“Theres your bag mate!” A man poked his friend laughing pointing at my luggage in a tray at the airport. The comedy context you are missing is the pink colour of my bag and jacket. Maybe it was because it was 4 am but this was an unamusing addition to the airport. Early morning flights are always my preference, I enjoy the novelty of waking up at 3am with the excitement of a holiday. The freezing walk to the train while dressed in inappropriately summery clothes and watching the carnage at the airport as sleep deprived Brits decide it is the right time for a pint. I fall asleep quite easily and so the flight whizzed by and before you know it we were being dropped off in Málaga Airport Departures Lounge. This was obviously a mistake so the whole flight wandered around confused for 10 minutes before we were sent back to the terminal and on to security.
From the airport I grabbed a train and some plain clothes police officers were shouting ‘Pickpocket Pickpocket!’ and making a woman leave the station. This should have worried me but all I was thinking was ‘This is like on Instagram’. On the other side, I came out of the station, looked around, saw the sea and decided to walk to it. After 20 minutes I was in an industrial estate by the sea with cranes, container ships and cement towers. Turns out following my nose to the first bit of sea I saw was not the smartest idea and I had to concede and get Google out to walk 40 minutes back to get to the actual beach.
The AirBnB was not available until 2pm so I decided to fill my time going to the Centre Pompidou Malaga, a modern art museum by the Marina. From the outside it is a large coloured glass cube full of light and colour but inside it is like wandering around a dark basement. The art inside is interesting, with a mix of sculptural and canvas pieces, however the descriptions of the art lost me. Explain to me why a sculpture of a brush stroke traversing a wall was called Armpit Hair, and this title alone made it a feminist piece of work despite there being no relevance to the artwork itself? Modern Art seems to be trying to legitimise itself through shock factor, with pictures of human penises stuck to teddies and sewn drawings of women masturbating. This obsession with nakedness and shock feels juvenile and unimaginative.
This is not to say I didn’t enjoy any of the art, the fluorescent sculpture by Dan Flavin was beautiful and really defined the space it was in. I loved The Sharing of the Waters by Marcelle Loubchansky, it was emotive and descriptive without being pretentious or overt. I even looked up the value of her work to see if I could get a print but the original piece sold for only £3640 in 2022, so an achievable goal in the future. Throughout the gallery were furniture and model architectural pieces that look almost ordinary now but were trail blazers of their time and really highlighted the impact of art on what we see everyday in the world around us.
The downside of an early morning flight is that by 3pm you are exhausted and so going to the apartment for a nap was a must before dinner. As a classic English person on holiday I must have an ice cream a day, regardless of the weather and so sitting in my jacket and jumper I had 2 scoops of ice cream from Kalua. One scoop of Tiramisu and one scoop of Banana Split-the tiramisu even had pieces of lady finger biscuits in! My choices together were not optimal because the Tiramisu over- powered the Banana Split which tasted like fresh bananas and so the scoops had to be eaten separately, still delicious regardless.
The next day, I met up with my boyfriend at the Central Station and re-lived the day before, exploring Málaga and walking along the beach front, all a first for him. For lunch we went to Los Marangos, simply because the day before I saw a humongous queue to get in and some delicious looking Paella. I may have been slightly fooled by marketing, we noted that the wait staff were not quick to get people in, with a queue outside even with tables free inside. Regardless, we very much enjoyed our seafood paella and sides of croquettes, baby squids and garlic prawns.
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As we were heading out to dinner we stumbled upon hundreds of people lining the street as a full brass and drum marching band played. As we got closer we could see a float holding a religious statue with candles and incense swaying down the street in time with the drum beat. The road in front of the float was thick with incense, making the view cloudy and I can only imagine how pungent it must have been for the children swinging the burners. It was being carried by 50 red robe cladded men and boys led by 10 people in white robes with tall, pointy red hoods carrying long staff-like candles. It turns out this was a Semana Santa Procession, marking the start of the Easter weekend and the hooded people at the front are Penitents. Later on after dinner, we saw a similar procession but instead of red robes, they were purple. This was the start of many similar processions adding green, black,brown and blue hoods to our collection seen. This was lovely to see and experience but on Sunday you could not walk anywhere in the old town without bumping into at least 3 different processions and made walking around quite difficult. It was like being trapped in a maze though instead of walls or bushes we were trapped by masked, candle waving Catholics.
The next morning started slowly and breakfast merged into lunch. When we finally got our act together which included returning home for forgotten sunglasses and to change out of jumpers we headed to the Alcazaba, an Islamic ruin that could be seen to climb all the way up the mountain. The weather had finally warmed up and we enjoyed exploring its maze of turrets and levels, designed for protection from enemies. We walked all the way to the top of the Gibraltar Palace past orange trees and pretty flowers until we could see all of Málaga.
Unfortunately, while we were there a camera crew was following a man as he looked wistfully off into Malaga’s distance. In his crew he had 2 camera people, a boom operator and seemingly a director and assistant. The camera crew were not being discreet and running around people or standing in the middle of small, medieval paths to get the shot. They gave the impression of a high-effort YouTube production, with no official lanyards, and their constant presence hovering around, getting us in their filming was a bit off putting. I saw many people streaming as we walked around Málaga, with one woman drilling off on loop ‘Thank you for the follow’ on Instagram Live as she walked 10m behind her family.
For dinner we ate at a local restaurant we kept passing as we walked into town from or AirBnB called Le Gastronaut and we had tapas, so much tapas! We ate Spicy Potatas Bravas, Chicken and Ham Croquettes, Red Tuna Steak, Tortilla, Garlic Prawns, Tuna Sandwich, 2 Sangria’s and a beer, all for €50! This was the best value and best tasting food we had all trip and clearly based on the awards on their walls, our opinion was not unique.
It had finally become hot and the next day was dedicated to the beach. The sand was a charcoal grey and composed of larger shell and seaglass pieces rather than a fine, homogeneous sand. This meant the sand kept it’s heat and after going in the (rather cold) sea, I lay on the sand to warm up like a lizard on a rock.
That evening we went to a flamenco show at Teatro Flamenco Malaga, which my boyfriend described as smelling like York Viking Museum. Flamenco is heavily influenced by Arabic Culture, with Morocco just being a short distance across the Alboran Sea. This is most noticeable in the singing, with the same trills heard in calls to prayer. There were 3 styles of flamenco dancing displayed, a male and female version of the classic, more stompy flamenco that everyone associates with the name, which focuses on footwork and is facially very expressive. The male version had the air of primadona, strutting around the stage, what made me chuckle was that when he came out he had extremely gelled hair pointing straight back from his head however after 1 spin, it had lost its structure and by the end of his performance he was having to brush tousled strands out of his eyes. My boyfriend said this was to signify him losing control as the dance progressed but to me it just looked a bit silly. The final flamenco style used castanets and had a much more gentle style of movement with clear ballet influences. The speed and dexterity on the woman’s fingers to create the rhythm of clicks was extraordinary. This was definitely my preferred dance style, however the singing was what really impressed me, especially given they had to work with what the dancers did, which often felt sporadic and off the cuff.
With that piece of culture done so was our trip and the only thing left to do was fight through more Semanta Sana processions to get to the train in time for our flight, this was down to the wire and the sound of drums in the distance seemed to haunt us as we ran to the station.
