Walking Our Brains Out

With this omnibus post, I am bringing this blog right up to date. What an achievement!

Since Pat and Helen left, exactly a week ago, Karen and I have kept active, but haven’t done much in the way of tourist-y things. The one big exception was a visit to the Basilica of Santa Maria de la Victoria, which we did the day the ladies left. It will be a highlight of our time in Málaga.

The Basilica is off the beaten tourist track. Karen found mention of it far down a list of things to see and do in the city, even though it came highly recommended by those who reviewed it – 4.5 stars out of five on TripAdvisor. It’s in a part of town not often visited by tourists.

When we arrived at the large, unassuming-looking church, we went straight in and began looking around. I was thinking it wasn’t particularly impressive when a fellow came in and spoke to us in Spanish. When I explained that we didn’t understand Spanish well, he apologized and immediately switched to English. This was Miguel Angel Pérez, the Basilica’s volunteer guide. Did we want a tour of the crypt and altar? Because if we did, we’d have to come with him now as the church was closing soon. (Yet another case of having wrong information about opening times! We had thought it was open until 14:00.)

Miguel is absolutely passionate about the place. A good part of his spiel was taken up with complaining bitterly about the lack of attention the Basilica receives from the city’s tourism powers that be. He’d finish one of these little diatribes with, “In-CRED-i-bool!” or “I’s TERR-i-bool!” The result, he says, is that visitors are few, and the diocese might have to discontinue the tours. I took this as softening us for a request for donation, but that wasn’t it. He genuinely wants people to know about this place and come to it.

The story behind it is interesting. The Basilica was administered by the Minim order of monks, founded by the Italian Saint Francis of Paola in the 15th century. When the original 17th century sanctuary and crypt were destroyed in the 18th century, the Count of Buenavista – whose Renaissance palace now houses the Picasso museum – stepped forward and said he would pay for reconstruction, on the condition that he and his wife could be buried in this holiest of places. The Minims agreed, but negotiated complete control of design.

The result is a unique masterpiece of rococo plaster carving. The crypt is a small, low-ceilinged room with the duke’s and duchess’s tombs along one side, kneeling effigies facing each other. The walls on all four sides are encrusted floor to ceiling with white relief carvings of skeletons and other symbols of death, on a black ground. For the Minims, Miguel told us, the crypt represented the earthly realm and the symbolism was intended to remind viewers of the inevitability of death and the need for contrition and virtuous living.

Miguel admitted us to the crypt through a half-open door, in darkness, then with a great flourish, turned on the floodlights. He was like a kid showing off his favourite toy. He directed me where to stand to get the optimum photo and told me to take my time shooting. He later urged us to post a review and the photos on TripAdvisor as this was the best way the Basilica could hope to attract more visitors.

If the crypt is the earthly realm, Miguel explained, then the sanctuary behind the altar – where he took us next – is the heavenly. In the centre of it sits a statue of the Virgin that had been sent to Málaga as a gift by an Austrian prince to commemorate the re-conquest of the city in 1487. It’s over 500 years old. The walls and ceiling of the dome above it are decorated with plaster relief carvings, gilded and coloured, leading the eye up to heaven. As Miguel might say, “In-CRED-i-bool!”

The next day, the Friday, we walked to the church that we can see poking up over the buildings on our block, the parish church of San Felipe Neri. It turns out to be quite a pretty one on the outside, with lovely geometric painted walls. We didn’t go inside, but may later. Our destination this morning was the Museum of Flamenco Art, just off Calle Beatas, about 10 minutes from the flat. The place is run by the Peña Juan Breva, a foundation for promoting flamenco in Málaga. Juan Breva (1844-1918), a singer and guitarist, was an iconic figure in the history of Malegueno flamenco.

Spotted near Church of San Felipe Neri

Church of San Felipe Neri

The place also houses a tapas bar where they have well reviewed flamenco performances, and some kind of archive, which includes, among other things, an important collection of hundreds of old flamenco phonograph records. When we came in, there were a couple of old guys sitting in the bar, sipping their carajillos (coffees with a shot) and chatting. They were very friendly and urged us to come back later for a performance.

The museum itself, spread over two floors, is not really professionally mounted, but has charm. It includes a hodge-podge of original and reproduction flamenco dresses and other performing paraphernalia, old guitars, photos and, true to the museum’s name, art inspired by the music, none of it very distinguished. The labels are in Spanish only, so we didn’t get a lot of it. Still, it was mildly diverting to look at the artifacts, and the admission was only €1 apiece. Maybe we’ll go back for a performance.

We meandered around the old town for awhile, collecting street art photos, and then went home. I don’t think we did much else that day.

