Ronda

For the two days after Pat and Helen came, we were busier with tourist-y things than Karen and I usually are. When you’re in a place for six weeks, you don’t feel compelled to do everything right away. But the ladies only had six days and would be off in Granada for two of them.

For Friday morning, we had booked a “free” walking tour of Málaga’s monuments. The tours had received great reviews on TripAdvisor, well deserved, judging by our experience. Our guide was Javier Herrera, one of the founders of ExploraMalaga, a little company with an interesting business model. The tours are only nominally free, of course. But the firm does not post a price list, inviting customers instead to pay what they think the tour is worth. This theoretically keeps the guides trying harder to please. Javier did.

He’s a smart young guy with excellent English and a great sense of humour. He twinkles. He told me that he couldn’t find a job after university, as many young Spaniards can’t, so ended up starting a first business, which failed. Then he and a couple of buddies hit on the idea for ExploraMalaga. It’s clear he loves the work. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d done some acting in his day – he certainly has the gift of the gab – and he loves his city (he was born here) and its history.

We started in Plaza de la Constitución, where Javier gave us a five-minute potted history of the city: Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Moors, and the long, bloody “Christianization” campaign, culminating in the fall of the Moorish city in 1487. We didn't hear too much about more modern times  – not dramatic enough, perhaps. We also learned why the fountain, which used to be in the centre of the plaza, is now, after a 19th century reconfiguration, off in one corner. (To make room for gatherings like the International Women’s Day demo I’d seen the night before.)

Karen and I didn’t actually see much or anything on the tour that we hadn’t seen already, but we did pick up all kinds of interesting tidbits of information. For example, that the cathedral was left incomplete because city fathers decided it would be better to spend the money on improving infrastructure. The planned second tower at the front – to match and balance the one that’s there today – was never built. (I confess I really hadn’t registered this before, although I had been dimly aware the building was asymmetrical.) Malaguenos, as a result, have nicknamed their cathedral La Manquita, a diminutive of manco, meaning a one-handed person.

He showed us the part of the cathedral that was once the mosque, and talked interestingly about differences in approaches between Christian and Muslim religious architectures – Christians wanting adherents to look to heaven, Muslims to look within. And he pointed out that the consistory at the back of the church was designed to look like a fortress, complete with fake canons carved in stone. This was to intimidate marauding corsairs. The harbour used to come almost to where the cathedral sits. This was before the city built what Javier referred to as “fake” land, including much of the lands of the current port area where the Pompidou Centre and many other buildings stand.

In the middle of the tour, we stopped at El Pimpi and had a taste of one of the bodega’s sweet dessert wines – not to our taste, but not awful – while Javier entertained us with lore about folk music traditions in the city, and let tour members try on one of the flowered hats that male players wear.

Javier, our guide, on the right

We had a short break here, and as we were standing waiting for the tour to start again, speculated on the origins of the name, El Pimpi. Pat said it was obviously the same word as in English, pimp. I said, no way. When the tour started, Javier, unbidden, settled the argument for us. It was indeed after the English word, which Malagueno procurers learned from English sailors and adopted to identify themselves to prospective customers. “Yes, I’m a pimp! Come this way.” The spot where El Pimpi stands today was, as we’d already learned, very close to the sea before the port lands were built. So this was where sailors in search of women would make contact with the pimps. Javier said the owners of El Pimpi did not acknowledge this – I believe it; you can see why they wouldn’t – and that most of the wait staff aren’t aware of the story.

The Roman Theatre, he told us, had only been discovered 70 years or so ago when a building was demolished and the foundation for a new one was dug. I assumed it had always been there. The stoneworks under the glass pyramid in front of the theatre are the remains of a factory where a sauce made from rotting fish guts – still eaten in the city, but rarely – was once manufactured. Delightful.

