladle. Steel, long handle, and the exact capacity of one well-served cup of hot chocolate. Not a drop more. Not a drop less. Pepa taught me that. She’s in charge of the pot and has the hand of a surgeon and the patience of a saint.

On the Thursday of the fair, at half past six in the evening, I go to work at the Caseta del Mayor, in the Jardines de Picasso. The hot-chocolate party prepared by the women of a local association. The most eagerly awaited culinary event in the calendar, ahead of Christmas Eve and well ahead of any wedding.

The pot is enormous. If I fell in, they’d find me at Easter. The chocolate has been stirred since five with the patience of an alchemist: milk, drinking chocolate and a secret the women pass to each other in whispers and which I, out of loyalty, will not reveal. I’ll only say that it smells of childhood. And cinnamon. Oops, I’ve said it.

By quarter past six there’s already a queue. By twenty past, the queue goes round the caseta. By twenty-five past, a man in a beret tries to jump the queue on the grounds that he’s “only come to look”. Nobody comes to look at a hot-chocolate party. Lola, who controls the queue with the authority of a traffic policeman, sends him to the back with a smile that brooks no argument.

Service begins. I dive into the pot, come up, fill the cup and dive again. In, out. In, out. I’m a machine. Next to me, another helper hands out churros with tongs at a speed that ought to be illegal. Another collects cups. Another cheers everyone on: “There’s enough for everyone, don’t push!” It’s a perfect choreography.

From my post I watch the whole town go by. I see a grandmother who asks for “just a little, I’m on a diet” and then asks for a little more. I see a grandson covered in chocolate up to his eyebrows who says it was his cousin. I see a couple who have been sharing a cup for fifty years because, according to him, “it cools down quicker that way” and, according to her, “that way he doesn’t drink it all”.

And I see the man in the beret, who is already on his third round. Each time he brings a different excuse. The first cup was for his wife. The second, for his sister. The third, for “a neighbour who can’t walk”. Pepa looks at him over her glasses, plunges me to the bottom of the pot and serves him a proper cup. “For the neighbour,” she says. “For the neighbour,” he replies. They both know there’s no neighbour. That’s the fair too.

At half past seven the bottom of the pot starts to show. Time to scrape, which is the hardest and most prized part, because the chocolate at the bottom is the thickest, the one that tastes of heaven. Some people wait on purpose. Wise people.

When it’s all over, they wash me in hot water, dry me with an embroidered cloth and hang me back on the nail, next to the sieve and the river calendar. I smell of chocolate for a week. I’m not complaining.

I have a whole year until the next hot-chocolate party. But on Thursday, for one hour, I was the most important ladle in Torrox. And the man in the beret, I’m sure, remembers me too.

Climbing Calle Calzada when you’re barely four years old and wearing a flamenco dress with more starch than a bridegroom’s shirt is an undertaking of epic proportions. Nieves walked with determination, swinging her sky-blue ruffles with every short step and glancing sideways at how the fringe of her little shawl tickled her arms. Every three steps she stopped to check the ruffles were still there. They were.

For her, this was no ordinary afternoon: it was her first real fair. The earlier ones didn’t count, because either she was in the pushchair or she fell asleep before reaching the rides. Not this time. This time she had a flower in her hair, clip-on earrings and a mission: to see everything. A giant world of coloured bulbs hanging from the sky, distant music and a happy murmur rolling down the cobbled hill of Torrox.

Halfway up, in front of a cake-shop window, the little espadrilles stopped dead. Like a car at a checkpoint.

“Look, Mummy!” she pointed, her index finger pressed to the glass, fascinated by a row of little cakes topped with toasted cream.

Her parents exchanged a look of resigned complicity. They knew full well that negotiating with a determined flamenca halfway up a hill was a lost battle. Her father tried the classic “later, on the way back”. Nieves answered with the look of someone who knows that “later, on the way back” is a language invented by grown-ups so as not to buy anything. Minutes later she was holding the loot in both hands with the caution of someone carrying dynamite.

She took a first enthusiastic bite, closing her eyes to savour the sugar like a professional taster. But the physics of fairs is unforgiving. A thick, treacherous drop of cream slid from the corner of her mouth, hesitated for a moment on her chin, as if thinking it over, and nose-dived onto a white polka dot on her chest.

The silence that followed was absolute. Even the town band, in the distance, seemed to turn the volume down. Nieves lowered her chin, opened her eyes wide as saucers and fixed her gaze on the disaster. The white polka dot was no longer white. It was a wounded polka dot. The corners of her mouth began to tremble, threatening to unleash a wail able to compete in decibels with the entire street band.

Her father, with the best will in the world, pulled out one of those scratchy paper napkins. Good intentions, wrong tool: he would have turned the stain into a weather map.

That was when her mother performed a manoeuvre worthy of a conjurer. With the skill that only experience gives, she yanked open her handbag (the handbag where plasters, a retired dummy, three hairpins, mints and an ID card two renewals out of date all live together), drew out a wet wipe like someone unsheathing a foil and, in two firm, circular strokes, wiped the stain away without a trace.

“There!” she said, putting away her secret weapon. “As if nothing had happened. Go on, eat it before it reaches the bottom ruffles.”

Nieves blinked. She touched the spotless polka dot with her fingertip, like someone checking that a miracle is real. And she grinned from ear to ear, with the smile children get when they discover their mother has superpowers.

She wiped her sugar moustache with the back of her hand, offered her father a little piece as a consolation prize and set off up the hill again, ready to eat the fair in big bites. Carefully, though. Leaning well forward.

I live in the middle of the Plaza de la Constitución, on an island of barriers and canvas that the technicians call “front of house” and the audience calls “that thing in the middle”. I’m the stage sound desk: forty-eight channels, hundreds of little knobs and a row of tiny lights that turn green, yellow or red depending on how the night goes. Children think I’m an aeroplane cockpit. They’re not far wrong: things take off from here too.

My technician has been with me since four in the afternoon. Headphones round her neck, torch in her pocket and a roll of masking tape she uses to label me in biro: “VOCALS”, “KICK”, “GUITAR 2”. There’s one channel that says “??”. Nobody knows what it is. She never touches it. We respect it.

What I’ve heard most today is her voice, as she walked around the empty square with her headphones on: “Testing, yes, yes. One, two. One, two.” She’s repeated it so many times it’s got a chorus. If she recorded it, it would be the song of the summer. Of the autumn, sorry.

At six the bolero afternoon arrived and the square, which still smelled of the flower offering, filled with couples dancing close. She gave them a touch of reverb, because a bolero without reverb is a hug in a hurry. At nine the other dance began, the cable dance: lads in black pushing flight cases on wheels and the lighting guy in his tower, talking to her in signs, like two divers.

Then people come to the barrier. A man asks if they can play him “one of the old ones”, as if I were a jukebox. A girl puts a soft drink on my lid and my technician hands it back to her with a smile that’s slightly scary: “Not even water here.” The girl apologises. To me. I like her.

At eleven the star of the night comes on, one of those singers half the square knows by heart. First chord. My little lights jump to yellow. She puts on her headphones and rests two fingers on the vocal fader. She doesn’t dance. She doesn’t move her head. She moves millimetres.

In the third song, the singer comes down to the edge of the stage to wave and accidentally points the microphone at a speaker. I sense it before anyone: a squeal born thin as a mosquito that in half a second wants to be a siren. But she already has her finger on exactly the right knob, lowers that frequency three notches and the squeal dies before it learns to walk. Nobody heard it. Only the two of us. She celebrates with a sip of water. Well away from me, of course.