On Saturday, we were feeling our oats apparently. We decided to walk again out to Pedregalejo, the former fishing village on the northeastern edge of the city. Our idea was to walk along the beach promenade there. The first time we went, we stopped at the beginning of the promenade. We’d go further this time, have lunch at some point, then walk – or bus, or cab – back. It was a lovely sunny, warm day, forecast to go up to 24C.

The walk to the edge of Pedregalejo is nice enough, with beach and sea views on the right, but also traffic noise and whizzing cars on the N340 alongside. When we got to the village, we turned down to the beach, which is a few blocks in from the highway. The promenade is lined with restaurants, bars, seaside cottages and fishermen’s houses. It goes much, much further than we imagined.

Pedregalejo

Pedregalejo and Malaga skyline beyond

We walked another almost four kilometers through El Palo and El Candado, two other suburban beach communities. In El Palo, we passed through a very busy street market, selling mostly clothes and knick-knacks, but also some fresh produce. The restaurants were all set up for lunch and starting to fill. The beach restaurants along this stretch of coast set up fire pits, usually in old aluminum row boats, and cook fish, especially sardines, on skewers over an open wood fire – an Andalusian bbq. Sardines on a skewer is one of the iconic images of the region. A street artist we see every day near the Roman Theatre in Málaga sells almost nothing but little paintings of skewered sardines. To each his own...

At El Candado, the promenade rejoins the highway. We turned back there. We had been hoping to get a close-up look at a tower we could see in the distance from the city. It looks like a modern highrise or office tower, but with unusual protruberances on the side. It stands on its own on a hilly point. We’d keep looking at it, saying, “What the hell IS that?” It had become an obsession. Now, although we must have been very close to it, we couldn’t see it at all, presumably because we were too close to a rise in the land that hid it. We’ll have to drive out there when we rent a car next week.

We stopped at Restaurante Antonio, a big place right on the promenade in El Candado, one of the few that advertised it served meat dishes – which we of course required. Lunch was, let us say, an experience.

It felt like being on the set of one of those 1970s films about village life in southern Europe – Zorba the Greek, or something like that – only updated to 2017. We knew weekend lunch out was a big deal in Spain. It’s a time for family to get together. The restaurants are jammed. Sunday is the traditional day, but Saturday is evidently just as big, perhaps especially on a sunny spring market day at the beach.

We were surrounded by families at Restaurante Antonio. At a long row of tables to my right was a huge extended family with at least three generations. I counted four brothers – same banana nose on every one of them – aged late twenties to late thirties, each with a pretty wife and small children. They arrived separately over a 20-minute span, each arrival setting off a marathon of cheek kissing and loud greetings. In the end, there must have been over 25 people at the table.

There is no apparent self-consciousness about being out in public here. Families behave at a restaurant as we would in the privacy of our back yards. The kids were running up and down the promenade, kicking footballs, skateboarding, scootering. Or out on the beach, running or digging in the sand. A parent might occasionally remonstrate with an unruly child or be called on to soothe an injured or unhappy one, but nobody seemed to mind the kids running free. It was expected. More than once, I saw kids run in front of or fall in front of strangers walking along the clogged promenade. The adult would smile and reach down absently to pat the child while continuing their conversation, and walking on without pausing. Nobody minded. And for the most part, the kids were not badly behaved, just exuberant.

At the table on the other side of us, which was practically out in the flow of the promenade traffic, sat a young couple in their early thirties, a taciturn-looking, heavy-set fellow and his slender, elegant wife in movie star sunglases. They had three kids, two boys aged about eight and six, both dressed in football outfits with UNICEF as the team logo – don’t know what that’s about – and a little girl, maybe two, toddling around on stubby legs, smiling at everything. The kids rarely sat still, and apparently weren’t required to. If they felt like going off and playing, they did.

At one point, the mother, obviously the tough-love parent, with a voice like a drill sergeant, frog-marched the oldest boy away from the table after some infraction or other – teasing his little brother, I think – and spoke to him sternly. He was a bit subdued for awhile after that. The parents would change places at the table as child-minding duties required. The father sat cradling the toddler, feeding her for a long while. The mother would stand and walk around the table to cut food for the children or get them to sit straight. While the foot traffic flowed by two steps away.

It was tremendously entertaining. Meanwhile, the smiling waiters were moving among the tables. The cookers at the fire would hustle up from the beach with a plate of skewered something-or-other. The food was rarely served all at once. The dishes came one by one and appeared to be for sharing.

