Villa Sola de Vega

The Sola in the name comes from Nahuatl zollin, "quail", and is usually read as "where quail abound"; "de Vega" recalls José María de la Vega, the town's 18th-century benefactor. Villa Sola de Vega is the seat of the municipality of the same name, in Oaxaca's Sierra Sur, at about 1,400 m, with the Sola river, a tributary of the Atoyac, passing the town.

In 2020 it had 2,439 inhabitants and is the largest locality in a municipality of 111 localities and about 12,350 people. The town had 3,903 people in 1900, fell to 988 in 1980 and has recovered since. Residents are called solteños. The municipality lies where the Central Valleys meet the Sierra Madre del Sur: pine and oak forest on the heights, and Zapotec is spoken in the area, in variants such as Lachixío and Elotepec Zapotec.

The climate is mild: the average yearly temperature is about 19.7 °C, with January the coolest month (18.2 °C) and April the warmest (21.5 °C), and about 1,160 mm of rain a year, mostly in June. The local economy rests on corn and beans, with some logging. Peaks stand around the town, such as Cerro El Obispo, about 6 km east and above 2,400 m, and the neighbouring settlements of San Francisco Sola and San Ildefonso Sola lie within a kilometre.