Malaga, Spain

Apr. 08, 2023

Before discussing the city of Malaga, I will write about the country first, as I have done in previous posts. Having studied the language, culture, history and geography of Spain for years, this beautiful country is very dear to my heart.

Spain is a country located in extreme southwestern Europe. It occupies about 85 percent of the Iberian Peninsula, which it shares with its smaller neighbor Portugal.

The flag of Spain:

Spain is a country of stone castles, snowcapped mountains, vast monuments, and sophisticated cities. The country is geographically and culturally diverse. Its heartland is the Meseta, a broad central plateau half a mile above sea level. Much of the region is traditionally given over to cattle ranching and grain production; it was in this rural setting that Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote tilted at the tall windmills that still dot the landscape in several places. In the country’s northeast are the broad valley of the Ebro River, the mountainous region of Catalonia, and the hilly coastal plain of Valencia. To the northwest is the Cantabrian Mountains, a rugged range in which heavily forested, rain-swept valleys are interspersed with tall peaks. To the south is the citrus-orchard-rich and irrigated lands of the valley of the Guadalquivir River, celebrated in the renowned lyrics of Spanish poets Federico García Lorca and Antonio Machado; over this valley rises the snowcapped Sierra Nevada. The southern portion of the country is desert, an extension of the Sahara made familiar to Americans through the “spaghetti western” films of the 1960s and early ’70s. Lined with palm trees, rosemary bushes, and other tropical vegetation, the southeastern Mediterranean coast and the Balearic Islands enjoy a gentle climate, drawing millions of visitors and retirees, especially from northern Europe.

Spain’s countryside is quaint, speckled with castles, aqueducts, and ancient ruins, but its cities are resoundingly modern. The Andalusian capital of Sevilla (Seville) is famed for its musical culture and traditional folkways; the Catalonian capital of Barcelona for its secular architecture and maritime industry; and the national capital of Madrid for its winding streets, its museums and bookstores, and its around-the-clock lifestyle. Madrid is Spain’s largest city and is also its financial and cultural center, as it has been for hundreds of years.

Here’s a brief story about Madrid one of my teachers told. Residents of Madrid, called madrileños, are very proud about the quality of their water. So much so, that if they are away for a period of time, often the first thing they will say upon their return, even as they are stepping off the train, is “Tragame un vaso de agua” (Bring me a glass of water.) I’d ask for wine myself.

The many and varied cultures that have gone into the making of Spain—those of the Castilians, Catalonians, Lusitanians, Galicians, Basques, Romans, Arabs, Jews, and Roma (Gypsies), among other peoples—are renowned for their varied cuisines, customs, and prolific contributions to the world’s artistic heritage. The country’s Roman conquerors left their language, roads, and monuments, while many of the Roman Empire’s greatest rulers were Spanish, among them Trajan, Hadrian, and Marcus Aurelius. The Moors, who ruled over portions of Spain for nearly 800 years, left a legacy of fine architecture, lyric poetry, and science; the Roma contributed the haunting music called the cante jondo (a form of flamenco), which, wrote García Lorca, “comes from remote races and crosses the graveyard of the years and the fronds of parched winds. It comes from the first sob and the first kiss.” Even the Vandals, Huns, and Visigoths who swept across Spain following the fall of Rome are remembered in words and monuments, which prompted García Lorca to remark, “In Spain, the dead are more alive than the dead of any other country in the world.”

In 1492, the year the last of the Moorish rulers were expelled from Spain, ships under the command of Christopher Columbus reached America. For 300 years afterward, Spanish explorers and conquerors traveled the world, claiming huge territories for the Spanish crown, a succession of Castilian, Aragonese, Habsburg, and Bourbon rulers. For generations Spain was arguably the richest country in the world, and certainly the most far-flung. With the steady erosion of its continental and overseas empire throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, however, Spain was all but forgotten in world affairs, save for the three years that the ideologically charged Spanish Civil War (1936–39) put the country at the centre of the world’s stage, only to become ever more insular and withdrawn during the four decades of rule by dictator Francisco Franco. Following Franco’s death in 1975, a Bourbon king, Juan Carlos, returned to the throne and established a constitutional monarchy. The country has been ruled since then by a succession of elected governments, some socialist, some conservative, but all devoted to democracy.

Spain is bordered to the west by Portugal; to the northeast it borders France, from which it is separated by the tiny principality of Andorra and by the great wall of the Pyrenees Mountains. Spain’s only other land border is in the far south with Gibraltar, an enclave that belonged to Spain until 1713, when it was ceded to Great Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht at the end of the War of the Spanish Succession. Elsewhere the country is bounded by water: by the Mediterranean Sea to the east and southeast, by the Atlantic Ocean to the northwest and southwest, and by the Bay of Biscay (an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean) to the north. The Canary (Canarias) Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwestern African mainland, and the Balearic (Baleares) Islands, in the Mediterranean, also are parts of Spain, as are Ceuta and Melilla, two small enclaves in North Africa (northern Morocco) that Spain has ruled for centuries.