Javier referred to both the Alcazaba and Gibralfaro as forts or castles. I had thought the Alcazaba was a residence, a palace, and the castillo was the defensive structure. He explained some of the defensive features in the architecture of the Alcazaba: the main gate tucked back in, facing along the land-side wall instead of straight out where it would be easier to breach; the multiple walls of different heights that could trap attackers, making them easy targets for defenders.

The tour ended in the Plaza de Merced on the northeastern edge of the historic centre. It’s the site of the house in which Picasso grew up – there’s a museum there today. His family were apparently quite well off. As he was sending us on our way, Javier recommended the square and the streets around it as a good place to look for not-too-touristy tapas bars, something we haven’t done yet.

We gave him €10 each. He had close to 20 people in that tour. Not all gave as much – I saw some of the younger people giving him loose coins – but I’m guessing he grossed at least €100 for his two-plus hours of work. Which sounds pretty good, except he was telling me earlier that there is an insane fixed tax on freelancers of €350 a month, which he was quite bitter about. Afterwards, though, I was wondering if the “feelance tax” was possibly in lieu of paying income tax.

Plaza de Merced: hangin' with Pablo

I can’t remember where we went from there, but we ended up at a little restaurant in the historic centre for a menu del dia lunch. It wasn’t great, but did include starter, main, drink, dessert, bread, all for under €15. I think most of us had the baked chicken for mains. Mine was a little short of meat on the bone. My starter was a great lentil soup, though. Pat and Helen had paella for starters – so they could tick it off on their list of things-to-do-in-Spain, I think. It didn’t look like the paellas we remembered from Valencia (where the dish originated), but did have a surprising amount of seafood and meat in it. Desserts were store-bought custard-y things. They brought them in a basket in their tinfoil cups so you could choose. Fancy. I shouldn’t be critical, though, because Pat generously paid for ours.

After the tour ended, we walked over to the bus station so Pat and Helen could buy their bus tickets for Ronda. They were leaving Monday in the morning, returning late Tuesday. We walked back by the river and spotted some new street art.

And so back to the flat to rest up for our rare planned evening out. We had booked tickets for a flamenco show at Kelípé Centro de Arte Flamenco, a little theatre-club about 20 minutes from the flat. It had good reviews and cost €25 each for show and two drinks. We had cheese and crackers and jamon at home before we left.

The club was down a little alley in the historic centre, a block or so in from the river. The evening didn’t start well. The harried guy at the ticket desk had no record of our booking, which we’d made online that day. I showed him the booking on my phone. He pencilled us in and told his waiter, an impassive-looking fellow in a muscle shirt with arm tatoos, to seat us at a little table with high stools right in the doorway, with obstructed views of the stage.

There was hardly anyone in the place at this point. I went back out and explained that we couldn’t sit in backless seats the entire evening, but he said all the other places were booked. I booked ahead too, I protested. Yes, but only today, he said. I went back in, but wasn’t happy. There were some stools along the back wall from where we would at least have unobstructed views of the stage and some back support. I went out again, and he grudgingly agreed we could sit there. We sat and watched as the prime seats – tables with proper chairs in front of the stage – filled up with a Scandinavian school group of young teenagers.

At a few minutes before show time, there was still one small table for four available, right at the corner of the stage. I went out one more time and spoke to the guy at the door. He said, yes, we could have the table. Someone had booked but not shown up. He was just coming in to tell us we could sit there, he said.

Within minutes of the show starting, all petty dissatisfactions with the evening melted away. It was fabulous.

The first surprise: the guy at the door was also the guitarist. Four of them sat in chairs at the back of the shallow stage. There was the bearded, pony-tailed ticket taker on guitar, a tall thin woman in a red flamenco dress and shawl (we had seen her come in earlier in her street clothes), a guy all in black except for his white scarf (late thirties, early forties, interesting face), and furthest from us, a younger, thinner guy, also in black, straddling a box.

Were they Roma? I’m guessing so. Flamenco is the traditional music of the Roma, the gypsies of Andalucía. Just as with the Blues, to which it’s often compared, lots of non-Roma play flamenco now, but it appeared these four might be the real McCoy. They certainly made a striking-looking quartet.

