The Almuñécar town-hall maintenance department is carrying out a spot of boisterous-bolder clearance within the Urbanización Carmenes del Mar, which is on Cerro Gordo, La Herradura.

They have completed the contemplation, pointing and knowing-nod stage and have moved onto the erecting a barrier, warning passers-by of the possibility of being pounced on by a very large stone. But it is not only people or cars, but houses which could find themselves playing host to a lump of intrusive Cerro Gordo; hence Operación Pilla el Pedruzco.

Councillor José Manuel Fernández Medina explained, heroically, “This task, at the petition of the locals, and the prevision of future damage to this Herradureña residential area, will be carried out in the following days, just as soon as a technical study is compiled.”

He explained that the coming autumn rains could loosen the boulders’ capricious grip on the hillside and off they bloody well go, and the last one to the bottom’s a poof, sort of thing.

These lurking and potentially mobile boulders are situated between the Casas Especiales and Atarazanas areas, by the way.

(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical Granada, Andalucia)