The Pyrenees and the Cantabrian ranges play an important role in the Spanish climate, holding the warm, dry subtropical airstream over Spain during the summer months. In general, westerly winds from the North Atlantic are dominant most of the year, while the warm, dry Saharan airstream blows less frequently.

Spain has been invaded and inhabited by many different peoples. The peninsula was originally settled by groups from North Africa and western Europe, including the Iberians, Celts, and Basques. Throughout antiquity it was a constant point of attraction for the civilizations of the eastern Mediterranean. From c. 1100 BCE the Phoenicians, the Greeks, and the Carthaginians began to establish settlements and trading posts, especially on the eastern and southern coasts. These outsiders found a mosaic of peoples, collectively known as the Iberians, who did not have a single culture or even share a single language.

Roman Catholicism became the official religion of Spain in 589 and has been closely identified with the country ever since. The advent of political liberalism at the beginning of the 19th century led to a series of conflicts between church and state, especially over land ownership and the control of education. Even so, Catholicism remained the official religion of the state until the Second Republic (1931–36). After the Spanish Civil War, General Francisco Franco restored it as the state religion, and it retained that status until the proclamation of the constitution of 1978. Since then Spain has had no official religion, but the Roman Catholic Church continues to receive financial support from the state. The legalization of divorce and abortion along with educational reforms in the 1980s brought the church into conflict with the government once again but with less intensity than previously.

The vast majority of the population is Roman Catholic, yet for many—and especially for those born after 1950—this has little meaning beyond being baptized, married, and buried within the church. There are several hundred thousand non-Catholic Christians in Spain. American-based denominations such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh-day Adventists as well as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) have been active in the country since the 1970s. In addition, there are hundreds of thousands of adherents of Islam, whose numbers have grown rapidly because of immigration. Some 100,000 Jews fled Spain during the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century, when the inquisitor general Tomás de Torquemada persuaded the country’s rulers to expel any Jew who refused to be baptized. To remain in the country, many Jews converted to Christianity (becoming known as conversos); those known as Marranos converted to Christianity but continued surreptitiously to practice Judaism. Restrictions on Judaism were eased only in the 20th century, and by the early 21st century there were some 15,000 Jews in Spain.

Málaga is a port city and capital of Málaga provincia (province), in the comunidad autónoma (autonomous community) of Andalusia, southern Spain. The city lies along a wide bay of the Mediterranean Sea at the mouth of the Guadalmedina River in the center of the Costa del Sol. It was founded by the Phoenicians in the 12th century BCE, conquered successively by the Romans and the Visigoths, and taken by the Moors in 711. Under Moorish rule it became one of the most important cities in Andalusia. When the caliphate of Córdoba disintegrated, the kingdom of Málaga was founded, ruled over by emirs who named it “terrestrial paradise.” After they had failed several times, Christians took the city on August 19, 1487.

The Guadalmedina River flows through Málaga from north to south. Towering above the city is Mount Gibralfaro 558 feet, crowned by an ancient Arab fortress: Gibralfaro Castle, an ancient Moorish fortress that commands breathtaking views of the city and the bay.

Our next stop is at a Renaissance-style cathedral built between the 16th and 18th centuries. It is now a National Monument and boasts a Baroque choir by Pedro de Mena, as well as some fine examples of Spanish Renaissance sculpture. The cathedral, in the center of the old city, was begun in 1528 on the site of a mosque; the interior, main facade, and one of the towers were completed in 1782, but the second tower remains unfinished.

The Provincial Museum of Art has a collection of 17th-century masterpieces as well as modern works—including some by Pablo Picasso, who was born in the city at No. 16, Plaza de la Merced.

In the 21st century the city invested heavily in new cultural offerings, including the Picasso Museum, the Contemporary Art Museum, the Carmen Thyssen Museum, and branches of the Pompidou Centre and Russian State Museum. The Moorish castle, the Alcazaba, has been reconstructed as a museum and garden, but the Gibralfaro fortress remains in its original form.

Málaga is one of the foremost Spanish Mediterranean ports after Barcelona. The port’s main exports, most of which are produced in the eastern Andalusia hinterland, include iron ore, dried fruit, almonds, olive oil, oranges, lemons, olives, canned anchovies, and the famous Málaga sweet wine; principal imports are petroleum, corn (maize), chemicals, iron, and steel. Málaga’s industries include the manufacture of building materials and foodstuffs; there are also breweries, fertilizer plants, and textile mills. There is a thriving electronics industry. The Andalusia Technology Park opened in Málaga in 1992 in an effort to promote regional technology development. The complex is used for the creation and development of technology companies and as a research center.

Sites of modern Málaga:

Sheltered by the surrounding sierras, Málaga’s mild climate makes it a popular and internationally known resort city. Nearby are a number of narrow beaches; some, such as Marbella and Fuengirola, have pine woods reaching to the seashore. The city has a bullring and an international airport.

The population of Málaga was 579,000 in 2022.

Now we must leave Malaga behind, as it’s time to set sail for Cádiz.