orwellianTwo

The train out of Madrid takes three hours to run down south, through the great plains and scrubby rolling hills of south-central Spain. As Castille gives way to Andalusia the hills seem to draw in nearer and there are more deep river beds to cross, and even more tunnels to push through. The hills are never far away even as we ease into Malaga itself; the port city is picturesquely hemmed by parched hillsides, some of which pop up in the town itself. A site with a good sized harbour, with ready made high places for fortification and defence. Perfect as a power base for your aspiring empire, if you can stand the summer heat.

First to ring the local estate agents were the Phoenicians, and when they arrived in about 800BC the name Malaka (“fish salting place”) went up on the front door. The Greeks moved in about two hundred years later, and they were still there when the port became part of the Roman Empire and underwent substantial development. The Visigoths came along, but the deepest impression on the city was made by the Moors, who exchanged contracts in the early 8th century. Various Muslim dynasties ruled until 1487, when Ferdinand and Isabella undertook a forced eviction and inserted Catholicism into the title deeds. Malaga then fell into decline, until – rather surprisingly perhaps for what appears to be a laid-back, party-loving city on the Costa del Sol – it became the most industrialised city in Spain in the 19th century. A centre of Republicanism during the Civil War, Malaga suffered brutal repression from the victorious Francoists, but the old fascist was good enough to allow the Costa to develop its thriving tourist economy in the 1960s.

Which reminds me, beaches.

Today’s Malaga has an old town that follows the street plan of the Arab medina, but the buildings are essentially 19th century, and characteristically Spanish with their elaborate balconies and long window shutters. You half expect Carmen to pop out of them at some point and warble her love for the star matador at the bullring around the corner. And someone to accompany her on the castanets. And a bull to run amok somewhere.

Maybe she’s already given it a go, and no-one heard her above the hubbub. Malaga is full of tourists. All here for the weather, the beach, the places to eat, the Irish pubs in the old town, the pulsating nightlife. Toledo is full of old convents but the whole town felt like one vast Trappist monastery compared to this place.

I have to admit, I love it. Ask me again after my next three nights here though.