I (Jeremiah) am in Málaga on Spain's Costa del Sol. Switzerland is wonderful in the winter if you enjoy mountains and snow, but Geneva lacks the snow, and the nearest mountains are still a train ride away (and no, the cliff/gravel quarry that is Mt. Salève, while handy for a quick hike, is to an Alp or even a Jura what Lake Champlain is to the Great Lakes).

Málaga is sun. Málaga is a beach. Málaga is eating outside in February, so long as you don't mind sitting for dinner at 8:45 pm, long after the sun goes down and the temperature starts to remind you that Málaga, while warmer than Geneva, is still more like wintering in "Jacksonville, Florida" than "Jamaica."

The other bonus of the Costa del Sol? When the neighbors next to your Airbnb return home drunk and screaming after the clubs finally kick them out, it’s already 8:00 am instead of the middle of the night.

But long before it was the Costa del Sol and drew sunburned British tourists and American wayfarers like myself – Málaga was Malaka, a bustling Phoenician port. Those master sailors from Tyre weren't drawn here in the 8th century BCE by the prospect of winter sun and tapas. They saw something far more valuable: a natural harbor nestled at the foot of Mount Gibralfaro, surrounded by rich deposits of silver and copper, and – most importantly for what would become the city's true source of wealth – waters teeming with fish.

Side note: I've never liked anchovies. I don't like them on pizza. I'm not a huge fan of Worcestershire sauce. All of my "Caesar" salads are neutered and tasteless amalgamations of lettuce, parmesan cheese, and supermarket dressing.

tl:dr No anchovies for me, please.

Until I visited Málaga, I had no idea that the Malagueños were all about the anchovy. Fried anchovies are amazing, and I’ve been eating them like french fries the whole week. Malaga anchovies are so good and so famous that the nickname for Malagueños is “Los Boquerones,” which, naturally, means ‘anchovy’ in Spanish.

But before the residents of this sunny seaside town fried anchovies and sold them as drinking snacks, their ancestors took anchovies and other similarly unlucky denizens of the nearby ocean, cut them open, and left their guts to decompose/rot/ferment in the Mediterranean sun.

This wasn't some weird fish torture fetish, although the Phoenicians were likely into that, too. Instead, they were making garum. If you're thinking "fish gut sauce, yum," well, you're not alone. Even the Romans, whose demand for garum was one reason they were so protective of the (then) province of Hispania Baetica, were still a bit conflicted about the culinary merits of the sauce. Pliny the Elder, never one to mince words, described it as "the putrefaction of guts." But he still used it. Everyone used it.

The recipe was deceptively simple: Take fish intestines (anchovies were the preferred choice here in Málaga, though any oily fish would do; mackerel guts were another popular base depending on what the local fisherman found in their nets), add an obscene amount of salt, throw in some aromatic herbs if you're feeling fancy, and then let it all stew in the hot Spanish sun for a few months. The result? A clear, amber liquid that would be a product much in demand around the Mediterranean world.

The highest quality garum – called garum sociorum – came from the Spanish coasts and was worth its weight in gold. Think of it as the ancient equivalent of that $200 bottle of balsamic vinegar you bought the last time you were in Italy. Except instead of aged grape juice, it's fish guts.

Garum wasn't just a condiment. It was also medicinal. Got burns? Garum. Eczema? Garum. Dysentery? You guessed it – garum. It was even thought to be an aphrodisiac, though that might have been more about its high nitrogen content than any romantic properties. (I'm choosing not to think too deeply about why fermented fish intestines are high in nitrogen. Or how that would bring the romance.)

Garum production was so crucial to Málaga that you can still find the remains of ancient garum factories right in the center of town. These weren't small-scale operations – they were industrial-sized facilities with huge stone tanks where the fish would ferment. Imagine the smell on a hot summer day. Now imagine that smell was making you rich. Suddenly it doesn't seem so bad, does it?

If you think this all sounds suspiciously similar to modern fish sauces, you’re onto something. Although garum production declined with the fall of the Roman Empire, its aromatic descendants — and a few distant relatives — continue to add just the right touch of umami to tables around the world. Some Italian communities still produce a version called colatura di alici, and cooks throughout Southeast Asia have been using their own local blends of fermented fish sauce for millennia. Even that most American of condiments, ketchup, traces its ancestry to several types of fish-based seasonings popular along the southeastern coast of China. And Worcestershire sauce? That slightly funky undertone that I’ve been avoiding all these years? Yes, it’s still made with anchovies.

¡Vivan los boquerones!*

—-

*Which is apparently also what you yell when attending a fútbol match in Malaga.