Málaga es azúcar y especias

Málaga is sugar and spice...

It's a rite of passage, isn't it? Breaking out from the comforting embrace of home, and pushing out into the world to experience what's out there, good and bad. 

Somewhere in Italy, 3 twenty-somethings decided to take this leap... with a little persuasion from Madre e Padre, I happen to know. They chose València as their first port of call, and we’re delighted that they chose to use our apartment to stay in for the duration. 

 

This gives us a chance to make another autumn visit to Malaga. Always a pleasure, always a great experience. But you have to make it real... it can't all be sugar-coated.

The food that enters the mind must be watched as closely
as the food that enters the body.
Pat Buchanan

 

We arrived at our neat little rented apartment on the west side of centro on a rainy Saturday evening. There had been bad weather in the south of Spain, and this was pushing away to the east, but not quickly. It would linger until early in the week that followed, before giving way to glorious warm sunshine and clear, cool evenings.

Centro is eternally teeming with visitors and locals alike. We had arrived in the middle of a lively weekend, and the streets, restaurants and bars were packed. Málaga was alive with a hugely diverse mix of people wandering, rushing, delivering, organizing, stopping, starting, moving, talking, eating, smoking, drinking and generally making Málaga centro into that loveable thing that Málaga centro is.

 

But there were heavy showers that need to be dodged. There are places on the very heart of centro that remain attractive for drinking and eating despite the brazen commerciality of those calles and plazas. We sat at one of these with cañas, indulging in one of life’s great pleasures… people-watching.

 

Rain came and went. Small children in wellies splashed in puddles. Tourists (exclusively male) attempted to vindicate their decision to bring only t-shirts and shorts by pretending they were not actually wet and freezing cold.

We ate well outdoors, under a canopy that threatened to give in to the heavy showers… then made our way to the west side of centro, close to the Rio Guadalmedina, and close to our apartment for the week.

 

We found a café that we had not seen one on previous visits, at the previously unremarkable end of a busy street that starts in a corner of Plaza de la Constitución. There were several other restaurants close by. The evenings were still warm enough to be outside, and we found high stools at barrel tables.

 

This taberna will remain nameless in this blog post, as comments will be made later, and we’ll just scratch the surface a little. My comments will be a bit more real than the tourist vision.

 

We enjoyed decent wine, and some interesting interaction with our fellow punters… as the barrel tables left little room for exclusivity. A couple close to us (she Bulgarian, he Czech) were Málaga residents, and were accompanied by her rather eccentric mother, who now lives in the Netherlands. They had chosen English as the common language between them, and with anyone they interacted with.

 

The younger woman reminded me of myself (stay with me here) as she reached out us across the barrels as if to offer help. I understood what she was doing. I share this urge when in València, this urge (which I mostly resist) to offer advice and local knowledge to the foreign visitor, often without even being asked or prompted. We didn’t need any help on this occasion, but I get you, and I know you wanted to help.

 

What is impossible to ignore in Málaga is sweet things. Seemingly every street has one or more outlets for cakes, sweets, biscuits, desserts, chocolate, ice cream, yogurt, candied fruit, nougat, toffee apples, milk shakes, slushies. Sweetness excess.

A brand from Lisboa has several sites exclusively selling the delightful Portugese Pasteis de Nata. A café right outside the door of our apartment building had dedicated itself to the worship of cheesecake (and is therefore a very good thing in my opinion) and was packed at all hours of the day and evening. The more proactive shops posted staff outside to offer the innocent passer-by a tantalizing taste of sugar and spice, and to draw them into their sweet, comforting, calorific world.

 

There are specialist sweet shop brands, such as Belros and Captain Candy*. The queues outside the best cake shops were long, particularly leading into the weekend.

This is no more than an observation… a realization that this proliferation of sugary confections is too emphatic to be just another grab for the tourist dollar. It’s not an objection, and I wouldn’t suggest that the traditional shops are being pushed out in any way. Málaga still has, and always has had wonderful traditional food shops for jamon, bacalao, charcuteria, amazing canned and preserved goods, and so many other ingredients for great Spanish food… with quality and simplicity at its core. And of course, the first-class produce from land and sea at the brilliant Mercado de Atarazanas.

 

But I’ve chosen this retail outlet sugar-high proliferation as a theme for this blog post, and so you will have to cope with the occasional clumsy analogy and sweet-related pun along the way. Apologies in advance.