And then there were the African craft and sunglasses sellers, wending among the tables. They’re all over southern Europe: tall, thin, dark-skinned men in sunglasses and dreadlocks. The same ones kept returning and offering their wares as the tables filled around us. Nobody appeared to mind. At the table behind me, a young woman sitting with her husband or boy friend, engaged with one of them. They had a smiling conversation, but she bought nothing. (I’m not sure I’ve ever seen anyone buy anything from these guys.)

At one point, I caught an odd little interplay at the restaurant next to Antonio’s. The eight-year-old from the table beside us was sitting on his skateboard, absently rolling it back and forth – this is probably thirty feet from his family’s table. One of the African sellers, who was on his second or third pass through, leaned down and held out one of his trinkets to the kid, as if offering it to him. The kid looked up at him, like, “What?” When he finally reached out his hand, the African guy pulled the trinket away, smirking. The kid couldn’t care less, just stared after him in slight puzzlement.

The Africans weren’t the only peddlars. There were also Spaniards selling lottery tickets. They have little machines on their belts, like the ticket sellers on London buses in the old days. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen them sell anything either. Karen was amused by the couple selling packaged sweet buns table to table. “This is a restaurant for heaven's sake!” She was offended on behalf of Antonio who might be missing out on a dessert sale. But the restaurant tables were on the public promenade, so Antonio probably didn’t have private-property rights here.

Our lunch? Dreadful. Pork chops with fries, a shared mixed salad to start. To be fair, the salad was fine, a generous serving, as always, and fresh ingredients. The fries with the chops were good too. It’s just that a couple of the pork chops were over-cooked almost to to the point of incineration. This is what you get, I suppose, ordering meat at a fish restaurant where they cook over an open wood fire. It didn’t matter. The beer and wine were good, and the entertainment top notch.

Restaurante Antonio: that's the eight-year-old from the next table on the promenade

We walked back along the promenade, unspooling the day. The restaurants were full. The sun continued to shine. We probably had way too much sun this day – and me without sunblock! The market was tearing down when we went by again. I had thought we might take the bus back to the city, but we ended up walking all the way. It must have been close to 20 kilometers in the end – over 25,000 steps on Karen’s FitBit.

Pedregalejo

That night, Karen started complaining of a cold coming on. The next day, she thought she still had energy for another long walk, but really didn’t.

We went anyway – the other direction this time: west and south. We walked through town, as we’d been along the seafront – through not very interesting commercial docklands – on a walk with Shelley a couple of weeks before. We took Avenida de Andalucía, a grand boulevard lined with rich-looking modern highrises and office towers. Across the street, we could see the Jardín de Picasso, which looked lush and pretty, but was inaccessible across several lanes of traffic.

It’s deceptive how far away from the water we’d come taking this route. The shore line curves away. The walk down along Avenida de Juan XXIII, an even more boring and noisy major artery, was much longer than we expected. We arrived at the sea tired, hot and footsore. The promenade was jammed with strolling families, the beach carpeted with sunbathers – which was surprising, as it would be mostly locals here, not tourists; this was the suburbs. In Valencia at this time of year, even on a warm sunny day like this, it would mostly be tourists sunbathing. The locals would be walking along the promenade in their Sunday finery, or filling the restaurants.

We sat on a park bench for awhile, watching the people, then trudged wearily home. I took one picture, of the beach and the commercial port beyond. Karen accused me of taking it only because of the nude sunbathers, but I hadn’t even noticed them until we walked on and drew alongside them. (If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you might just be able to make them out.)

Karen’s cold was now in full flower. Our activities over the next few days would be much curtailed. We mostly went for walks around the nearby historic centre.

On Monday, we did walk down to the harbour. We sat in the sun and read our books for an hour – or Karen did; I finished mine after ten minutes and went off exploring. At five (when things start to open again after siesta), we went in search of a little art gallery we'd heard about, run by the Fundación Unicaja. Unicaja – you-knee-CAH-hah - is one of the big banks in Spain. Like some other banks here, it invests in cultural activities – concerts, gallery exhibits, etc. – as a form of self-promotion and philanthropy. We enjoyed several excellent shows at the Valencia gallery run by Bancaja’s similar foundation.

This one was difficult to find. It’s not in the same location as the foundation’s Málaga business offices, which is where Google maps wanted to send us. I asked about it at a tourist office and was directed to the same place. Did the young woman not wonder why a foreign tourist would want to find business offices of a bank cultural foundation? A young woman in one of the bank’s nearby retail outlets also directed us to the same office. C’mon people! That’s not what I want! We circumnavigated the building it was supposed to be in, twice, peered at the directories on two doors but saw no sign of the foundation. Frustrating.

