Salobreña Mobilises Entire Coastline to Roast Chestnuts for Thirty Thousand Visitors
The town council has ordered every fishing boat, bakery and pensioner's kitchen into a single chestnut-roasting campaign ahead of the Fiesta de la Castaña.
Salobreña has suspended all fishing along its coastline until Friday so that every available brazier can be redirected to roasting chestnuts for the Fiesta de la Castaña, the town council announced on Monday. Fishermen have been reassigned to a rota of fire tending, and the port now smells almost exclusively of woodsmoke.
The Centro de Mayores, which opens its doors at 5pm on Thursday, November 5, has been extended with three marquees erected on the adjoining car park. Council workers laid more than four hundred metres of trestle tables overnight, and a local carpentry workshop has been commissioned to build an additional ninety benches so that no visitor has to stand while eating a roasted chestnut.
Councillor for Festivities Rafael Ortega said the council had calculated that the town would need to roast chestnuts in quantities never previously attempted. "We expect the town to be full of people who want something warm in their hands," he told reporters. "We have therefore asked every bakery in the municipality to stop making bread and start making chestnuts."
Live music will be provided by a band of forty-two musicians drawn from the town's schools and its municipal orchestra, who will rehearse in shifts from Tuesday. Organisers said the band would play continuously from dusk until the last chestnut was eaten, a moment the council has not yet been able to estimate.
Residents of the lower streets have been asked to keep their windows open to let the scent circulate, and the local bus service will run an extended timetable to carry visitors from the coast to the senior centre. Councillor Ortega said the town would review the arrangement next week, when it expects to be asked to do it again.
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