 

“Poner la guinda del pastel”

Spanish saying: “To put the icing on the cake”… adding a final detail or element
to a situation that perfects or embellishes it.

 

Heavy showers continued through the weekend and into Monday. Our “shopping” visits to the usual suspects: Massimo Dutti, Mango, Zara, Natura and so on were little more than chances to stay dry. By lunchtime on the Monday, the rain had pretty much relented, so our usual visit to Muelle Uno was very much back on the agenda.

 

Crossing the road at Plaza de la Marina and onto the Paseo de Muelle Uno… Málaga changes here. It changes from traditional-but-modern Spanish city, and becomes a smart, airy, cosmopolitan sea port and marina. A leisure and retail experience that delivers on every visit. An even bigger choice of cafés, bars and restaurants now, it grows and grows in stature.

Walking along under the great pergola, past the Palmeral de las Sorpresas, something new (although not unexpected) starts to become clear. Over our last couple of visits, it had been obvious that Málaga was going for the superyacht market. The quayside at Muelle Uno was being developed, more efficient and sophisticated facilities installed, glass walls raised to separate us from them, and provide security for the visiting super-rich.

 

This appears to have succeeded. Throughout our stay, 3 enormous super-yachts were moored along the quayside. Initially, one gazed in wonder at the sheer size and scale of these craft. A little googling** told us that they were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The largest had its name obscured, presumably out of a “need” for anonymity. These huge craft, the size of car ferries in another world, can accommodate perhaps 18 guests…. but this requires 30+ crew, to pander to their every need. The maintenance and mooring costs run into the tens of millions annually.

 I was far from star-struck. You don’t have to look and think too hard to realise how obscene this all is. How sickly sweet. They’re all registered in tax havens. They will be floating at any given quayside for much of the year, costing millions, but empty. They are the kid at school who kept the sweets in his pocket and gorged on them all, growing more bloated by the day.

If they bring prosperity to the city that benefits the Malagüeños, then that is a good thing, but like I said… it feels obscene. It felt like the opposite of the famous Malagüeño modesty and generosity. I’m not sure they belong.

 

I don’t think it’s high on the list of issues that come with these bloated, floating money-pits, but they also block the view of the city across the harbor from many of the Muelle Uno restaurants. We found a table that had a view between the glistening craft, and enjoyed a nice lunch. We made our way back to town in the sunshine, counting our blessings.

 

The Mercado de Atarazanas is a must-see. It may not be an architectural gem like the incredible modernista Mercado Central de Valencia, but the huge stained glass window across one end of the Mercado Atarazanas is spectacular. It goes without saying that the stalls and produce are worth 2 or 3 circuits of the market. Like a good restaurant menu… you want it all. I’m always conscious (as a tourist) of just getting in the way of the locals’ daily lives occasionally. They have groceries to buy, things to discuss, prices to barter, stock to maintain, floors to wash and actual real life to live.

 

But it’s quite a relaxed feeling in and around the market. If you have your morning coffee at one of the market cafés, it’s a completely different vibe to the city street cafés, or the Plaza de la Marina where we habitually have breakfast. For dedicated people-watchers*** like ourselves, it’s endlessly fascinating. She seems to know everyone, and makes sure everyone knows it. That camarero has styled his beard in the same way as Santiago Abascal, but let’s not read too much into that. That elderly cruise ship group will never keep up with their guide at that pace. The small groups of ancianos habitually stop outside the market entrances and get in everybody’s way… and nobody cares. Every café seems to have a “best mate” type of character, who habitually helps himself to a beer from the fridge, then gets shouted at. He’ll be back in 2 minutes to try again.

A mass of humanity, a more eclectic mix you could not imagine.

 

Less eclectic, less of a hub. less central, but nonetheless one of my Málaga favourites is the Mercado de Salamanca. It does the same job as Mercado de Atarazanas, but it does it on a much smaller scale, it does it without tourists, without cruise ship groups, without waiters and without dramas.

The Mercado de Salamanca sits there north of centro, in El Molinillo, looking pretty in the sunshine. Architecturally, it does a passable impression of Mercado Colon in València, only on a much smaller scale, and without the pretension, overpriced food offerings, and surrounding opulence.

 

Once again (as on a previous visit) it was a great relief to get the first sight of Mercado de Salamanca as we crossed the road from Calle Cruz de Molinillo, and see it unchanged. It remains an authentic barrio market. I hope it always remains so. Mercifully it stands out of the tourist epicenter, so has a reasonable chance.

