Malaga is a city where the Spanish west merges with the Spanish east
At such a quick acquaintance, the city seems completely ordinary and even unremarkable. The leisure expert of the online publication "Lenta.ru" suggests staying in Malaga longer.
No Room for Antiquity Here
Oddly enough, the second largest city in southern Spain after Seville, the port and commercial center of Andalusia, has always been little concerned with its history. If a new building needed to be constructed somewhere, the "old" was ruthlessly demolished and replaced with what matched contemporary notions of modernity and practicality. In general, the "practical streak" and foresight of Malaga's residents have been a subject of jokes of varying degrees of sarcasm for Spaniards for centuries, much like the stinginess of the Scots is for the English.
And now the historical center of Malaga looks, to put it mildly, eclectic. Ancient buildings coexist with modern glossy shop windows of expensive boutiques. Beautiful boulevards run through the port districts with their chaos and not very picturesque decay. The grand cathedral rises in the middle of a poor residential area. And old walls continue to crumble, while cranes and construction sites rise in their place.
However, this does not mean that the city has nothing to impress a tourist. And it's not just the Arab fortress of Alcazaba, where all guides and guidebooks will inevitably send a guest.
Around the Fortresses
Although Alcazaba, of course, deserves attention. This fortress palace was built on the site of a former Roman bastion during the Arab rule in Spain. The practical Arabs rebuilt everything that could be useful according to their own judgment. Therefore, in one old building, details of Roman, Phoenician, and Moorish architecture are sometimes combined. And that's fine – quite peculiar and very typical for Spain. Near Alcazaba, the ruins of a Roman theater from the 1st-2nd centuries AD still exist. The Arabs did not rebuild it, probably due to their lack of interest in theatrical art. And it was of no other use.
Behind the powerful walls of the Alcazaba fortress is a living archaeological museum with magnificently preserved towers (once there were about a hundred), inner courtyards with palm trees and fountains, palace enfilades decorated with ancient ceramics. The museum is alive because there are no barriers or signs saying "Do not touch" and "Do not enter." Wandering through Alcazaba, it's easy to get lost in the labyrinths and interwoven palace rooms and corridors. The "living area" of the fortress is quite large, and the layout is deliberately confusing – the defensive structure was meant to create difficulties for potential invaders.
From Alcazaba, you can go higher up the hill and through a special passage reach another ancient Arab fortress – Gibralfaro. The Arabs also rebuilt it, but this time from a Phoenician fortress. And they gave it the current beautiful name, meaning "lighthouse on the cliff."
Gibralfaro is the highest point in Malaga. From here, a breathtaking view of the entire city and its surroundings opens up, making the place especially popular with photographers and filmmakers. Most of the advertising brochures used to lure tourists to the Costa del Sol are views from here, from Gibralfaro. And how many films have been shot in the fortress itself! If you need a romantic mountain-sea landscape with a picturesque ancient castle, they go to Gibralfaro. Locals say that in some seasons, film crews sign up in queues and even argue over who gets the most beautiful sunset and sunrise hours. Perhaps Gibralfaro already has the right to be called a honored set designer of world cinema.
The Soul of the City
And yet, Malaga is not just tourist attractions. The soul of the city is in its life, on its streets. Small taverns and cafes – steps down or, conversely, up a narrow spiral staircase to a terrace entwined with greenery. The lopsided little building of an old cinema with hand-painted posters leans with one wall against a multi-story shopping complex with signs of leading fashion brands. It's even scary to look at the little building – but the cinema here runs shows regularly every day.
The morning market of Malaga shows all the diversity of Spanish faces: peasants tanned to blackness; old women resembling evil witches from fairy tales; beautiful southern women with long eyebrows and white facial skin under wide-brimmed hats, but their hands never wash to the same whiteness as those of the important shoppers with baskets; and the shoppers in such beautiful dresses as if they deliberately dress in their best to stroll along the stalls.
Closer to noon, when the perishable goods are sold, the tasting of local wines begins: sellers keep up with buyers, treat other traders as well, so that by closing time, an atmosphere of goodwill and universal well-being reigns in the market.
A man in a decent suit and tie feeds a carrot to a dusty donkey "parked" next to a mirror-glass office building. This is Malaga. Here, the Spanish west and the Spanish east merge into one.