Then comes the song everyone was waiting for. The singer turns the microphone towards the audience, she brings the band down to almost nothing and the square sings on its own, a choir without cables or labels. My little lights don’t measure it, but I feel it in my legs and in every screw. It’s the one channel I don’t have, and the best-sounding one at the whole fair.

When it’s over, people leave saying what a voice and what a night. Nobody says “it sounded so good”. The lighting guy points this out to my technician. She shrugs:

“If it sounds good, nobody remembers the sound. If it sounds bad, they even remember my name.”

“Like the lights,” he says. “People only look at me when a spotlight blows.”

Then the pop and rock covers band comes on, and she starts all over again. In the small hours she covers me with my dust sheet, gives me two little pats and says, “Good work, partner.” Tomorrow, at four, again: “Testing, yes, yes. One, two.” I know it by heart. It’s my favourite song.

It’s twenty to six and I’m stopped at the Estación Central in Torrox Costa, the one everyone here calls the Conejito. I’m the steering wheel of the fair bus: large, almost horizontal, with the cover worn just where the thumbs rest. Nobody has let go of me since half past nine last night.

Tonight I’m on Line 1: El Morche, Torrox Costa, Torrox Convento, and round again. When we pass the Line 2 bus, coming from El Peñoncillo, the drivers greet each other by raising two fingers without letting go of me. Those two fingers are my entire social life.

The ride is free, and it bears repeating, because the lads coming back from the Youth Zone at La Granja always ask, as if it were a trick. They get on with their hoodies tied round their waists, voices hoarse from singing along to the DJ, and a packet of chewing gum that goes from hand to hand until it returns empty to its owner. Getting off, they say “Cheers, boss.” The driver isn’t boss of anything, but he likes it.

At one o’clock a grandmother got on with her granddaughter asleep in her arms, dressed as a flamenca since the afternoon offering. Seven polka-dot ruffles, crumpled from so much fair. We’re colleagues, the girl and I. She has seven ruffles and I have just one, but I turn more.

That time the driver held me the way you carry a cup filled to the brim. He went down to the Costa without a single hard brake, cotton-wool curves, and the girl didn’t open an eye. At their stop, the grandmother took a red carnation out of the girl’s bun and left it on the dashboard: “For you, you’ve carried us in a cradle.” It’s still there. It’s the only passenger who has done the whole night.

At three, a couple with a giraffe from the raffle stall, a metre and a half of neck. Since it didn’t fit sitting down, it travelled standing, leaning against the pole, very proper. She explained it had cost eleven tickets. It was the only passenger who didn’t say good night.

After four the people who have done the fair from the inside get on: waiters from the casetas with the smell of the griddle in their hair, an electrician still wearing his head torch in case something blows on the way, two Civil Protection volunteers talking about anything except the fair. One falls asleep with his mouth open and nobody takes a photo. Among night-shift people, that’s the law.

Through the windscreen I see the cleaners, who start when everyone else finishes. A Local Police patrol waves us through at a junction and the driver returns the greeting with two fingers. I’m extremely sociable today.

Every time someone gets off, I think of the cars that stayed at home tonight. Of their steering wheels, asleep in the garage, not hunting for a parking space in the small hours or fighting sleep on a roundabout. They owe me one.

Now the driver finishes half a Spanish-omelette sandwich wrapped in foil, looks at the clock and squeezes the cover just where it’s worn. “Come on, the last one,” he tells me quietly. At six it’s the last run back, and it’s ours.

They say the last fair bus arrives with the dawn. Not true. In October, at six, the sea is still black as ink and the sun doesn’t peep out until after eight. Out there, the only things shining are the lights of two boats, the street lamp at the stop and the carnation on the dashboard.

That’s enough for me. Tonight I’ve seen the sun come up lots of times: every time someone fell asleep in a seat and woke up right at their stop.

I measure a metre and a half across, weigh as much as a calf and spend the year in a storeroom, behind some roadworks barriers and a dismantled nativity scene. I’m the paella pan for the Great Paella for our seniors. And on the Friday of the fair, at half past two, in the Caseta del Mayor, I am the queen of the Jardines de Picasso.

My day starts early. At ten in the morning I’m already on the fire, with three burners roaring underneath like a dragon with heartburn. Above me, the cook: a big man in an apron and cap, with a wooden paddle he handles as if he were rowing across the Strait of Gibraltar. They call him Curro and they say he’s been making this paella since before I existed. He treats me with affection and firmness, which is how a paella pan should be treated.

First comes the oil, a generous stream that sizzles across my whole surface and tickles me. Then the chicken, the rabbit and the vegetables. The sofrito takes as long as it takes, and Curro won’t be rushed. When someone from the organisers comes to ask “How much longer?”, Curro doesn’t even look up: “Whatever the rice says.” And they withdraw respectfully. Here, the rice is in charge.

Mid-morning comes the delicate moment: the experts’ visit. Because around a giant paella there always forms, spontaneously, a committee of men with their hands behind their backs, giving opinions. One says it needs saffron. Another, that it has too much. A third, who went to Valencia once, insists they don’t put that in over there. Another replies that “this is Torrox, not Valencia”, and a debate breaks out with more passion than a derby. Curro listens to none of them. He stirs. He smiles. He gets on with it.

Around one o’clock, the smell escapes from the caseta and starts wandering round the town. It climbs the hills, slips in through windows and wakes those who were sleeping off the night before. They say a dog came down alone from Calle Alta following the scent. They say a tourist asked if you needed a ticket.

Then the rice arrives. It falls like rain, in the shape of a cross, as tradition demands, and I feel my soul fill up. The stock boils, the bubbles dance and Curro spreads the grains with the paddle like someone painting a picture. From here on, silence. Nobody touches anything. Not even the expert committee dares to comment.

And then comes my moment. What I wait for all year. The socarrat: that layer of toasted rice stuck to the bottom, crunchy and golden, which is the glory of any paella pan. Curro lowers the heat and listens, because you can hear socarrat: it crackles like cellophane. At exactly the right moment he turns off the burners. They let me rest for five minutes with a cloth over me. The longest five minutes of my life.

At half past two it’s served. The plates pass over me on their way to the tables of our seniors, who are waiting with napkins round their necks and the hunger of people who have danced all morning. It rains “Isn’t it good!”, “Just like the old days” and a “Now that’s a paella” from the man who went to Valencia, which from him is the equivalent of a national award.

At the end, when there’s almost nothing left, three grandmothers come over with their own spoons to scrape the socarrat from my edges. They do it in silence, with technique and without hurry, like people panning for gold in a river. And I let them. That’s what I’m here for.

In the afternoon they’ll wash me with a hose and I’ll go back to the storeroom, next to the dismantled nativity scene. But I’ll leave happy. They scraped me down to the last grain, which is the greatest compliment you can pay a paella pan.

I’m a bass drum. Round, with two tight heads, ropes zigzagging round my belly and a cymbal screwed on top, like a wedding hat. In a street band, everyone has a job: the trumpet sings, the trombone shows off, the snare gossips. I only know how to say one word: boom. But I say it when it needs saying, and then everyone starts walking.

It’s the Friday of the fair, half past four, and we’re in the Plaza de la Constitución. At five the Horse Parade sets off from La Granja towards the Convento, and it’s our job to warm up the afternoon. Warm it up even more, because the Torrox sun hasn’t noticed it’s already October. My head is stretched so tight that if someone stares at me, I sound.

