Ronda is a pleasant place to stay. It’s busy with busloads of tourists coming in each day from Malaga, but if you can avoid getting caught up in the middle of thirty Germans all following a lady holding a flag on a stick, it’s fine for a stroll about.
Fine that is until the power all goes off. At the time, we’d assumed that it was a local issue, probably caused by high winds. Eight hours later when the first brief restoration of the phone signal occurred, we learned that it was an international issue covering all of Spain and Portugal, plus a bit of France.
I think we take connectivity for granted these days, but twenty hours without electricity where all you could buy was whatever a darkened corner shop might sell you for cash and a complete lack of online updates or even the ability to make an old school telephone call, soon gave an insight into how quickly society might break down if a power outage went on for a few days.
We had limited food in the dead fridge and forty euros in my wallet. I’d let the car get low in fuel though and there wouldn’t have been enough in the tank to get us to our next destination of Seville if we’d been travelling that day. Whilst I’m not going to turn into one of those ‘prepper’ folks, I’m mindful of the possibility of a repeat occurrence and will try to be better prepared. Or at least until it’s all forgotten.
The game that we went to in Ronda, was a couple of days before the outage. It was only a twenty-five-minute walk from where we were staying and so Jen and I didn’t need to use the car. That’s a real benefit when street parking is at a premium and you’ve bagged a handy spot.
The game was Ronda’s final home game of the season, and they were hoping for a big crowd. A van with loudspeakers had been driving around town all morning, advertising free admission. A few hundred people turned up, but I’ve no idea how many spectators usually attend. Some of them looked unfamiliar with their surroundings and what they should be doing, so maybe the marketing worked.
It was a critical game for Ronda, who were sat in the fourth and final play-off spot of the seventh-tier Andalusian First Division. Atletico Benemiel had nothing to play for, sitting in the middle of that eight team section in the table, sandwiched between the four play-off spots and the four relegation positions.
Ronda went a goal up midway through the first half, before Benamiel equalised ten minutes later. It seemed to matter more to the visitors, who picked up multiple bookings and had a fella sent off for instigating a hullabaloo just before the final whistle. For the record, a hullabaloo ranks higher than argy-bargy, which itself is a step up from hand-bags.
The home players slumped to the floor at the end, with the two dropped points meaning that with just one game remaining, their play-off ambitions were no longer in their own hands. Pretty much as I imagined that the Boro players might have done after their similar home draw with Norwich earlier that afternoon. Still, we go again, as the coaches say, and for both Ronda and Boro, there’s hope that it might all work out fine in their respective final fixtures.
Trail of the Lion King 