MALAGA
Second in size among Andalusian cities, Malaga is the least interesting.
Were it not for the sea, its position would be one of singular
remoteness. On the extreme verge of Europe, the mighty Sierra Nevada
rises behind it, and cuts it off from the rest of Spain. Yet as a
flourishing port it is one of the towns in the Peninsula best known
among Englishmen. It is beloved by our sailors. From the odd phases of
life to be seen in and around the harbour, they derive their notions of
the people and the country. With that utter absence of curiosity
noticeable in their kind, they never penetrate inland, or even into the
outskirts of the town. But nothing can dispel Jack's conviction that his
knowledge of Spain and the Spaniards is intimate and profound.
Malaga is not, as its appearance suggests, a city of purely modern
growth. It was known to the Phœnicians and the Romans, and before it
became subject to the Almoravides was an independent principality under
the Hammudiya dynasty. Later it shared the fortunes of the Sultanate of
Granada, and its siege and capture by Ferdinand and Isabella contributed
to bring about the fall of the capital. This part of its history is
dealt with in great detail by Prescott. Among the numerous incidents of
the siege was a determined attempt on the part of a Moor named Ibrahim
al Gherbi to assassinate the Spanish sovereign. The defence was
conducted by the indomitable Hemet el Zegri, who yielded to famine
rather than to the arms of the besiegers. The treatment of the fallen
city leaves an indelible blot on the fame of the conquerors. The
population, with the exception of a few hundreds, were sold into
slavery, presents of the fairest maidens being made to the various
courts of Europe. A worse fate was reserved for the Jews and renegades,
who were committed to the flames.
The old Moorish fortress of Gibralfaro still frowns down on the lively
city to remind us of those days. Some of the walls and towers are
believed to be of Phœnician origin. The stronghold has undergone
repeated restorations and adaptations to military requirements, but a
great deal of Moorish work may still be detected. A horseshoe arch
behind the Paseo de la Alameda serves to identify the Moslems' dockyard
or Atarazanas, and to indicate how far the sea has receded in the wake
of the banished race southwards towards Africa.
[Illustration: MALAGA--THE HARBOUR]
The Cathedral towers high above all the other buildings of the
city. It is in the Classical style, and though designed by Diego de
Siloe in 1528, was built for the most part in the early eighteenth
century. It must be confessed that it looks better at a distance than
near. The interior is solemn and cold. It is worth visiting for some
specimens of Cano's art which it contains, and for Mena's magnificent
carving in the choir. As at Granada, the edifice is adjoined by a
smaller church called the Sagrario, founded by the Catholic Sovereigns
in 1488 as the cathedral of the conquered city.
But it is not for its monuments or historical associations that Malaga
is to be visited. Its interest is of to-day. And in truth it needed not
the hand of man to embellish a spot where Nature has been so lavish of
her choicest gifts. The gardens round Malaga abound in the finest
specimens of tropical flora. Tall india-rubber plants, gigantic
eucalyptus, great bamboos, the rarest exotics, such as the _Pritchardia
folifera_, the araucaria, and the _Scaforthia elegans_, flourish on this
favoured shore. The villas of the wealthier classes stand each in a
veritable Paradise. And everywhere the white flower of the orange, the
oleander, the vine, and tree-high ferns!
This luxuriant vegetation is the less to be expected since want of water
is the great drawback to the prosperity of the district. Through the
middle of the town runs the Guadalmedina--a broad channel, without a
drain of water! The new and magnificent promenade, planted with palms,
sweeps round the sea-front, as fine as anything on the Riviera. To drive
along it in the sensuous southern night is to drink a deep draught of
the joy of life. At one point the drive descends into the bed of the
river, along which you may proceed for a mile or more. And yet at times
the Guadalmedina becomes a roaring torrent, bursting its banks and
sweeping away farmsteads and stock. It is difficult to say whether flood
or drought has done most damage to the province.
As at Seville, you find life here focussing in lane-like streets, closed
to vehicles, and lined with cafés and casinos, among the finest I have
seen in Spain. Here to an early hour of the morning the men of the city
gossip in garrulous, intimate groups of nine and ten, all, as it seemed
to me, talking together. The number of cigarettes smoked during the
progress of these tremendous conversations must be stupendous. As you
will see the same group meeting night after night, you wonder what there
can be in the outwardly uneventful round of life of Malaga to supply
topics for conversation. To an Englishman there is a mystery about this
ability to talk for five or six hours about nothing at all. You will see
the same thing in the dullest provincial towns in France and Italy--the
same groups of stout, bald-headed citizens talking with frantic
animation every evening. Their newspapers afford the slenderest mental
pabulum--their contents could be dismissed in ten minutes--and the
respectable gentlemen in question are never seen to read books. How
then do they recruit their stock of ideas and find an inexhaustible
stock of topics for conversation?
[Illustration: MALAGA--THE GUADALMEDINA]
Women are, of course, conspicuous by their absence. Here we have another
illustration of the utterly false ideas Englishmen usually entertain
concerning Latins. To judge from novels written fifty or even thirty
years ago, John Bull appears to have regarded the foreigner with pitying
contempt as a mere philanderer, always running after a petticoat; yet no
one can be in Spain a fortnight without noticing the Spaniard's
disinclination for female society, or at any rate how perfectly content
he is without it.
I do not fancy the ladies of Malaga care very much for society either,
in our acceptation of the word. Looking out of the window appears to be
their favourite recreation. They do not inherit the habit from the
Moors, for that people, as I have said, were nearly all expelled at the
Reconquest, and the town was resettled. All the Andalusian towns were
wholly or in part emptied of their Mohammedan population when taken by
the Christians, and repeopled with Castilians and others from Northern
Spain. This fact is forgotten by those who recognize in every trait of
the Andalusian a heritage from the Moor. We might as well think we
derive our chief national characteristics from the Britons or the
Normans.
East of Malaga lie several coast towns of importance, within whose gates
the traveller rarely sets foot. Motril, Adra, Almeria--what is there in
them to reward the fatigue of a journey in a diligence along the parched
shore, or in some crazy coasting craft, with timbers straining and
creaking before the lightest breeze? Almeria is now connected directly
by rail with Madrid and Granada. The prosperity of the whole district is
bound to be greatly increased by the construction of the line so long
promised from Guadix to Baza. This short link in the railway system
would save the traveller from Malaga to Valencia nearly 180 miles, or
its alternative--a long and exhausting diligence journey. It would also
bring the southern parts of Andalusia into direct communication with the
great commercial centres of eastern Spain and with Marseilles. It would
supply us with a new route to Gibraltar, moreover. This, with a line
from Jaca across the Pyrenees into France, and another from Huelva to
connect with the Portuguese system Villa Real de São Antonio, are links
of which Spain stands vitally in need.
[Illustration: MALAGA--A MARKET]