Maribel carries me, hanging from her chest on a leather harness. During the week she works in an office and on Tuesdays she rehearses in a garage that smells of instrument cases. Nobody applauds the rehearsals, or the vans loaded up in the small hours, or the long-sleeved shirts in the blazing sun. People see the party. We know what it costs to make it look easy.

Then there’s the trumpeter. Good musician, iron lungs and a habit that drives me mad: he rushes. Always. Maribel raises the mallet to count — “one, two…” — and he’s already on three, like someone waiting at the bus stop while the bus is still in the depot. The others race after him. Not me: I wait, I land, boom, and the lad falls back into line looking innocent. We’ve been like this for twelve years.

We start with a pasodoble. Here, pasodobles aren’t listened to: they’re obeyed. Three bars in, a couple who had gone out for bread start dancing between two tables, a mother keeps time with her pushchair and a very serious man begins moving his foot as if it weren’t his. From a balcony, someone turns the TV down to hear us better.

And the children arrive. They adore me, and I them, but they all want to hit me. They sidle up and tap me with a finger, a palm, a lollipop that leaves a mark. A little girl looks at me with her hands behind her back, not daring. Maribel crouches down and lends her the mallet. The girl takes it in both hands, closes her eyes and hits me. Boom. A tiny, crooked boom. She opens her eyes, amazed that something so big has answered her, and runs off to tell her grandmother.

Then we move, because a street band standing still is only half a band. We leave the square by one street and come back by another, and people follow us like seagulls follow boats. Two tourists who don’t know the song but already know the step. A lady who had popped out for parsley and comes back half an hour later, with the parsley and no idea how.

We stop for a moment in the shade. Water for everyone. The trombonist fans himself with the sheet music, which he never looks at either. Maribel sets me down on the ground, on my side, and for the first time all afternoon my back head feels the air.

For the last pasodoble, the square is already looking towards the horses. Maribel raises the mallet. And then something happens that hasn’t happened in twelve years: the trumpeter waits. He looks at me. Boom. We all come in together. Nobody in the square notices. We do.

Tonight I’ll sleep in a car boot, with my cover on and my cymbal unscrewed. Tomorrow, at half past four, we’re back in the same square with inflatable company. But today I take home the little girl’s boom. The big ones I give every afternoon. That one, though, was given to me.

My name is Duquesa, I’m a nine-year-old dapple-grey mare and this morning they spent two hours and forty minutes braiding my mane. Two hours and forty minutes. With red ribbons, a pompom on my forehead and a hairdo on my tail any bride would envy. If I look at myself in the water trough, I don’t recognise myself. I look like a First Communion cake with legs.

It’s the Friday of the fair and at five the Horse Parade sets off, from La Granja to the Convento. Riders in traditional dress, wide-brimmed hats, gleaming boots and horses groomed as if for a royal wedding. In front, the Queen and the Mister of the festivities, waving as if they’d done it all their lives. And guess who I’ve been given to carry: Álvaro, Manolo’s nephew, who has come from Madrid for the fair.

Álvaro is a charming lad, polite and very well groomed, according to the ladies who peer into the stable. What nobody mentioned is that he had never been on a horse in his life. I realise the moment he puts his hand on my neck: he’s trembling more than I did the day I saw a helium balloon for the first time.

“Easy, beautiful,” he tells me.

Easy, me. Sweetheart, you’re the one who needs to take it easy.

Manolo, my owner, has been with horses for forty years and talks to us more than to his family. He gives quick instructions: heels down, back straight, gentle on the reins and “you leave it to her, she knows”. He’s right about that. I know. I’ve got six parades under my belt. I know the route, the cobbles that are slippery, the bend where there’s always a child with a bubble gun and the corner that smells of churros and makes my head turn.

We set off. Clapping, hooves and phones taking photos. Álvaro waves with one hand while with the other he clings to the saddle as if it were the safety bar on a ride. I walk very slowly, with great elegance, so the lad doesn’t slide off.

Halfway along, a little girl with pigtails leans over the barrier and offers me a carrot. A carrot. In the middle of the parade. Manolo says no, we don’t stop. I, with all due respect to Manolo, stop. I eat the carrot with all the leisure in the world while behind me a little jam of gala horses builds up and Álvaro apologises to everyone, red as a pepper. People laugh and clap. The girl is happy. So am I. And Álvaro, against all odds, bursts out laughing. I think that’s where we started to understand each other.

We carry on. At the churro corner I veer a little, just enough to breathe in the smell, and Álvaro, who has gained some confidence by now, says “don’t even think about it” in such a firm tone that I almost obey. Almost.

Behind all of us walks a worker with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, picking up what we leave along the way with a dignity that deserves a monument. Nobody takes his photo. From here, I pay him tribute.

We reach the Convento as the sun goes down, with people applauding on both sides of the street. Álvaro gets off as best he can, legs shaking, and before leaving pats my neck and says in my ear: “Thank you, Duquesa. You saved my life.”

Over the top. But I liked it. I’m already looking forward to next year. One thing, though: bring more carrots.

I’m the ticket booth for the bumper cars at the Llano de la Almazara. Red and yellow sheet metal, a scalloped little roof, a string of bulbs and a window just big enough for a hand with coins. When each town’s fair ends they fold me up completely and I travel in the trailer with the bulbs wrapped in blankets, like someone moving the good china.

It’s Friday, eight in the evening. Until nine, every day of the fair, the rides run quietly: no loud music, no microphone. An hour designed for children who find the racket too much, and for anyone who wants to hear the fair differently. I enjoy it like no one else. I can hear the poles crackling against the ceiling mesh, the soft “pom” of the cars and the laughter, which without music you can hear whole.

Inside me works Mariángeles. She counts the tokens in little piles of ten, always ten, like little blue soldiers in a row. Beside her, on a roll of tickets, her youngest son does his homework, which arrives punctually on his phone whichever town he’s in. Today it’s the subjunctive. He says the subjunctive is like bumper cars: you never know where it’s going to come at you from.

On my inside wall, stuck with tape, is the list of towns for the season, from spring until the weather turns cool. Next to each name, Mariángeles notes what doesn’t appear on maps: “Here the neighbour brings us cold water.” “Here the baker keeps bread for us even if we close late.” Next to Torrox it says: “Good people. They come with their coins counted.”

And it’s true. Right now I have four children with their foreheads pressed to the glass and all their capital on the counter: twenty-cent, ten-cent and five-cent coins, and a button. They count out loud, make mistakes, start again. They’re just short of a fourth token. One of them takes off a trainer and out of the trainer — don’t ask me how — comes a fifty-cent coin. Ovation. Mariángeles gives them their tokens and hands back the button, very seriously: “Take this home, someone will be looking for it.”

Behind them waits a man holding a little girl’s hand. He asks for two tokens, and the family’s grandmother, who has watched over the track from her folding chair for forty seasons, looks at him over her glasses.

“You were the one in the red cap. The one who always got stuck in the corner.”

The man bursts out laughing and covers his face. The girl looks at him as if she has just discovered that her father was once a child too. He searches his wallet and takes out an old token, made of brass, with the little car engraved on it almost worn away. “Someone gave it to me one year. I never spent it.” The grandmother turns it over slowly: her husband ordered that batch the first year they went on the road, when I still smelled of paint.

Father and daughter get into a green car. They bump politely and, in the corner, of course, they get stuck. Their laughter can be heard from the other end of the Llano. When they get out, the grandmother gives the girl a new token: “This one isn’t for spending. It’s for thirty years from now.” The girl puts it in her pocket and pats it twice, to make sure.

