Tonight, he burns: Zozobra, that four-story-tall work of so many community volunteers conducted by the Kiwanis, is the center of attention over at Magers Field. Preceded by music, merriment and dance, Will Shuster's 1924 version of gloom, recreated and enlarged in the many years since, goes up amid flame and fireworks not long after dark.

With him, according to lore, go the woes and any remaining rencores from the year past — and La Fiesta de Santa Fe gets its unofficial and far-from-holy start.

Tomorrow morning at 6 in Rosario Chapel, Mayor David Coss is to repeat the words of captain-general Juan Páez Hurtado to his cuadrilla — the proclamation of the fiesta that carried out the wishes of the man who led the resettlement of el norte in 1692, Don Diego de Vargas. That pregón was issued 20 years after Don Diego led Spanish settlers back to the Plaza — a re-arrival that ended 12 years of downriver exile after the Pueblo Revolt.

Sacred and solemn as the captain-general's words were, they ushered in a fine end-of-summer event in the fashion of fiestas throughout the Spanish-speaking world: holy in theme, secular in celebration.

Mass at the Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi recalls the devotion that sustained settlers sent so far from the colonial cities of Mexico — and so much farther from Spain, where the 1492 reconquest from the Moors led to that other world-changing event of the same year ...

And on the Plaza, gaiety and good times!

Over the years, notably those since Manifest Destiny swallowed the American Southwest, the event took on commercial trappings. But through it all, fiestas, as so many santafesinos know it/them in plural form, endured as something special for the local populace: Spanish Market, Indian Market, the opera, the chamber-music festival, the folk-art market catered to visitors and locals alike; but now, with the Labor Day weekend over and the out-of-town traffic down to a low roar, tends to be a time for nosotros.

Everyone's welcome, of course — but there just aren't as many out-of-towners on hand, give or take tons of students up from The University of New Mexico or over from Highlands for Zozobra.

Now, as the Plaza wears the coats of arms of so many founding families, it fills with locals — along with so many raised here but working elsewhere. Among the food booths, and in front of the community stage across from the Palace of the Governors, the homecoming aspects of fiestas take some of their most pleasant forms: an abrazo here, an hola there — great to see you again, my friend ...

A schedule of events, along with stories and pictures of at least some of its meaning, are in The New Mexican's official guide to Fiesta, available on newsracks around town: Parades and performances fill the weekend. It promises to be an enjoyable one — and we wish you felices fiestas!