Ronda's Parauta Serves Free Rabbit Rice at Rural Festival Parauta, a village of 350 people in the Serrania de Ronda, celebrates its Rabbit Festival this weekend with free arroz con conejo, local produce, verdiales and family entertainment. This weekend belongs to the small villages of the Serrania de Ronda, and few celebrate theirs as wholeheartedly as Parauta. The village, which sits in the hills an hour behind Ronda and counts barely 350 residents, is holding its Festival del Conejo, the Rabbit Festival, from Friday, November 6, to Sunday, November 8, and the occasion has been declared a Fiesta de Singularidad Turistica, a distinction that the regional administration reserves for events that express the identity of a place. The festival exists to defend something simple: the traditional cooking of the Andalusian countryside, and of Parauta in particular. Rabbit is one of the central pillars of the village's recipe book, together with the game and garden produce of the Serrania, and for three days it becomes the reason for a party that fills the streets. The most awaited moment is the communal meal. The residents themselves prepare the traditional arroz con conejo, rabbit rice, in quantity, and it is distributed free to everyone who turns up. In a village of 350 people, cooking for a crowd of visitors is no small commitment, and it is precisely the point: the festival is not a tourist show staged by a company, but the hospitality of a community that cooks and serves its own table. Around the food, the weekend fills out with a local market selling products of the zone: chestnuts, honey, liqueurs, cured sausages and embutidos, homemade cakes and esparto crafts. For visitors, it is one of the best possible catalogues of what the Serrania de Ronda produces, and the money goes directly to local families. Saturday is the big day. At 12.30 the Panda Los Moras opens the programme with verdiales, the festive singing style of the Malaga mountains. At 2.30pm comes the free tasting of arroz con conejo, with the Orquesta Antidoto providing the music while people eat. Later in the day Grupo Chekere takes over, and in the evening the festival lights up with a glow bar, a 360-degree video booth and a photo booth, before the late music carries on with El Callejón, Los Bomberay, Crazy Hour and DJ Toulalan until the small hours. Sunday belongs to the children, with bouncy castles, workshops and musical shows from 12.30, and at 4pm Malakay closes the festival. It is a programme that makes a point quietly but clearly: the Rabbit Festival is a family event first, a gastronomic event second, and a tourist attraction third. The timing is good for anyone exploring the Ronda area in autumn. Parauta is also one of the gateways to the Bosque Encantado, the Enchanted Forest that has become one of the most visited natural corners of the province, and a weekend of festival food and a walk among centennial chestnuts makes a very complete day out in the hills. The festival also lands at a particular moment in the village's public life. Parauta is the town of Katrin Ortega, the mayor who won her seat with 88 per cent of the vote and all seven councillors and who, weeks ago, broke with the PSOE to lead her own local platform, Unidos Parauta Avanza. Her project has been precisely this: to put the village on the tourism map of the Serrania. A festival declared of Singularidad Turistica, a market of local products and a growing flow of visitors are the visible part of that ambition. For the wider Ronda region, events like this one matter beyond the charm of the programme. The great names of the area, Ronda itself, the gorge, the wineries, absorb most of the tourism that arrives in the comarca. The small villages live or die by their ability to offer a reason to turn off the road, stop for a morning and come back. Rabbit rice served free in a village square, with verdiales and children playing, is one of the most persuasive reasons the Serrania has. If the weather holds, Parauta expects to feed several hundred people on Saturday afternoon. The rice is free, the market is open to all, and the village, small as it is, spends the weekend doing what it does best: proving that tradition, cooked well and served generously, is still the best calling card a village in the Ronda hills can offer.