At nine on the dot my bulbs start flashing, the eldest son turns up the volume and the microphone, which has kept quiet for an hour, announces: “Another round, the fair’s only just started!” Mariángeles goes back to her little piles. The youngest closes his exercise book. The subjunctive can wait.

In a few days they’ll fold me up and put me on the trailer, heading for the next name on the list. But in some pocket in Torrox, one of my tokens stays behind, waiting. And tokens that aren’t spent always come back. I know because I come back too.

Air. All I ask for is a breath of air that doesn’t seem to come straight out of a bread oven. Flap, flip, flap, flip. If moving the ribs of this fan in such a frenzy burned calories, I’d wake up tomorrow two sizes smaller and without needing to squeeze into this shapewear that has taken my breathing hostage tonight. I breathe in shifts: first the left lung, then the right. That’s how I manage.

“Wear the high wedges, Rocío,” I told myself at home, looking in the mirror, “they flatter the shawl and the Almedina is a hop and a skip.” What a genius. You don’t walk up the Almedina: you climb it, with an ice axe, rope and an oxygen tank. They should put a mountain hut halfway up with a St Bernard handing out bottles of water. I’ve just overtaken an eighty-year-old man going up with a walking stick, and it took me so long to overtake him that we had time to talk about his grandson, the price of olive oil and his sister-in-law’s hip operation.

I feel a drop of sweat treacherously running down my spine, dodging the hooks on the back of my dress with engineering precision. If it reaches my waist, I’ll collapse right here in front of the bakery and they’ll have to revive me with a magdalena.

And the flower. The red flower in my hair has been threatening to collapse onto my left eyebrow for a quarter of an hour. I put three hairpins in it. Three. And there it goes, slipping millimetre by millimetre, like a glacier with bad intentions. All I need is to arrive at the concert looking like a pirate captain with a one-eyed carnation. Although, come to think of it, I might start a trend.

I glance at the clock while flapping my wrist as if whisking an omelette for twenty: quarter past ten. I do the maths. A hundred metres of hill to go, two corners and a treacherous step I’ve known since I was a girl. At wedge pace, that’s about seven minutes. If I don’t stop to say hello to anyone, five. If I bump into my aunt Encarni, forty-five, because she’ll ask about the boyfriend I don’t have.

Route plan: speed up across the cobbles, dodge any suspicious puddles of rebujito, don’t look sideways in case there’s anyone I know, and arrive in one piece to order a bottle of cold water before the first rumba starts. Once there, the shapewear, the wedges and the flower can do what they like. I intend to dance until I’ve cooled down or until dawn, whichever comes first.

A neighbour calls out from a balcony: “Rocío, you look gorgeous!” I smile back as best I can, my mouth twisted with effort, and she applauds me. That’s the magic of the fair: even if you’re sweating like a chicken on the spit, there’s always someone who sees you as beautiful.

Come on, my dear wrist, one last push, because a fair night doesn’t wait for those who run out of air on street corners. Flap, flip. Flap, flip. I can already hear the guitar.

I’m the lost-property notebook at the Local Police post at the fairground. Blue covers, a slightly bent spiral and a pen tied on with a string so it doesn’t get lost, which would be the last straw. I live on a folding table, between a first-aid kit, a radio that never stops talking and a flask of coffee nobody admits is theirs.

This Friday night I already have three pages written in police handwriting, which is quick, clear and uses capitals in the important places. “KEYS. Three, with a dolphin keyring and a bottle opener. Handed in at the raffle stall.” “MOBILE. Unicorn case. Rings non-stop: ‘Mum’.” “DUMMY. Blue. Urgent.”

The dummy left here in under ten minutes. It was collected by a father who looked as if he had run round the Llano de la Almazara three times. He rinsed it with water from a bottle and gave it back to a baby who was crying with its whole body, and the silence that followed was so great that Officer Sonia and her colleague looked at each other and smiled without saying a word. Some silences deserve a round of applause.

Not everything is so simple. A man comes to report the disappearance of his straw hat. It turns out his wife is wearing it; she’s standing right behind him and took it because the sun was in her eyes in the car. Sonia notes it down anyway: “HAT. Found. On his wife’s head.” Everything must be recorded.

At half past eleven the radio turns serious. A boy of about five, striped T-shirt, has let go of his mother’s hand near the bumper cars. At that moment I feel it: the whole post swings into action, without hurry but without pause. A message over the radio to colleagues from the Guardia Civil, another to the Civil Protection volunteers, another to the medical post just in case. And two officers who set off walking fast, but not running, because running is frightening.

There’s no need even to write it down. Four minutes later they’re back. The boy is holding Sonia’s hand, very serious, with a red balloon her colleague bought him to make the walk shorter. His mother arrives from the other side, hugs him as if she hadn’t seen him for a year and says “thank you” so many times it sounds like the lyrics of a pasodoble.

“What’s your name?” Sonia asks, crouching down to his level.

“Mario. And I wasn’t lost. I was looking.”

He’s right. I note it in my margin, in smaller writing, because it seems important to me: “He wasn’t lost. He was looking.” Many of the things that come here aren’t lost either. They’re watching the fair from somewhere else, waiting for someone to come and get them.

At quarter to twelve I do a count. Eleven things lost, eleven found. That leaves the flask of coffee, which I’ve decided is mine. Sonia closes my covers, stretches her back and goes out again for another round of the fairground, in her high-vis vest and with her smile on. Out there, there’s always someone who needs to find something.

At half past six on Saturday morning, Torrox sleeps with its mouth open. The shutters are down, the lanterns are still hanging not quite knowing what to do and the last night bus dropped off its last passenger half an hour ago. It’s my time. I’m the street sweeper from the cleaning service. I have two round brushes that spin like sevillana dancers and an orange light on my roof warning that here we come.

Ahead of me goes the team on foot: four street cleaners with their palm brooms, their long-handled dustpans and their fluorescent vests. They reach the corners I can’t fit into, and in Torrox there are lots, because this town was built with donkeys in mind, not machines. I take care of the wide bits. They take care of everything else.

Calle Calzada greets me with the usual inventory. Confetti of every colour, sticking to the cobbles as if it had been promised it could stay. Sunflower-seed shells in industrial quantities: I reckon half the Axarquía has come through here eating seeds and discussing the goings-on. Paper napkins, little cups, a candyfloss stick and, in a corner, a red flamenco flower that has lost its owner.

Merche, the most senior on the shift, picks up the flower carefully and leaves it on a bench, in plain sight. “In case she comes back,” she says. Merche has a rule: whatever can be returned doesn’t get swept. So, after a while, the bench has gathered the flower, a hair comb missing two teeth, a child’s cap with cat ears and a closed polka-dot fan, very dignified.

“The fan goes to the Local Police,” says Merche. “Someone’s going to miss that one at midday, when the heat kicks in.”

I carry on with my job. Spin, suck, move forward. The water from my nozzles leaves the cobbles shining and the street smells of wet stone, which is the loveliest smell there is at this hour. A cat watches me from a window with an “you again” face. A baker drives past in his van, raises his hand and greets us with two gentle toots of the horn, from one early-morning worker to another.

The best thing about my job is that nobody sees it. The second best thing too. When the town opens its shutters in a couple of hours, it will see the street clean and think it was always like that, as if the fair had never passed this way. And that, though it might not seem so, is a compliment.

At the end of the street we stop for a moment. One of the lads on the team, the new one, leans on his broom and looks up at the lanterns, which are starting to take on colour in the first sunlight. “Last night I was here dancing,” he confesses. “And now I’m here sweeping.” Merche laughs: “Well, that’s why you know what it’s worth.”

