Málaga

Málaga, Spain

The Alcazaba of Málaga glows in October sunset light, framed by a stone parapet and bougainvillea above the old town and the sea.

Málaga pairs a Phoenician harbour, a hilltop fortress, Picasso's museum and a long Mediterranean beach.

The place

Málaga is the Andalusian port that governs the province of the same name, on Spain's Mediterranean south. The shoreline it fronts is the Costa del Sol. Housing and industry run mainly along the Guadalhorce, on that river's left bank, while the historic streets fill the pocket between the Guadalmedina and the slope of Gibralfaro. About 603144 people live here, barely 18 metres above the sea, so beach, quays, cathedral and castle sit in one tight circuit. Tourism, construction and technology services carry the economy, with transport and logistics now widening that base. Holiday flights and cruise calls keep the waterfront busy, yet the inland streets still read as a working provincial capital: offices, a market day, a cathedral parish, not only a strip of holiday lets. La Malagueta, east of the centre, is where the city meets the sand. Westward the plain runs out towards the airport. From Gibralfaro the roofs, the port cranes and the open sea stack in a single glance. People have lived at Málaga since about 800 BCE, when Phoenician sailors fixed a town on this harbour, and the same reason for being here, a sheltered landing on a long coast, still holds. The Moorish walls, the Roman theatre beneath them, and the museum of the Málaga-born painter Picasso are the set pieces; fried fish within sight of the water is the daily one. Summer is hot and the promenades fill up; spring and autumn are easier for the hills. The centre itself is compact, but the path to the castle is a real climb. Practical civic detail sits at http://www.malaga.eu/.

Its story

Málaga began as a Phoenician harbour colony. Settlers from Tyre gave it the name Malaka, Malake in some later spellings and mlkʾ in Punic letters, around 800 BCE. Ships could turn into the Guadalmedina from here, and goods moved between the eastern Mediterranean and the Strait of Gibraltar. Like sister colonies in the far west, the town eventually came under Carthage. Rome called it Malaca. Once the Punic Wars were over, the Republic was in charge, yet in the first century BCE Strabo could still describe a Phoenician character, unlike the Hellenised neighbour Mainake. Malaca later stood as a confederated city governed by its own code, the Lex Flavia Malacitana, and a theatre was cut into the base of the hill. That theatre is the Roman building still readable in the centre. Visigothic rule followed the western empire. Around 552 the Byzantines seized the city and possibly raised either Malaca or Carthago Nova to head their province of Spania; they rebuilt the quays and leaned on a fishing and trading life already long established. Sisebut, the Visigothic king, recovered it in 615. Arab and Berber forces took Málaga in 711, or perhaps 713, and Arabic writers set the name down as Mālaqah (مالقة). Castile captured the city in 1487, in the middle of the war for Granada. Factories arrived in the nineteenth century, and the closing third of that century brought a deep social and economic slump. The centre still stacks those layers on one slope: harbour, Roman stage, Moorish fort, cathedral.

What to see

Culture

For five centuries Málaga has marked Holy Week, Palm Sunday through to Easter Sunday, as the city's central public ritual. Brotherhoods move carved Passion scenes through the streets on tronos, enormous decorated platforms, a number of them above five thousand kilograms. Hooded penitents in floor-length robes lead; behind them walk women in black, candles in hand, while brass and drums keep a funeral pace. A saeta may rise from the crowd without warning, one voice thrown at the float. Nuestra Señora de la Esperanza, the royal archbrotherhood of Our Lady of Hope, musters more than five thousand members, six hundred of them nazarenos. Some platforms stand taller than a church door, so they spend the year stored elsewhere and only meet their parish during the processions. The week shuts ordinary routes and turns night-time Málaga into a slow river of wax, cloth and music. If you watch a procession in Málaga, never cut across the path of a trono, and hold still and quiet while a saeta is sung.

What to wear

Málaga dresses for heat, and it still keeps a separate wardrobe for ceremony. In Holy Week the clothes that fill the street are the nazareno robe and the tall capirote, plus the black dresses of women carrying candles; none of that is everyday wear. The older festive costume of the region, a ruffled traje de flamenca cut in cotton or silk, sometimes with a short equestrian jacket, comes out for the summer fair and for weddings, then goes back into the cupboard. Day to day, people in Málaga dress like any warm southern city: linen and thin cotton while the sun is high, jeans and trainers, a jacket when the evening breeze picks up, and a cleaner shirt if dinner is in the centre. A visitor does well to copy that. Add a hat and breathable cloth in the hot months, and a light layer in winter, which stays mild rather than cold. Shoulders and knees should be covered in the cathedral and in smaller churches. Swimwear belongs on La Malagueta and at beach bars, not in the old town, and a climb to Gibralfaro calls for shoes that hold on steep stone.

What to eat

Plan it

Best time. April, May, September and October are the comfortable months for walking Málaga's hills and lanes, warm without the hardest summer heat. July and August belong to the beach: the Costa del Sol is crowded and hot. Winter stays mild enough for the old town, and the streets are quieter.

How long. three or four

Getting there. Málaga is reached through its airport on the coastal plain. An airport express bus runs to Alameda Principal and Paseo del Parque, where many local buses also stop. A suburban train runs from the airport to Málaga Centro Alameda and on to María Zambrano, the station for Renfe high-speed AVE trains, with the main bus station next door. Taxis queue at the arrivals rank, and the line grows long in summer. Fares and frequencies change, so check the operator or http://www.malaga.eu/ before you set out.

Budget. mid

Tips

Etiquette

Nearby

Sources