Malaga

Our final couple of days before the familiarity of Marbella is reached was spent in Malaga. We have always said we should spend some time in Malaga instead of just rushing past it on our way to or from the airport, usually at unearthly times of the day or night, and I am so glad we did. It is a delightful city and we have had an amazing time.

Malaga is the capital of the Costa del Sol. It is one of the most important cities in Southern Spain. It's port saw trade with the ancient Phonecians - all that purple dye stuff - and it exported a fish paste it produced which was highly sought after by the Romans. Moorish Gibralfaro castle is high on the hill overlooking the town. In the town itself the huge Cathedral dominates, it was built between the 16th and 18th centuries. Malaga is also the hallowed birthplace of Picasso.

Thank goodness we reached our hotel relatively early after the short hop from Cordoba. Soon queues of cars built up, all patiently waiting to get into the city centre car parks. Thursday is the most popular of the Santa Semana processions and one of the longest, starting at about 5.oo in the afternoon and finishing at 5.00 the next morning. We managed to stay the course until 2.00 am. and considering we had fitted in a trip to the fairly new Picasso Museum in the afternoon I think that was pretty good going!

The first Tronos is Mary, looking so sad, but beautiful, surrounded by flowers, preceded by swinging incense burners, and carried by the cofradía Santa Cruz. The two guys in the photo spotted me with my camera - and I was well back, behind tiers of seating. They posed for me in one of the frequent respite stops the bearers have to make. They were having such a good time in spite of the heavy work. Who knows, they could be some of the famous people that belong to the various cofraías! The second photo here below, again a respite halt, show three young guys verging on exhaustion after carrying their tronos well into the night.


The Forces were represented in the Holy Thursday Santa Sermana parade as well. This guy in the photo below had an axe on his back and the Esquadrilla de Honores he was part of carried out a stunning series of movements with their rifles, swinging them around with tight precision - this special particular guys' task make all the harder by my camera flashes, but he didn't loose his concentration once! Nice - very!


Some of the bearers walked bare footed some were blindfolded. Behind the tronos some followers were blindfolded or barefooted too, doing penance for their sins of the past year. Women as well as men.

We like Malaga a lot. As we drove out westwards we saw a lot of the seafront is earmarked for redevelopment. Malaga is bidding for European Cultural Capital of 2016. To my mind there is no doubt it thoroughly deserves the accolade.