By eight, the centre is spotless. This afternoon the street band will be back, the ruffles will be back and the sunflower seeds will be back, that’s for sure. And tomorrow at half past six we’ll be back, with the orange light and the brushes dancing, to leave everything once again as if nothing had happened.

They put me away in the depot with my tank half empty and my brushes full of confetti. I don’t mind. It’s my way of going to the fair.

I’m a bull. Fierce, black, big-horned, nearly two metres tall. And filled with air. Lots of air. They inflate me with a fan that buzzes in my belly like a swarm of bees and, when I stand up in the middle of the Plaza de la Constitución, I’m imposing. For about ten seconds I’m extremely imposing. Then the slightest breeze blows, I sway like a roly-poly toy and things lose a bit of their seriousness.

It’s the Saturday of the fair, half past four in the afternoon, and today is the inflatable bull run. There are four of us: my brother the red one, who has a badly sealed seam and keeps losing pressure through his tail; the piebald one, who is the tallest and thinks he’s the boss; the little one, a young bull with a frightened face; and me, the black one, the classic, the traditional one.

In front, the street band is warming up. The trumpet sounds, the bass drum booms and the saxophonist plays in sunglasses so big he looks like an insect with rhythm. As soon as the first note of “Paquito el Chocolatero” sounds, the whole square goes wild. And when the square goes wild, they arrive.

The children.

Forty, fifty, a hundred, I don’t know. With red neckerchiefs round their necks, white T-shirts stained with ice cream and an energy that, properly channelled, would light up the entire fair without spending a euro. They surround us. They chase us. They shout “toro, toro!” with ferocious joy. In theory, we’re supposed to chase them, but the helpers pushing us go at their own pace and it ends up the other way round: it’s the town that corners the bull.

A little boy with glasses grabs my neck and won’t let go. A girl with a flower in her hair pats me on the back the way you’d congratulate a horse. Another does passes with his father’s jacket, very dignified chest passes for a six-year-old. People applaud every pass and someone, from a balcony, calls for another.

I have only one fear in life, and it isn’t the cape. It’s pins. Hairpins. Pencils. Anything with a point. Every time I see a child with a candyfloss stick, my spirits deflate. Last year someone made a tiny hole in the red one with an earring and he ended the afternoon lying on the pavement like a balloon at the end of a birthday party. I don’t want to end up like that. Not today, with the band playing.

Halfway through the run a treacherous gust blows. I lean, lean a bit more and, for one glorious second, I balance on a single leg, like a ballet bull. The children scream. The band, never missing a chance, finishes it off with a boom of the bass drum. It looks rehearsed. It isn’t.

I regain my balance. The square applauds me alone. For a moment I feel like the star of the fair.

Just after five the bull run ends. The children, sweaty and happy, go off in search of water, ice cream or both at once. The band heads off up the street. And they switch off my fan.

It’s a strange feeling. Little by little I lose my fierceness, my horns bend, my neck crumples and I end up lying on the ground like a bull costume with nobody inside. A boy walking past crouches down, pats me on the nose and says: “You’re coming back tomorrow, OK?”

I’m not coming back tomorrow. I’m coming back next year. But I’ll keep the pat. And the fact that I went to sleep in one piece, without a scratch and with the whole town applauding.

The Saturday of the fair doesn’t allow for half measures, least of all at coffee time. In the living room at home, with the blinds half down to hold back the sultry heat from the street and the ceiling fan turning with the listlessness of a Monday, the tinkle of teaspoons against china marked the start of a much-needed truce.

We had been promising moderation for three days. Three. We swore it on Wednesday, after the first fair dinner. We repeated it on Thursday, after the second. On Friday nobody swore it out loud any more, but there was a tacit agreement: this year the fair would be survived on sparkling water, fruit and Franciscan moderation. My cousin even brought a bowl of grapes as a symbolic gesture. The bowl sat untouched on the table, looking at us reproachfully.

Every trace of discipline went out of the window the exact moment my uncle stepped through the door.

He was carrying a golden cardboard tray tied with a red ribbon, and its weight gave away that the town cake shop had done its very best. He carried it with both hands, at chest height, like someone entering church with the monstrance. When he set it down on the oilcloth, the crackle of the waxed paper sounded like a starting pistol.

“Today deserves a sugar rematch,” my uncle declared, undoing the knot with the deliberation of a bomb-disposal expert.

“Darling, we said…” my aunt began.

“We said lots of things,” he replied, without looking up from the ribbon.

The smell of toasted custard, cinnamon and freshly baked puff pastry filled the room all at once. There they were, packed together like soldiers on parade: mille-feuilles crowned with icing sugar, piononos soaked in syrup and two chocolate profiteroles that openly defied any cholesterol test. We counted them with our eyes. There were seven of us. There were nine cakes. Fair maths is cruel: two left over, and two is the worst possible number for a family.

For ten seconds there was a reverent silence. Nobody dared reach in first so as not to look like a barbarian, but glances crossed, calculating trajectories, measuring distances and claiming pieces with their eyes. My grandmother, who hadn’t moved from her armchair all afternoon, sat up a few centimetres. A tiny gesture. But we all understood that the profiterole in the corner already had an owner.

The resistance lasted as long as it takes a sip of coffee to cool. A quick hand (I won’t say whose, but the aunt of “darling, we said” has very good reflexes) pounced on the crispy pastry, unleashing a white shower over the table, and sanity surrendered for good. In two minutes, the tray looked like a battlefield: crumbs, icing sugar everywhere and one lonely pionono that nobody dared claim out of pure good manners.

If the night promised dancing until the small hours in the square, the body demanded premium fuel. That’s what we said, with our mouths full and our fingers sticky, by way of scientific justification.

Tomorrow the guilt would return, and the boiled vegetables and the bowl of grapes. Today, the fair was celebrated one bite at a time.

I’m the first-aid kit at the fairground medical post. An orange box with a handle, two catches that go click and, inside, perfect order: gauze by size, bandages rolled like seashells, the blood-pressure monitor coiled in its case, saline, gloves and my most precious treasure, which isn’t what you think. It’s the box of cartoon plasters.

On the Saturday of the fair, at nine at night, the fairground smells of churros, candyfloss and new shoes. That last one I can smell better than anyone, because new shoes are my main customer. Out of every ten people who come through the door of the post, seven arrive limping with an apologetic smile and their shoes in their hand.

“I bought them for the fair,” says the first, a girl in a green ruffled dress. “It’s the first time I’ve worn them.”

Nacho, the nurse, nods like someone who has heard that sentence four hundred times. Because he has heard it four hundred times. He cleans, treats, applies a special blister dressing and gives her a piece of advice that is almost a philosophy of life: “New shoes, a little at a time. And for dancing, your old ones.”

Then a six-year-old boy comes in with a grazed knee and enormous pride. He fell running towards the raffle stall, but he says it doesn’t hurt, while his chin trembles slightly. The ambulance technician asks him what his favourite animal is and opens my box of cartoon plasters like someone opening a treasure chest. The boy chooses a lion. He leaves the post showing it to everyone, knee first, as if it were a medal.

At half past nine an elderly man comes in, hair neatly combed, sits down and eyes me sideways. There’s nothing wrong with him, he says. He just wants his blood pressure taken, since he’s here anyway. Nacho takes it with all the calm in the world. Perfect numbers. “Like a young lad,” he tells him. The man stands up straighter than when he came in and goes off to find his wife and tell her.

