Hola amigos - and welcome to live coverage of Stage 18 of La Vuelta, a penutltimate day in the mountains with four Cat.1 climbs and 177.5km between Colmenar Viejo and Beccerril de la Sierra.

Someone's happy... This from Higuita's EF Education First manager Jonathan Vaughters.

That was apparently the 85th Grand Tour stage win for Colombia.

Lopez will be up to fourth and in the white jersey again at the expense of Pogacar.

Roglic is all smiles as he warms down on the rollers... one step closer to the overall victory in Madrid. With Quintana losing around a minute - plus the bonuses - Roglic extends his lead again today, with Valverde now his closest rival again.

The Pogacar-Quintana group come home with Meintjes and Hagen 1'16" down.

And it's Primoz Roglic who beats Alejandro Valverde in the sprint for second place and superior bonus seconds. They come down around 15 seconds down.

Victory for Colombia's Sergio Higuita!

The fans are out in their droves as Higuita snakes his way through town and zips under the flamme rouge (which is actually a dark green).

It's coming down - but not quick enough for the chasers. 23 seconds now.

Higuita swings off the wide highway and joins a smaller road that rises into town. 28 seconds now for him.

The gap is down to 32 seconds for Higuita. The chasers will be fresher, but will they run out of road?

Higuita is now onto the false flat drag up to the line. He has 34 seconds and will no doubt die a thousand deaths over the next few minutes.

Now it's Lopez who picks things up. This quartet now has 55 seconds on the Pogacar chase group, so Lopez will be going back into white today. But to think that he had four separate days in red earlier in this race - he won't be happy with fourth on GC.

Roglic comes to the front of the chasing quartet - he hasn't done that yet because, well, he doesn't need to. Today he takes another step closer to winning his first Grand Tour. With just one mountain stage remaining, you'd think he has this one in the bag.

Lone leader Sergio Higuita negotiates a roundabout as the road flattens a little going under the 10-to-go banner. He still has 38 seconds - but can he survive that final grind to the line?

The gaps aren't coming down at all - and that's to be expected: this is a wide, smooth road, with a gradient that suits all riders. There are no big hairpins and it's not exactly technical.