The Bells did it, Esmeralda!

Salobreñeros have a reputation for being decent folk, certainly speaking from personal experience, but they can get upset when somebody or something spoils their efforts.

The good folk of Salobreña have been faithfully hanging out of their windows at eight in the evening, on the dot – every evening – applauding the efforts of the police and medical workers.

However, the church bells have been drowning their efforts out and some of them are not happy bunnies, if social media is to be believed.

It’s a routine in which the whole village seemingly participate: the Guardia Civil and Policía Local drive around, accompanied by the strains of the National Anthem – they stop occasionally to sing happy birthday to those kids that are celebrating them – all to the gusty applause of Los Salobreñeros.

But then the bells start up…

The village priest, bless his cotton socks, decided to join the fanfare with his medieval ghetto blaster pealing out from the bell tower of Nuestra Señora del Rosario, effectively drowning out the applause.

Before you could say “keep your campanological cacophony down,” those hands hitherto occupied in impacting against each other, were soon put to impacting on keyboards in a flurry of social-media indignation.

Many thought the priest had had a good idea whilst other thought that he should accommodate his bells somewhere uncomfortable, until, in the end, the Mayor, María Eugenia Rufino, interceded…

She phoned Father Jorge and asked him to move his bell ringing forward, so that it didn’t coincide with the balcony applause.

Don Jorge had just wanted to do his part and had no problem changing his bell-born homage so that his bell ringing concludes at 19.59h, a minute before the applause rings out – nobody starts clapping before 20.00h and the bells fall silent one minute before. Everybody’s happy!

(News: Salobrena, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)