There’s also a girl feeling a bit dizzy, who has spent the afternoon in the sun without drinking water. They sit her in the shade, give her a cold bottle and tell her a bad joke. Ten minutes later she’s fine, and after fifteen she laughs at the joke, which is when you really know someone has recovered.

What I like most about this team is the way they work: unhurried on the outside and everything ready on the inside. They know it will almost always be a blister, a knee or a touch of heatstroke. But they’re ready for anything, which is why they’re here. And even so, they treat every blister as if it were the most important one at the fair.

At midnight we do a count: seventeen blisters, one knee, one dizzy spell, three perfect blood-pressure readings and a pair of glasses found under a chair, now back with their owner. Nothing serious. It’s the best news a first-aid kit can give.

Nacho closes me, click and click, and puts me on the shelf. I have twenty cartoon plasters left. Tomorrow we’ll need to restock the lions, they always run out first.

The original plan for Saturday night was a monument to prudence. We had agreed to meet at nine by strict consensus, even voted on in the WhatsApp group with a poll and everything: a quick, light, no-fuss dinner, so as to get a place in the front row before the eleven o’clock concert on the Torrox fair stage. We had cold soft drinks, bottles of water in our rucksacks to fight the heat of the crowd and the firm promise not to stuff ourselves, so we could jump to “Sabor de amor” without risk of indigestion. Someone suggested having salad. Nobody listened, but the gesture was appreciated.

Common sense lasted exactly until we turned the corner into Calle Calzada.

That’s where the mutiny happened. The smell of the wood-fired oven came out of the pizzeria like a cartoon arm and grabbed us by the nose. Someone (Rafa, always Rafa) floated the forbidden words: “How about a pizza to share?” Before the responsible faction could cast a single vote against, two of the group were already coming out carrying a wobbly tower of three steaming boxes. “To share,” said Rafa. Three family-size boxes for six people. That’s not sharing, that’s a feeding station.

Goodbye to frugal nibbling; hello to melted cheese stretching in endless strings over the cobbles.

We ordered a four seasons, a barbecue and a ham and mushroom. The four seasons was the most controversial: someone only wanted the ham season, someone flatly refused the artichoke one and someone maintained that in Torrox, in October, there’s only one season, and it’s summer. That climate debate cost us five precious minutes.

Eating a family-size pizza standing up in the middle of a busy hill, juggling so as not to stain your fair shirt while holding a can of fizzy drink between your knees, should be an Olympic sport. Lucía ate with her arm stretched out, as if the pizza scared her, to save her white blouse. Rafa, on the other hand, was already on his fifth slice, with a tomato stain on his chest in the exact shape of the Iberian Peninsula.

At twenty past ten the tension was unbearable. The clock was ticking relentlessly, a gust of wind nearly blew away a cardboard lid and there were three orphan slices left that nobody wanted to leave behind, out of sheer party dignity. Throwing away pizza at the fair brings bad luck. Nobody says so, but we all know it.

We polished off the last crust at a run, wiped our fingers on a single miraculous napkin that passed from hand to hand like a relic and ran up the hill amid laughter and puffing. As we turned towards the square the first chords of the electric guitar rang out and the singer greeted the town.

We arrived flushed, our digestion at its limit and our breath smelling of oregano, but overflowing with joy and ready to burn off dinner to Spanish pop. We didn’t get the front row. We got the seventh. But when “Sabor de amor” came on, we jumped anyway. Carefully, mind. Very gently. Because of the pizza.

My professional career came to an abrupt end in the third pass of the fourth sevillana, just as the band decided to speed up the beat as if they were paid per beat. Until then I was a respectable spool heel: seven centimetres of dignity covered in red suede, matching the polka dots on the dress. No plastic, no imitations. A proper shoemaker’s heel, the kind they sell you with the warning “this one needs breaking in”.

I had lasted three days of fair like a champion. I had dodged puddles of rebujito of dubious origin, other people’s stamping feet, treacherous steps and the kilometres Maricarmen covers between the caseta, the nougat stall and the raffle stall, where, by the way, she never wins anything. Three days. I could already see myself retiring with honours in a shoebox, on top of the wardrobe, telling war stories to the wellies.

But that last zapateado on the boards of the caseta was my death sentence.

There was a sharp crack, like a branch snapping. I felt the glue and the two nails that held me to the sole give way without warning: one shot off towards the bar and the other surrendered with a little metallic sigh. Maricarmen, oblivious to the tragedy, did a triumphant turn with her arms in the air. I was left stuck between two badly aligned planks, staring up at the ceiling of lanterns like a soldier fallen on the battlefield.

Watching my sole companion walk away was devastating. And Maricarmen took less than half a second to lose her symmetry. She went from parading with the poise of a fair queen to limping with a most comical rhythm, one foot in the Alhambra and the other in the basement, raising and lowering a shoulder as if dancing reggaeton by accident. Her cousin, seeing her, thought it was a new step and copied her. Then two more joined in. For one glorious minute, half the caseta danced with a limp out of involuntary solidarity. From the floor, I didn’t know whether to cry or feel like a choreographer.

Maricarmen finally noticed. She looked down, looked at her stumpy shoe, looked at her friends and came out with the sentence that broke my heart:

“And they cost me forty euros in the sales!”

The sales. Three days of impeccable service and that was my send-off. Not even a minute’s silence.

Then came the worst part. A tide of espadrilles, cowboy ankle boots and esparto platforms kicked me mercilessly towards the exit. I rolled across the dance floor, bounced on the step and flew out of the door like a cowboy thrown out of a saloon. Now I rest here, propped against the kerb of a Torrox pavement, watching the parade of ruffles from the perspective of a cigarette end.

A stray dog has come over to sniff me with a sceptical air. It walked round me twice, wrinkled its nose and decided I’m not even good enough to be a bone. It left without saying goodbye. In this town even the dogs have standards.

My owner will be negotiating a pair of spare ballet flats from some far-sighted friend by now, or will have surrendered to going barefoot, which in the small hours is the obligatory fashion at any Andalusian fair. Meanwhile, I have achieved what many dream of: early retirement in the middle of a party, with a street view and live music.

If anyone asks, tell them I fell in the line of duty, a victim of art and excessive enthusiasm. And have them put on my gravestone: “It lasted three days. The sevillana, four.”

Being planted in the middle of the Plaza de la Constitución in Torrox has its advantages: prime views, varied conversation and a permanent position many would envy. The problem comes when two o’clock strikes in the middle of the October fair and the thermometer decides to ignore the calendar with the utmost cheek. October, they say. October in Torrox is August with a jacket in the wardrobe, just in case.

I’m the central street lamp. Three cast-iron arms, a stately bearing and a spotless night-time record. At night I’m indispensable. By day, with my bulbs off and the sun beating down, my job is reduced to keeping my composure without melting and serving as a meeting point. “Where shall we meet?” “At the lamp post.” Just like that, no other directions. I’m a cast-iron GPS.

Luckily, this year the Town Hall has seen fit to hang a canopy of colourful umbrellas over our heads. A floating vault of greens, yellows and fuchsias that softens the glare and casts a psychedelic mosaic on the ground. I appreciate the shade, I won’t deny it, but I feel a bit silly surrounded by so much open fabric without a drop of rain falling. I look like the serious aunt at a wedding where everyone else is wearing a party hat. A tourist took eleven photos of me. Eleven. All he didn’t do was ask me to smile.

