Misfortune, but not crime-related, is the subject of the next article, which involves a hang-glider enthusiast falling out of the sky – not recommended.

On Sunday the 20th of last month a man – name and age not known – was injured just above Otívar, near the old road (Carretera de la Cabra).

Fortunately for him, a motorist, who had stopped to admire the view of the valley, spotted him going down in a manner not conducive to a soft landing.
Such were his injuries (head and back) and the inaccessibility of the area where he landed, that he had to be rescued by helicopter, in which he was flown to the Santa Ana hospital in Motril.

This reminds me of an incident involving my deceased father-in-law, who owned a grove of olive trees just under the telephone masts site where these hang-gliders launch themselves from.

Being, even then, a gnarled old-world rural worker, he was always perplexed at these enthusiasts as they floated over. His dog spent the whole day barking at them, which didn’t improve his opinion of them.

Then one day, there was a crashing sound and foreign oaths shouted from down at the bottom of the grove, and, sure enough; there in one of his beloved trees was an entangled German hang-gliding pilot.

The dog was doing double flips but he just threw a stone at it, which is Spanish for “be quiet,” and stomped off for a ladder from behind the cortijo.

He soon had the unfathomable foreigner out of his bent tree, together with most of the flying apparatus and helped him down the track to the road, where worried companions of the downed hang-glider had appeared.

From then on, until the day he died; bless him… he would cringe, expectantly, whenever one of them flew over.