We walked under its neo-Arabic arch and into its lines of market stalls. The fish, meat, produce, and preserved goods were being bought and sold without pretension or show. Bought and sold by regular Malagüeños who would stop and chat, relate their stories, scold their children, and scurry home with their fresh fish to keep it fresh.

It’s nice to look at, this market, but it’s even nicer to know that it’s genuine, authentic and real. It’s part of the ebb and flow of barrio life, and doesn’t feature in any Málaga tourist guides. It will always be a must visit for me, and I live in eternal hope that it never changes.

 

The Arabic influence gets a brief mention above, but there is enough content to write about the Moorish**** influence in Spain for a 1000 blog posts. 

 

“Europe was darkened at sunset, Cordova shone with public lamps; Europe was dirty, Cordova built a thousand baths; …, Cordova changed its undergarments daily; Europe lay in mud, Cordovas streets were paved; Europes palaces had smoke-holes in the ceiling, Cordovas arabesques were exquisite; Europes nobility could not sign its name, Cordovas children went to school; Europes monks could not read the baptismal service, Cordovas teachers created a library of Alexandrian dimensions. (800-1000 C.E.)”
From “The Muslims in Andalucia”.

 

And I can’t resist adding this delicious quotation from a European scholar sympathetic to the Spaniards:

“the reins of their horses were as fire, their faces black as pitch, their eyes shone like burning candles, their horses were swift as leopards and the riders fiercer than a wolf in a sheepfold at night . . . The noble Goths were broken in an hour, quicker than tongue can tell. Oh luckless Spain!”

 

But it was never luckless. There is very little that one could name in Spain that is not a result of Moorish influence. Theirs was not a brief invasion. In it’s entirety, it wasn’t bravely repelled by chivalrous European knights in shining armour either. 

 

With a heartland in Al Andalus (Southern Spain) the Moors ruled Spain for almost 8 centuries. Their influence extended throughout Europe, and brought great learning, magnificent art and architecture, great science and philosophy. In the countryside, sophisticated irrigation systems still used today (in the Valencian Huerta!) were a testament to their agricultural skills. Many of those most Spanish of things, the pueblos blancos, were raised by the Moors in Spain.

 

When visiting one of Spain’s Moorish sites, I always try to remember how those people so influenced Spain, made it into the country that so many of us love and appreciate today.

 

We climbed the steps and slopes of the Alcazaba, past palms and bougainvillea, between the great bastion walls. The Alcazaba de Málaga does not compare in size and complexity to the spectacular Muslim sites in Sevilla, Cordoba or Granada. Perhaps for that reason, it’s easier to imagine the daily lives of the ruling governor, his family, staff and garrison in this fortified palace. Maybe here, that bit of the past feels more accessible to your imagination.

 

Through the rose garden, past delicately conceived water features, up into the living areas with beautiful architectural detail that you’ll see all over modern Spain. The dominating position over the sea and the city reflected in the breathtaking views all around. And the incredibly skilled construction of the whole edifice, built into the slopes of the Gibralfaro mountain in the middle ages.

 

It has been said that those 800 years of Muslim rule saved Spain from the Dark Ages.

 

Speaking of the Dark Ages, there are a lot of British Tourists in Málaga*****. All the time.

 

Back in centro at a table in Plaza Carbon, I saw a British couple arrive and sit down to eat. She was facing away from me, and I couldn’t pick her reactions to her male partner, or to anything else. He scowled at the menu, pointing at several things that he clearly disapproved of, until the camarero approached.

 

Sadly, I know that people still employ his chosen method of communication, but I hadn’t heard it used so blatantly for a while. He ordered his drink loudly and clearly in English, looking directly at the waiter: “A GLASS OF RED WINE PLEASE!”. When the waiter replied: “Rioja o Ribera?” our friend from suburban Blighty glared at him, open-mouthed, affronted, as if the waiter had insulted his dear mother. He’d spoken in a language that was not English, and this was clearly unacceptable. This departure from his recognized cultural boundaries had offended him so much that his partner now bore the burden of all further communication, and he sneered his way through his food and drink, clearly not enjoying any aspect of his life whatsoever.

 

I can’t help wondering why some people leave the UK at all.

 

Another evening 2 middle-aged Brit couples, darlings of Daily-Mail-reading-middle-England, shared a high table close to us in a café. They were undoubtedly the worse for drink, it being the first night of their city break, and as we all know only too well: "In vino veritas".

