As we continue to wait for the other Spanish boot to drop and wake us up from this dream that is Rota, this Little Town That Could still continues to endear.

  Case in point is Rota’s Nuestra Señora de Rosario, a street procession honoring the town’s patroness saint. Rota’s schedule of parading various wooden floats depicting the Virgin crowds the town’s public calendar, but this one comes with a twist – and a ring of salt, so to speak.

  Before the procession, the service organizations of Rota’s local churches join hands to coat several blocks of the procession’s route with carpets of decorative rock salt. It’s a lot of work, especially with no snow in the forecast, and no way to spread except by hand. With coolers of beer following in the wake of each salted carpet, it does seem like a very labor intensive excuse to drink beer in public. (As a New Orleanian, I heartily approve, though there they’d be carpeting the streets in jambalaya  or crawfish etouffe.)

  I should add the coolers include sodas and water for the cadres of kids cheerfully assisting in the salting. It’s yet another activity that keeps Spanish kids up well past American bedtimes.

  Each square of salted throw rug is a mix of natural white and dyed salt embroidered and stenciled with the symbols and heraldry of the various participating brotherhoods. (By the way, I’m writing this with the thinnest of research efforts, and I invite the serious reader to look all this stuff up him and herself.)

 It’s a lot of work, especially with no snow in the forecast, and no way to spread except by hand. With coolers of beer following in the wake of each salted carpet, it does seem like a very labor intensive excuse to drink beer in public.

  By the end of the night, two streets are completely covered in salt art, along with the kids, any of whom you could rub around your margarita glass.

  In all, more than 25,000 lbs of salt will have been dumped and turned into street art for the one-evening procession of the Virgin. What happens to the salt afterwards? It’s all used to make the world’s largest bucket of homemade ice cream. (Don’t look that up.)

  This is our sixth trip to this modest, market town and still-functioning fishing village that remains largely undiscovered by the tourist trade. And except for several beach bars knowing me as Vino Blanco Doblé, Carol and I remain invisible and blend in like the locals. 

  The religious devotion here is genuine and not a show for tourists. It took me a while to adjust my atheistic sensibilities, but I’ve become impressed by the fervor on display throughout the year here. (With the possible exception of the pointy hats and capes of the penitents during Holy Week. The red ones are okay, but when they wear white, it still hits a little close to my roots in the Jim Crow South.)

  For me, the extent of my piety for all these manifestations of faith will be a folding chair, flip flops and a vino blanco seco. 

  Make it a double.