At my feet, the daytime fair gives no respite. A band attacks a pasodoble with more decibels than tuning from the stage at the far end of the square. The trumpeter does his own thing; the keyboard, another; and the singer, a third that science has yet to discover. Never mind. The heat is fierce, but the locals couldn’t care less: fans beating the air at jet speed, glasses of rebujito performing impossible balancing acts and a group of brave souls stamping on the cobbles as if the ground were frozen and they had to warm up.

A while ago, a man in a flowery shirt and straw hat leaned on my post to shake a pebble out of his shoe. Big mistake. He nearly left his hand stuck to the iron, which at this time of day is as hot as a churro griddle. He jumped in a way worthy of a professional dancer, let out a “son of a…!” that I won’t finish out of respect for the children present, and the people around, thinking it was part of the dance, applauded him. The man, not one to waste an ovation, finished off with a sevillana step. Pure art.

A little girl has stuck chewing gum on my base. A couple have taken a selfie hugging me as if I were family. And a pigeon has been sitting on my left arm for twenty minutes, looking at me as if considering moving in. All normal.

I look to the far end, towards the stage, where the technicians are testing lights among cables, speakers and a roll of duct tape that must be what holds half the stage together. I smile through my dusty glass. I know perfectly well that as soon as the sun hides behind the whitewashed houses and the umbrellas become pure decoration, my turn will come.

I have more fairs behind me than I can count. And tonight, as always, I’ll be the first to light up, put up with some crooked lantern hanging from my back and light people’s stumbles until the small hours, when the last straggler bumps into me, says sorry and wishes me good night as if I were family.

In the meantime, I’ll settle for not burning out before dinner. And for the pigeon deciding, please, to go and live somewhere else.

The Sunday of the fair shows no mercy to accumulated tiredness, but the arena for the Torrox equestrian show was a hive of activity where nobody blinked. Between the fine dust kicked up by the hooves and the smell of leather and sand, I was holding Laura’s hand with a mixture of romantic devotion and cold sweat. With good reason. We had four days of partying in our bodies, the soles of my feet hurt as if I’d walked the Camino de Santiago in flip-flops and, to top it all, I had insisted on watching the ribbon race right up against the front barrier. My idea. Nobody made me. For the record.

“If you let go, the tide of linen shirts will swallow us,” she warned me in my ear, squeezing my knuckles with the force of hydraulic pliers.

Laura is a lovely person, sweet and with small hands. Small hands that, in tense situations, develop the pressure of an olive press. I’d known that since the first penalty shoot-out we watched together. Even so, I went ahead. That’s love.

In the arena, an imposing grey with a braided mane began trotting to the far end to build up speed. The rider, upright as a spindle, in an immaculate short jacket and with a moustache that deserved its own round of applause, held in his right hand a wooden spike as thin as a pencil. Fifty metres away, hanging from a rope stretched between two posts, fluttered a row of brightly coloured silk ribbons wound on small spools. The challenge looked like magic: gallop flat out and spear a ring the size of a one-euro coin to unroll the prize without slowing the horse. Some days I can’t get the key in the lock with the car standing still.

“Do you think he’ll get it?” whispered Laura.

“If he gets it, I’ll buy you churros.”

“If he gets it, you’re buying me churros anyway.”

It wasn’t exactly a negotiation.

The horse broke into a full gallop. The ground shook under our soles like a home-made earthquake. The crowd held its breath all at once: the silence was so thick you could only hear the animal snorting through the hot afternoon air and, in the background, a bag of sunflower seeds someone opened at the worst possible moment. Laura dug her nails into my palm; I’d swear that for those three seconds my circulation was suspended and I lost the feeling in my little finger forever. The rider stretched out his arm, narrowed one eye and thrust at the fuchsia ribbon.

Clack!

The spike went cleanly through the ring, the spool spun, releasing two metres of satin into the wind, and the crowd burst into a deafening roar of clapping and cheering. Laura leapt at my neck screaming with joy and knocked me off balance backwards, to the laughter of the neighbours and the applause of a man who shouted: “That fall scores points too!”

From the ground, my hair full of sand and my fingers still numb from her grip, I was absolutely sure: surviving a ribbon race holding your girlfriend’s hand is the most dangerous sport at the whole fair. And the churros, that afternoon, I had earned myself.

I’m the vest of a Civil Protection volunteer. Orange, with strips that shine when the light hits them and a chest pocket that fits a notebook, a pen and a packet of tissues. From Monday to Friday I hang on a coat hanger. The man who wears me, Fermín, works in a car repair shop; during the week he smells of oil and screws. At fair time, he smells of me.

This Sunday at eight in the evening we have the most delicate duty of all: the procession carrying the Patron Saints from the Parish Church to their Sanctuary. Fermín has been on the Paseo de las Moreas since seven, with two colleagues, a water carboy and crates of bottles. His job is to make sure everyone can be there, see and walk along in peace. Nothing more. And nothing less.

The promenade fills up slowly. Whole families, locals who have come up from the coast, grandmothers with fans and grandchildren in their Sunday best. Some have come every year for seventy years and some are here for the first time. Fermín opens a passage with his arms, kindly, without raising his voice: “A little step back, please, the older folk are coming through.” And people take the little step.

A lady of over eighty has been left without a place in the shade. Fermín brings a folding chair from his car, sets it up in the front row and gives her a bottle of water. The lady takes his hand, pats it twice and tells him he’s just like her grandson, who is also very good. Fermín blushes. I, on the outside, stay orange.

When the procession reaches the promenade, everything changes. A silence falls that nobody orders or asks for: it just appears. Fermín stands still too, in his place, watching both the street and the people. It’s the part of his job that isn’t in any manual: knowing how to be there. Respecting what for so many locals is the most important part of the fair and, at the same time, not losing sight of anyone.

A little boy wants to see everything and slips towards the road. Fermín brings him back to his place with a hand on his shoulder and a smile, without a shout. The mother thanks him with her eyes. A man feels a bit faint in the heat and the colleagues take him to a bench, with water and a while in the shade. Nothing more. Nobody notices, which is exactly how it should be.

The procession carries on towards Calle Almedina and the Sanctuary, and the crowd goes with it, little by little, like the tide. Fermín picks up the empty bottles, folds the chair and sits down for a moment on the kerb. His feet hurt. He looks at my shiny strips, a bit dirty now, and laughs to himself.

“Another year, partner.”

Nobody pays him for this. None of the volunteers earns a single euro for spending the fair on their feet, handing out water and opening passages. They do it because they want their town’s festivities to go well. And they go well, in part, because they are there.

Tonight I’ll go back on my hanger. On Monday, Fermín will go back to the workshop. But in my chest pocket something stays behind that the lady slipped in without him noticing: a mint sweet, wrapped in paper, with a pencil note that says “thank you, son”.

I’m a fire hose. Twenty metres of red fabric, a shiny metal coupling and infinite patience. I live coiled on the side of the engine, like a giant snail shell, and I have a very particular way of measuring whether a night has gone well: the less I come out, the better it went.

On Sunday night we’re on standby in the Convento area, because at half past ten the great fireworks display begins. We arrive early, before it fills up. The firefighters check the perimeter with me, test the pressure, unroll a length and roll it up again. It’s a ritual. Like trying on your flamenco dress the day before to see if it still fits.

There are five of my shift colleagues. The crew commander, who talks little and watches a lot. A young firefighter, who this morning visited her niece’s school to show off the engine and still has star stickers on her helmet. And three more, who have done so many fairs they know the order of the rockets by heart.