Without Borders
Although geographically Andalusia is southern Spain, it is more saturated with the East than other provinces. It got more Muslim influence than others, because the Arab conquerors knew what was what and preferred to live where it was better – warmer, more beautiful, more fertile, richer. In Malaga, the boundaries between Muslim and Christian cultures have long been erased: a Catholic chapel is calmly decorated with Moorish ornament, and the local dialect is full of Arabic words. Malagueños – residents of Malaga – speak their own "Malagan" language: a bright mixture of rural dialects, high literary Spanish, and modern international slang.
If you walk around Malaga not in tourist mode, the unobtrusive charm of this city will quickly reveal itself. Its southern part faces the sea, while on all other sides it is surrounded by mountains. Because of this, over the centuries, here now almost a metropolis, the atmosphere of coziness and intimacy characteristic of small towns has been preserved.
Early in the morning, it's good to go to the port, where noisy life bustles from dawn to dusk, and then climb up the narrow streets, fascinating after the port's din with their echoing silence. Greeting neighbors, women hang blankets and feather beds out of open windows.
In the morning, all of Malaga drinks coffee; its aroma mixes with the smell of the sea and intensifies due to the rapidly rising heat. You need to follow the smell – the coffee shop may be hidden in a small arch or in a patio, where a plywood door resembling an entrance leads. On Calle Chinitas, some romantics look for the courtyard with Café De Chinitas. There Federico García Lorca once wrote his poems, and there in the evenings he read them to his friends and anyone who wished to listen.
But there is no De Chinitas mentioned in his poems – the café closed back in 1936 and has now become a fabric store, as a memorial plaque in the small passage "Chinitas" informs. And in 1969, on the first floor of an aristocratic mansion in the city center, a new Café De Chinitas opened. The namesake café is quite good, with an expensive menu, strong coffee, and pleasant music. It's just a pity that Lorca never visited it.
In Search of Coolness
When the sun rises higher, it's better to take shelter in the shady alleys of the botanical garden. It is in the very center of the city. Plants from all over the world are collected here, and it is simply very beautiful: music plays, nannies walk with children, ducks swim in ponds, and goldfish in fountains. The botanical garden is the pride of Malaga. They say the mayor of the city ordered all insurance companies in the province of Malaga to insure its collection of rare plants – incidentally, the best in Spain. A few years ago, some two-hundred-year-old Chinese tree began to wither and shed its leaves, and the insurers were so worried that they called in the best Chinese botanist for a consultation. He cured the tree and, in addition to payment for his work, received the title of honorary citizen of the city.
You can also wait out the heat in the air-conditioned halls of the museum. In 2003, the Picasso Museum opened on Plaza de la Merced, previously unremarkable. Many residents of the surrounding neighborhoods didn't even know they were fellow countrymen of the celebrity. True, the Picasso family left Malaga when the great artist was still a child. But the genius's childhood is also worth something, and the opening of the museum was accompanied by a noisy advertising campaign under the slogan "Picasso has returned home." For some reason, the museum was not established in the house where Pablo spent his childhood, but nearby – in a specially built building with spacious, state-of-the-art halls. The Picasso collection in the Malaga museum is good, although not as rich as in the Barcelona museum.
Sun in a Bottle
Slightly east of Malaga, under the protection of the peaks of the Sierra Almijara, stretch the golden beaches of the never-cold Axarquía. This place is famous not only for its current resorts, where the sun shines all year round, but also for being the land of Málaga – one of the most famous wines in Spain. If you believe the Spanish – not the best, but maybe they say that out of modesty. Or perhaps out of pride – after all, all wines here are good. Maybe it's also because the Spanish generally prefer red wines, and Málaga is golden.
Be that as it may, it is here that the Pedro Ximénez grape variety grows, from which a sweet (20 to 30 percent sugar) dessert wine is made, and it has more fans worldwide than in its homeland, Spain. It is unlikely that any tourist has left Malaga without a bottle of this liquid sunshine of Spanish bottling. And in fashionable Paris, and in business New York, and in rainy Moscow, a small sip of honeyed Málaga will remind you of the Costa del Sol, a paradise on earth.
To the west of the Guadalmedina River, which divides the city into two unequal parts, are the famous districts of Trinidad – the birthplace of flamenco. The most famous flamenco singers – cantaores – were born here. It's worth going into any café – not for dinner, although you certainly won't leave hungry, but for the music, the languid and tense rhythms of the most Spanish of Spanish dances.