 

The male members of the group began to reveal their true feelings about immigration “back home”, and the conversation between them basically took an unacceptable turn. The 2 women clearly agreed, and (to their great credit) they rather expertly steered the conversation away from “they’re taking all our jobs… etc, etc”. Despite this, one of our intrepid travellers couldn’t resist underlining the things that he had been prevented from saying with: “The main thing is that you’re born in England. That’s the main thing”.

 

Go home, pendejo.

 

“Imagine what it’s like being an immigrant in Britain… being told you need to integrate more by people who spend their holidays pointing at pictures of egg & chips on the menu”.
Frankie Boyle.

 

We overheard a very similar group (it’s the same group to all intents and purposes, isn’t it?) discussing the great wooden doors of a nearby Hermandad. “Do you know what’s behind those doors?” one learned individual asked the group. Their disinterested silence didn’t deter him: “It’s a secret society”, he announced.

 

The Hermandades and Cofradias (as I’ve banged on about in a previous post) are Christian associations of laypeople, some with roots and history dating back to the Middle Ages.

 

They are so secret that their meeting places have enormous wooden doors opening directly onto the street (as in this case) and they invariably have their names in huge letters above these doors (also as in this case). They are integral to the religious and cultural life of Málaga.

 

They are so secret, that they parade through Málaga in huge numbers right through Easter week for everyone to see, carrying enormous religious effigies known as Tronos. Local TV broadcasts the whole thing, and hundreds of thousands of people come to the city to see them.

 

That’s how secret they are.

 

A final bit of Brit-tourist bashing: We were at our favourite breakfast café on Plaza de la Marina on sunny morning late in the week. The parakeets squabbled in the palm trees above the canopy. For no good reason that I could tell, all the arriving customers were elderly northern-European tourists, mostly Brits.

 

One old boy (wearing a hat reserved only for “foreign sorties” and pruning the azaleas) impatiently ordered a café Americano for his dear wife, which duly arrived. The young camarera was expertly serving lots of tables on a busy morning.

 

After a little while, the old boy advised his dear wife to put her saucer on top of her coffee cup, and rudely shouted out to the waitress: “we are waiting for the milk for the coffee! My wife can’t drink her coffee without milk!”. The lack of milk was no more that fault of the waitress than it was the fault of the cow on a distant hillside that was expected to produce it.

 

You’ve ordered an Americano, big fella. A long, black coffee. Add con leche when you order, and you’ve nailed it. But don’t blame the waitress for your ignorance.

 

We enjoyed a first visit to the Museo del Vino de Málaga. It was a few steps from our apartment, and it seemed rude to ignore it. There was an interesting section on “wine and children” (which we thought was an unusual, and slightly concerning twist on the story of vino) and the museum itself was interesting, if not in-depth. The guy in charge treated us to a little tasting after we had advanced our knowledge of the vinos de Málaga. We enjoyed a light local white wine that was not unlike a manzanilla, but then he produced the inevitable Pedro Ximénez. We politely endured the dark, sweet, brown awfulness of it (with apologies to any aficionados) and escaped with thanks.

 

We wandered once again along the graceful curve of the ever-developing and endlessly absorbing Calle Carreteria and found a cold beer and lunch to take the taste away.

 

And so, back to our barrel-tabled taberna, and the goings-on therein.

 

We visited a few times. Indeed, some of the encounters described above happened here. On one early occasion, we were offered Caldillo de Pintarroja. We were assured that this is a typical dish of Málaga. Best described as a curried fish soup, I would say.

 

In any case, we won’t be having it again, but it seemed to be consumed in large quantities at this taberna. Mostly by the staff and “management”.

 

With all outside barrel tables occupied on another visit, we were forced inside, to dentro, where many tourists prefer not to venture. What dentro does do, is give you a little more insight into the workings of this operation. The staff consisted of:

 

Several younger waiters and waitresses. They all stuck bravely to their task of serving the outside barrel tables, which were often populated by some of the sub-normal characters that I’ve described above. In most cases, they appeared to be quite engaged with the general running of the place, which is always good to see. They were joined by a couple of slightly older waiters, who tended to take the time to talk to customers a little more, take a genuine interest in them, perhaps have a story to tell.

