There are certain things you expect to find outside your front door in an Andalusian village. A neighbour stopping for a chat. A delivery van attempting the seemingly impossible task of squeezing along a narrow street. Perhaps a procession, a horse or two, or the distant sound of flamenco drifting up from the square. What you don’t necessarily expect is a man in swimming trunks carrying an enormous inflatable tyre past your window.

But this was Feria weekend in Jimena de la Frontera, and apparently anything goes.

four days when the village changes gear

Our annual Feria is one of those occasions when normal life in Jimena is temporarily suspended. For four days there is music, dancing, flamenco, bands and processions. The square becomes the centre of village life and people who might ordinarily be heading home for dinner somehow find themselves still outside several hours later. It’s noisy, colourful, sociable and wonderfully Spanish.

And then Saturday afternoon arrives…

Someone had decided that what Calle Sevilla — the steep street running directly past our house — really needed was a giant waterslide. Not a children’s paddling pool. Not a modest inflatable. A proper, enormous, street-length waterslide.

first, find your inflatable

Preparations began at home. Out came the swimming costumes, along with an assortment of inflatables, pumped up and ready for their moment of glory. Our beautiful vintage style green and cream ring, along with a pink, glitter filled unicorn, courtesy of a visiting guest, sat ready and waiting in our living room. Outside, more inflatables, some carried at head past our window. Then we opened the front door. And discovered half the village snaking up Calle Sevilla, past our house. And a giant, inflatable waterslide running down the middle of the road.

calle sevilla, but not as we know it…

The transformation was extraordinary. Where there would normally be cars and people making their way up and down the hill, there was now a brilliant blue river of plastic stretching along the street, edged in red and yellow. And beside it, an ever growing queue. Children, teenagers, parents and grandparents. People in trunks, bikinis and swimming costumes standing outside whitewashed village houses clutching inflatable rings, tyres, lilos and anything else they thought might get them to the bottom faster. All directly outside our front door.

There is something particularly surreal about opening your door onto a familiar street and finding a woman in a bikini waiting patiently with a giant rubber ring. But within minutes it all seemed completely normal.

and they’re off…

One by one, people launched themselves down Calle Sevilla.

Some approached proceedings with considerable confidence. Others discovered, rather too late, that steering an inflatable at speed is not an exact science. There were elegant descents. There were spectacularly inelegant descents. There were collisions, spins, shrieks, enormous splashes and the occasional expression suggesting that somebody had just reconsidered all the decisions that had brought them to this particular moment. And then they’d pick themselves up and join the queue to do it again.

Looking down from above, the sight was quite extraordinary: a huge ribbon of blue running between Jimena’s old white houses, with a procession of people and inflatables stretching along either side. It looked less like Calle Sevilla and more like a temporary water park that had accidentally landed in the middle of an Andalusian pueblo.

and this is why we love village life…

Perhaps that’s the thing about living somewhere like Jimena. The architecture may be old. Traditions run deep. Feria itself belongs to generations of celebrations that came long before us. But tradition here doesn’t necessarily mean taking yourself too seriously.

There can be flamenco and processions. There can be music in the square until late at night. And apparently there can also be several hundred people wandering past your house in swimwear carrying inflatable doughnuts.

For one hot Saturday afternoon, one of Jimena’s streets stopped being a street altogether. It became a playground.

People laughed. Children raced each other. Adults behaved like children. Neighbours stood in doorways watching the spectacle and the whole thing had that slightly chaotic, spontaneous feeling that the best village celebrations somehow manage to create.

By the following day, Calle Sevilla would start becoming Calle Sevilla again.

The water would disappear. The enormous inflatable rings would be deflated and returned to cupboards. Eventually the Feria music would stop and normal village life would resume. But for a few wonderfully ridiculous hours, we had a waterslide outside our front door.

And really, how often can you say that?