The pyrotechnician comes over to say hello before starting. They know each other from other years. They shake hands, go over the plan in two sentences and each goes to their post. No more words are needed: they both want the same thing, for the sky to fill up and the ground not to notice.

At half past ten on the dot the first rocket goes up. People say “ohhh!” and I, from the engine, say it inside too. Because even though I’m a hose, I love fireworks. I like the ones that open like golden palms, the ones that crackle like a pan of churros and the ones that take a second to explode, when the whole town holds its breath at once.

The firefighters only look at the sky now and then. The rest of the time they look at the ground, the trees, the roofs and the falling sparks. It’s their way of enjoying the fireworks: out of the corner of their eye, with a hand close to me. The young firefighter allows herself a huge smile when a green and white string bursts, and the commander, who has seen it, pretends he hasn’t.

The finale is a barrage that makes the windows rattle. Then silence, smoke and applause coming from everywhere, from the promenade, from the balconies and from the Convento. Somewhere in that smoke, I’m sure, the last shell of the night is drifting happily, the one that waited its turn without a word of complaint.

We do the last round. All in order. Not a single ember where it shouldn’t be, not one nervous bush. The commander gives the news over the radio with my favourite phrase of the year: “All clear.” All five take off their helmets at the same time, as if they’d rehearsed it.

We go back to the station with the lights off and no hurry. I’m still coiled, dry and at peace. Some hoses boast about how many times they’ve been out. I boast about this night, when I didn’t need to come out to have a front-row seat.

Tomorrow they’ll check me again, just in case. Always just in case. That’s what we’re here for.

My name is two-hundred-millimetre golden palm, although in the workshop they call me “the big one”. I live inside a cardboard tube stuck in the ground, near the Convento, surrounded by comrades in arms: rockets, shells, bangers, chrysanthemums, a couple of volcanoes and a row of sparklers that never stop talking. It’s Sunday, the last day of the fair, and at half past ten the great fireworks display begins. I close the show. I’m the cherry on top. The “see you next year”.

Not to boast, but it’s a position of great responsibility.

From my tube I can’t see much: a patch of sky, a few stars and the boots of the pyrotechnician, a serious man in a helmet and high-vis vest who has spent all afternoon checking cables, counting tubes and repeating under his breath “this one yes, this one yes, this one too”. When he passes in front of me, he stops, taps the cardboard and says: “You, the last one.” I know, boss. I know.

My neighbours are something else. On my left is a green chrysanthemum shell that has been nervous since midday and asks every ten minutes whether this hurts. On my right, a warning banger, short and big-headed, who spends his time boasting that he’s going to be “the loudest”. Sure. They’ll hear you all the way to Frigiliana. And then nobody will remember you.

In the distance you can hear the town. At eight the procession carrying the Patron Saints to their sanctuary set off, and that respectful silence the bells leave behind still floats in the air. Now, little by little, the murmur of the party returns: people looking for a spot, children perched on walls, gangs with bags of sunflower seeds and couples who have five days of fair behind them and are only standing up out of love.

Half past ten. That silence falls that only exists just before the fireworks.

Bang! Up goes the first, a warning rocket that whistles like a kettle and bursts in white. The town answers with the first “ohhh!” of the night. Then the rest go up, in waves: chrysanthemums, small palms, volcanoes spitting sparks and cascades falling like golden rain. My neighbour, the green chrysanthemum, shoots off shouting something I don’t understand and bursts beautiful, huge, perfect. I tell her so from below, although she can’t hear me any more.

The big-headed banger goes off too and, indeed, he’s extremely loud. Three car alarms go off and a man in the front row drops his bag of sunflower seeds in fright.

The display goes on. Twenty minutes of colours, smoke, sparks and “ohhh!”. And I, inside my tube, wait. Fewer and fewer comrades remain, there’s more and more smoke and I can feel the pyrotechnician’s boots getting closer.

The finale arrives. The rhythm speeds up, the explosions pile up and the sky looks like a flamenco stage about to collapse. People applaud without knowing whether it’s over yet. And then I feel the heat in my fuse.

I rise.

I rise as I have never risen, leaving a golden trail above the Convento, the white rooftops, the lanterns and all the people looking up with their mouths open. For one second I see everything: the whole town, the square, the sea in the distance, the big wheel lit up. Five days of fair in a single glance.

And I burst. I open into a gigantic golden palm that covers the Torrox sky from end to end and falls slowly, very slowly, in threads of gold. Below, the longest “ohhh!” of the night. Then, applause that never ends.

Now I’m smoke. Smoke drifting towards the Plaza de la Constitución, where the last concert is about to close the fair. I’ll stay there for a while, floating above the people, listening to the last song.

It’s been an honour to be the last. Until next year, Torrox.

I’m the fair organisers’ walkie-talkie. Black, with a short antenna, a volume knob I almost never turn down and a clip that has been hooked onto a belt since Wednesday morning. If anyone wants to know what the Torrox fair was really like, they shouldn’t look at the photos. They should listen to me.

On Wednesday at eight it all began with a voice from the set-up crew: “Square stage finished, over.” Then the electricians: “Entrance arch checked, board two ready for switch-on, over.” Then sound: “Testing, testing… Do you read me? Over.” We read them. We read them every day.

The whole fair has passed through my channel, but from behind the scenes. The Local Police reporting a car badly parked across a driveway and a boy who wasn’t lost, he was looking. The Guardia Civil coordinating traffic on the main road. Civil Protection asking for more water for the Paseo de las Moreas. The medical post saying, night after night, the loveliest phrase in my repertoire: “All quiet, just blisters.”

The night-bus drivers have spoken through me, counting passengers like counting sheep: “Last run back with thirty-two, everyone home.” The paella cooks, asking for a spare gas bottle at quarter to two. The caseta waiters, who didn’t know if there was any ice left for the drinks. The gardeners of the Jardines de Picasso, asking please for people not to walk on the new lawn.

The stallholders of the Llano de la Almazara too, announcing that at nine on the dot they were turning the music up. The cleaning team, at half past six in the morning, in a voice full of sleep and pride: “Calzada done, over.” The taxi drivers, asking how to get into the Convento area without getting in the way. The firefighters, with their nightly “all clear”.

And then there were the others, who didn’t even have a walkie-talkie but appeared in every message: the people from the associations putting out tables and stacking chairs; the choirs rehearsing in any corner; the dance schools with their dancers of all ages; the peñas, the clubs, the brotherhoods, the neighbours who lent an extension lead, an awning or a ladder. Nobody on the poster. Everyone at the fair.

It’s now one minute to midnight on Sunday. In the Plaza de la Constitución the last song of the fair is playing and people are singing it as if they didn’t want it to end. The person carrying me steps aside a little, looks for a corner where they can hear, holds me to their mouth and presses the button.

“Attention all teams. The fair is ending. Thank you to the crew, the electricians, sound and lights, the Local Police and the Guardia Civil, Civil Protection, medics and firefighters, cleaning, the drivers, the stallholders, the casetas, the volunteers from every association. Without you, none of this lights up. Over.”

For a few seconds nobody answers. Then the replies start coming in, one after another, overlapping like a sevillana: “Copy.” “Thanks to you.” “See you next year.” “¡Viva la feria de Torrox!” Someone, from some post, dares to sing a bit of a pasodoble. Nobody says anything, which is how radios applaud.

Tomorrow they’ll charge my battery and put me away in a drawer with the spare batteries and a roll of duct tape. I’ll spend the winter in silence, dreaming of messages. But first, as always, the last one.

“Over and out.”