The music started slowly, with the guitarist and percussionist, the young guy at the end, who banged and tapped rhythmically on his box. (It turned out to be an empty loudspeaker casing.) At first, I thought the guitarist wasn’t very good. I noticed some string-buzzing. But he was just warming up. If the poor guy hadn’t been out front taking tickets – and grief from dissatisfied customers – he would have done his warm-ups backstage. He was terrific once he got going. Then the other two started hand-clapping in intricate rhythms. They took turns calling out, or chanted in unison.

After the first number, the guitarist, who spoke English well, and sounded as if he might have lived for a time in the U.S., introduced the group and the evening, in both languages. Then they launched into the next piece. This time, the older guy sang.

Flamenco singing is probably an acquired taste. It’s not often very lyrical or even tuneful – just as the Blues isn’t – but it is incredibly passionate. One of the marks of a great flamenco artist, beyond the musical chops, is something untranslatable they call duende. It means, roughly, soul or feeling. I’m obviously no expert, but I’d say this guy had it. His heart was breaking. Flamenco songs are usually hurting songs, little mini-operas about love gone wrong and betrayal. I had been listening off and on for the last few years to recordings by one of the top young stars of flamenco, Miguel Poveda, who is reckoned to have duende in spades. Our guy reminded me of Poveda: the same urgency, passion and anguish in his singing.

On the next number, the dancer got up. And she was fantastic too. I have no idea what all the gestures – the pulling at her skirts, the throwing of the shawl - and the rhythms in her footwork meant, but she kept our attention at all times. For all the often-parodied pounding of heels, there is something very sensual about flamenco dancing, sexual even. And the rhythms can be quite intricate – nothing like tap dancing, perhaps, but much more emotionally expressive. This woman’s face was fabulous too. She’s exactly what you’d want a flamenco dancer to look like – rail thin, prominent features, huge deep-set flashing eyes. Her face expressed haughtiness, anguish, defiance, amusement, heartbreak. She was an actress.

The evening went on in the same vein, number after number, no two ever sounding quite the same, even to our uninitiated ears. Sometimes the singer sang or the dancer danced, sometimes both performed. We all felt, I think, that we were in the presence of something authentic and strong, and alien.

At one point, the Scandinavian school kids were getting restive, some of them laughing at the over-the-top passionate gestures and sounds of the performance – far too passionate and anguished for such young ones to possibly be able to understand. The guitarist made a very pretty, gentle speech, imploring them to be quiet, as they were disturbing the performers. And they were quiet after that.

At the end, I went over and thanked the guitarist. As we wended our back to the flat, we noticed the singer strolling a little way ahead of us up our street. On his way home? A neighbour perhaps? There is somebody in the building who plays flamenco and practices the hand-clapping. But this guy kept going past our place.

The next morning, we were driving to Ronda, about an hour and a half away in the mountains north of the Costa del Sol. This event did not start well either, but also ended on a better note

We had rented the car – through my new favourite online broker, CarFlexi – from Budget at the central train station. We walked over there in the morning ahead of our 10 a.m. pick-up time. When we got to the office, we discovered that Budget – and possibly all car rental agencies in Spain – required a passport to rent a car. I didn’t have mine with me. I protested that I’d rented cars before in Spain without showing a passport, but the guy was adamant. I would have to go home and get my passport. 

I took a cab, which cost over €7 and took almost as long as walking because of all the construction around the river and the one-way street system. The cabby crossed the river three times, which may have been a scam to increase the fare, but may just have been the best route to go under the circumstances. On the way back, I started out walking, thinking I’d flag a cab if I saw one, but I never did and ended up walking all the way, very fast. I arrived sweaty and tired, but we had only lost an hour.

Getting out of the city was easy. The drive was all on good roads, through lovely mountainous scenery. In Ronda, we found a parking lot that we thought was near the Puente Nuevo, the "new" bridge, the one built in the gorge, and the main point of entry into the old Moorish town. It wasn’t as close as we thought, but that was fine.