 

A rotund, brusque chap who appeared to be running the place, a manager. Always dressed in black, with a dirty apron and a sweaty brow. His management style appeared to consist of dramatically demonstrating how hard he was working, but this seemed to a) impress approximately none of his staff, and b) serve only to work himself up into a stressed and sweaty mess. He indulged in exasperated sighs and slammed down his 17^th glass of caldillo onto the bar top to heighten the effect. I’m going to call him (perhaps unkindly) Sancho. If you were fortunate enough to be served by him, he would dramatically slop the wine into your glass, perhaps spilling a little with a practiced show of having to move urgently on to the next very important thing he had to do.

 

There was also a slightly creepy individual, who we initially thought was a very regular customer taking too many liberties. It soon became clear that he was probably the owner, and also appeared to have an interest in the restaurant opposite… a slightly more formal tables-and-chairs sort of a place. He permanently had a glass of red wine on the go, which he kept in a little nook on the bar, just inside the entrance. He generously topped it up regularly, and did the same for his many cronies when they paid him a visit. I’m going to call him Quixote.

 

The first time we sat inside, we were close to the tiny bar area, which may have taken up around a third of the total inside area. This tiny bar area was where food was prepared. It was where glasses and dishes were washed. It was where the waiting staff and Sancho went for endless (large) glasses of caldillo. It was where jamon was cut, and where other seafood was plated up from the glass-fronted cool cabinet a couple of meters away. The till was here, of course, the table plan displayed on a greasy screen.

 

Aside of a couple of beer fridges around the room, everything happened in that tiny bar area.

 

Quixote and Sancho had a poor relationship. Quixote was not content to leave Sancho alone to run the taberna as he wanted to do, and constantly interfered. Sancho took his obvious frustration out on his staff, who largely ignored him and got on with what they were doing. Mostly drinking caldillo. A young female waitress (Dulcinea?) gulped it down while she washed up behind that tiny bar, as if her life depended on it. When Sancho reached the end of his thether and wouldn’t speak to Quixote any more, Quixote nagged at the other staff. They know well enough to ignore him.

 

It’s only when you get a bit closer to this, take in what’s going on, scratch the surface a little, that you get a more real picture of the lives behind the Tripadvisor reviews. You can feel versions of this soap opera played out in every taberna, café and restaurant across Europe. Dramas, relationships, frustrations, highs, lows, bitter and sweet, sometimes sour and unpalatable.

 

Enough of the dysfunctional taberna and the Cervantes analogies. Inexplicably, they seem to love their Caldillo de Pintarroja. Each to their own.

 

In the middle of the week, we had gone into a nice-looking bar (seemingly an independent in a city with a lot of chain places) on Calle Carreteria for a drink as the nights were getting cool. It was a quiet night, and the staff were hanging Christmas decorations and cleaning a little while they had time on their hands.

 

We went back in on our last night to eat, and the place was lively. It was Friday night, and the bar was full of (mostly) locals relaxing, eating, drinking. As we’d noticed on the previous visit, the place was run by a group of young women who were very clearly working together as a genuine collective, and helping each other to make the whole thing friendly and fun. The food was good, and the drink was good, but most of all, the feel of the place was good.

 

I love Spain’s café culture, but it can’t always be said that your average Spanish bar is friendly and fun. We’ll seek the place out next time. I don’t know if those young women had a mantra, but if they do, it might be this, this is what their attitude felt like:

 

"Huele las rosas. Huele el café. Lo que sea que te haga feliz”
"Smell the flowers. Smell the coffee. Whatever it is that makes you happy." Rita Moreno.

 

So, I spared you too many clumsy, sugary analogies and sweet-related puns, as I got diverted from that theme by people and places. But who cares.

 

We hope to be in Valencia for Easter, to feel the uplifting joy of the Domingo de Pascua parade in the Cabañal, and to remind ourselves how lucky we are.

 

 

* It should be said that Belros and Captain Candy are not exclusive to Malaga.

 

** Perhaps ironically, one of the founders of Google had his stinking great superyacht moored on Muelle Uno the week before we arrived.

 

*** People-watching might sound sinister to some. It’s far from it. It’s a harmless, free, victimless pastime that can provide endless fun, pleasure, topics of conversation and content for self-indulgent blog posts. Wear sunglasses if you’re afraid of upsetting anyone.

 

**** Moors are not a single or distinct race. It was/is a term used to describe Muslims in general, but especially those of Arab or Berber descent.

***** I am acutely and constantly aware that I am one of these things, at least when not in Valencia. I’m not here to tell anyone how to behave, but some of that self-awareness may be a benefit in some cases. Just sayin’.