In the end, more or less by chance, we stumbled on the right place. It's in Plaza Siglo, about ten minutes from home, tucked upstairs in one of the bank’s retail branches. We knew about the place because I’d seen a poster for an upcoming exhibit. I realized now that I had seen the poster in this very square, with an arrow pointing to the gallery entrance. Doh!

The exhibit we’d spent so much time and energy locating was Frida Kahlo: la vida como obra de arte – Frida Kahlo: Life as a Work of Art, paintings by Fausto Velázquez. Velázquez is an artist of about our age who had been an art teacher before retirement. He apparently has or had an obsession with the early-20th century Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. One could argue that her artistic career was summed up by the title of this exhibit. Velázquez has painted 20 or 30 reinterpretations of Kahlo’s famous self-portraits, in his own much more rigidly realistic style, with different lighting and backgrounds. Frida often looks much prettier than she did in her own paintings. It was mildly interesting, but after awhile, the pictures ran together. Stop! Too much Frida! And the show brochure, in Spanish and English, failed to satisfactorily explain why Velázquez had embarked on this exhaustive series of paintings.

On Tuesday, we tried to visit the Museum of Semana Santa (Holy Week). As in Seville (but not Valencia so much), Holy Week is a huge deal in Málaga. We’ll still be in the city for the first day, Palm Sunday, when the processions of effigies by various hermanedads, or religious brotherhoods, begin. So we thought it might be useful to get some background. The place was difficult to find, even though only a few minutes from home and, when we did find it, unaccountably closed – despite the sign on the door clearly indicating it should have been open. What is it about this city and museum opening hours?

On that same walk, I tried yet again to find what I’ve come to refer to as “the square of the violin maker,” an almost mythical place that I stumbled on while running one day early on in our visit, but could never find again. I tried to take Pat and Helen to see it, and Karen and I have halfheartedly searched for it a couple of times. It was an interesting little triangular plaza tucked away down an alley. The main feature for me was the luthier’s studio – with the luthier working in the window. There were also some interesting little shops.

It wasn’t anything really wonderful, it just bugged me that I couldn’t find it again. We couldn’t find it this day either, or not at first. I finally sent Karen home to rest, determined to stay out and take some photographs – and maybe find the square. I walked a half block from where I'd left Karen, and there it was. A myth no longer.

I also went down another little alleyway we’d often passed to a place that had looked like a restaurant with a courtyard patio. It’s actually a social and cultural “club.” There is a courtyard, very pretty, with a bar, tables, wall murals and a fountain. It did not appear to be an exclusive, members-only kind of club. Nobody stopped me coming in or asked me to leave or to stop taking pictures.

I have also been taking pictures of building fronts in the historic centre. We are both very taken with the curved-front buildings with bow windows or balconies, often painted in pastel shades. They date, I think, from the 19th century, possibly 18th in some cases.

On Wednesday, we went for a longer walk, almost down to the port. Karen had had a bad night with her cold, but was determined to get some exercise. The sun was shining, but it was cooler than it has been – mid-teens Celsius. We picked our way along, choosing the sunniest streets to stay warm. Amazing how quickly you get accustomed to warmer temperatures and adjust your idea of what constitutes cold. I tried on a pair of green suede shoes in one shop just up from Alameda Principal but they didn’t have my size. Too bad. Nice shoes at a good price.

Today – my god, I’m almost caught up – we went out in the late morning to visit a highly-recommended church, the Iglesia de los Santos Mártires (Church of the Holy Martyrs). It's not far from the flat, but we meandered as usual, and stopped a couple of times for photos, once in a flamenca shop on Calle Carretería. There are a few of them around the city, shops selling flamenco-inspired dresses: tight bodices, flared and/or ruffled necklines and hemlines. Very colourful. I think they're sold mainly for ladies, and little girls, to wear at the Feria in the summer, the other big festival here after Semana Santa.

The Church of the Holy Martyrs is gorgeous. It was one of four built in the old city right after the reconquest, with money from the Spanish royals. There are apparently four brotherhoods attached to this church, which may explain why it has the money to decorate with such opulence and build all the equally opulent side chapels. We spent a half hour, goggling at the richness, and snapping pictures.

On the way home, we went down the street where the Museum of Holy Week is supposed to be. It was open – or part of it was open, a special exhibit of contemporary religious paintings by José Antonio Jiménez Muñoz. He specializes in paintings to be used in posters advertising Semana Santa around Spain. He’s a talented painter, but really needs to find some new subject matter.

In the afternoon, we went out for another walk, down to the harbour and back up through the historic centre. Same old, same old. I think it's almost time we rented a car and got out of town.