Ronda is fantastic. We came pretty quickly to the edge of the canyon where the city is built, with its lovely views out over the fertile plain below and beyond to the mountains of Sierra de Grazalema National Park. We walked along the edge and came next to the white-washed Plaza de Toros de Ronda, one of the oldest bullrings still standing, and the home of the most popular style of bullfighting. It was built in 1779.

The Puente Nuevo, the next sight on our entirely unguided tour, was built between 1751 and 1793. It's a marvel of early-modern engineering, spanning a cleft, with its base extending up from the canyon floor 120 meters below. We crossed it slowly, with scores of other tourists. If it was this crowded at this time of year, what must it be like in the summer?

By this time, we were desperate for food and drink. The first few places we looked at, including one right at the bidge, recommended as having the best views, were expensive. I think Helen would have been okay with spending the money, but we forged on. In the end, we found a place down a side street in the old town, with a quite reasonable menu del dia – I think €19 for three courses, drink and bread. We got a table on one of the terraces, with partial views of the bridge and out over the canyon. It was breezy, but sunny, and the food and drink were great. We stayed well over an hour. It was a lovely meal. Thanks Helen!

From the restaurant, we walked through the narrow streets of the Moorish town. At one point, we found a path down to a point near the base of the Puente Nuevo, and took it. It was a popular spot, crowded with young travellers. The views back up to the bridge and the town were great. While we were there, some guys came rappelling up the rock face from the very bottom of the canyon, still quite a way down. Our walk back up the path was arduous enough, so I can’t imagine what it must have been like for the rock climbers.

We wandered on in the direction of one of the city’s main attractions, the Mondragon Palace, a museum and preserved historic home. It was closed. A waitress at the bar across from it told us it wouldn’t reopen until the next day. Bloody siesta! So we wandered some more.

We walked down narrow streets into squares, and stumbled on an interesting-looking church and a lovely park near the city hall. Pat was really not feeling well. The cold she had thought was almost finished when she arrived had come roaring back. But she was a trouper. We came to the so-called Puente Viejo, the old bridge, built in 1616. It’s not anywhere near as damatic as the Puente Nuevo.  

Puente Viejo

Sick sister

And then we came to one of the city’s other recommended attractions, the Palace of the Moorish Kings. It’s supposed to have hanging gardens, and features a long staircase cut into rock, down to a pool at the bottom of the canyon. It was the only source of fresh water for besieged Moors when the city was under attack by Christian forces in the 15th century. The overlooks were also used for pouring boiling oil on forces attacking from below. Lovely place.

The entry fee was €5 each, which we concluded after our visit was a rip-off. The palace itself was closed for renovations. The gardens were nothing special, mostly dead, nothing that we could see hanging. Helen and Karen – the silly women – walked a good way down the staircase to the canyon floor, but didn’t go all the way. They finally realized it would just be too hard getting back up if they did. The steps were also wet and slippery in places. There were no warnings about any of this at the top. Pat, who was already feeling short of breath, wisely stayed up top. I went part way down to try and find Karen and Helen, but turned back. I was already knackered by our first foray down the path towards the canyon floor.

We walked back to the Puente Nuevo, crossed it and had a rest in the square in front of the Plaza de Toro – or three of us did. Helen was anxious to see inside the bullring, another highly recommended attraction, so paid the admission. She was not disappointed, she later told us. Apparently the architecture inside is lovely, and even the museum displays mildly diverting.

Resting in square at Plaza de Toro

Mail slot at post office

From there we walked back to the car and drove home. It was dark by the time we got back to the city. We were relying on Google Maps navigation system on Helen’s phone to get back to the train station and find a gas station. There were a few, shall we say, anomalies in the routing, but eventually we filled the car with petrol and returned it to the parking garage. We took a cab back to the flat, tired but satisfied.