Casa Voyageurs

We have left Málaga and are high up in the air hugging the Spanish coastline in the tiny Air Maroc, turbo prop plane. It is a clear, sunny day. The Rock of Gibraltar comes into view. We veer to the left and I can make out hydrofoils plying the route between the Spanish enclave of Ceuta in Morocco and Algeciras across the straits.

I crane my neck and look back through the opaque glass of the porthole. Africa and Europe are simultaneously visible. It's a wonderful sight.

I should have retrieved my camera from the overhead locker but remembered Bresson's words about the best photos being the ones that aren't taken but simply remembered.

And within an hour we are in Casablanca where this journey began. Our time is tumbling to an end. Too quick, too soon to be going home I keep thinking. (My wife reminds me that we have spent four of the last twelve months travelling.)

The next day we are in "Le Petit Poucet", a bar which has changed little since the 1940s along Boulevard Mohemmed V.

Antoine de St Exupery used to stop off here on the Paris-Dakar mail-run, Camus was also a customer.

The guide books suggest Casablanca has little of interest for tourists. Alors! les bras m'en sont tombés! = you could knock me down with a feather! They were wrong again!

Casablanca has loads of charm - you've just got to open your eyes.

I will be sad leaving Morocco. A couple of days in Abu Dhabi to break the long journey home may throw up something interesting; who knows?

But I'm sad there will be no more French, no more Spanish - at least until I get back to work where I can have the occasional conversation with my African and Latin American students - a consoling thought. It's not the fun and challenge of communicating in those languages that I will miss per se, but the fabulous people they draw into my orbit.

I helped a blind man find Bus #44 downtown today after watching him stumble on the broken pavement and walk into a pole. He was very thankful for the help and I only realised later that not a word of our communication took place in my mother tongue.

A young guy on a motor scooter at some traffic lights waved at us and exclaimed (in English) : " I love Morocco". I found myself excitedly replying : "We love Morocco, too." He was elated. This happened in front of the Gare Casablanca Voyageurs (the Casablanca Travellers Railway Station) where tomorrow we take the train to the airport to fly home.

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Discover the real detail...Málaga

"Descrube el verdadero detalle / Discover the real detail ..."

When I caught sight of that ad slogan high up on the wall of a department store it captured the way I felt about Málaga, on this our fourth day in the city (and our last day in Spain) : wherever you go there is more than just stock-tourist beauty to be uncovered.

Here are a few images of today's unexpected sights:

Behind the Centro de Arte Contemporanio, these stunning murals spruce up an otherwise unappetising apartment block...

 And a close up of one of the towers ...

A fabulous little car park as seen from the fourth floor of the Ibis Budget Hotel where we stayed...

Walking along the Alameda I looked up and caught sight of these birds ...

The redeveloped harbour has a lot of dead retail (think Docklands, Melbourne) but a brilliant sail like trellis along its aptly named walkway, the Palmeral de Las Sorpresas, catches your attention...

Impromptu street art along the city's grotty, concrete storm drain inhabited by homeless people and used by skateboarders during the day. The Malagueños call the drain "the river" ...long time since it resembled anything natural or river like.

...nice Michael Jackson mural..."look into the mirror" reads the accompanying message.

High rises...

...and a close up of the other mural from behind CAC.

This 60s office building with its clean shapes and line creates a fabulous pattern off set by the palms, old street lamps and clear, blue, afternoon sky...

Back at the El Corte Inglés department store, where, yes, we did most of our shopping - for food - I came across these enticing leggy blond encouraging retail therapy. Where in the hell do the Spaniards get the money to shop - more than 26% are unemployed!

And on this last day in Spain, there were still reminders of Moorish heritage, of the presence of Al Andalus. This faux-minaret a perfect example...

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Ronda

Carerra del Espinel is the main thoroughfare of Ronda. It runs the full length of the new town and is mainly tourist oriented, shops, bars and cafes. I wondered why on Earth we hadn't stayed another day in beautiful Antequera. This wasn't what I was expecting. Friends had built the town up. I had such high expectations.

 

I've learnt though that you should not trust first impressions. I turned the corner and walked in the direction of the bridge which straddles the vertiginous Tejo Gorg. Crossing over into the old town - the casco viejo - I was transported light years from the tourist tack. I explored old streets, squares, palaces and gardens without another soul in sight.

 

And from the bridge you look out over the Sierra...

The countryside is more tapestry than landscape. The next day I decided to make way down into valley to see the gorge and the city from another angle. I walked these roads alone ...

...and after a few hours made my way up the precipitous path, past the old water mill and through the Moorish gate.

My bad hip was aching, but I didn't care. I walked through deserted streets...

...back over the bridge...

Hugged the cliff top along Paseo de Ernest Hemingway (Ronda features in "For Whom the Bell Tolls") ...

...skirting the Bull Ring, from which I tried (and failed to avert my eyes) - I hate bullfighting (as do most Spaniards).

...and got back int time for a late lunch of wine and tapas at our adopted, local pub.

And the journey continues through Al Andalus...

 

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The Lover's Rock : Antequera

Our first days of rain in weeks. It has given us a ready excuse to take refuge in Antequera's tapas bars but also provided the opportunity for some nice night photography. I like the drops of rain on the lens which leave their traces, the shimmering roads and the way the rain can have the effect of emptying places of people and vehicles often producing a lonely, eerie, "romantic" atmosphere.

Between downpours, which were never too long or too hard, I'd sneak out with my camera. By morning the rain had receded and I climbed up to the Alcazaba (the old Muslim fortress) which was captured by Ferdinand I of Aragon in 1410.

I know the story of the lovers associated with that rock in the background of the next photo...

It is a view of El Torcal, or "the lovers rock", which dominates the fertile countryside between Antequera and Boabdilla in Andalucía. It is seen through the Moorish window frame from one of the Alcazaba's towers, its Muslim fort.

The original legend is that two young Moorish lovers from rival clans threw themselves from the rock while being pursued by the girl's father and his men.

This romantic legend was adapted by the English poet, Robert Southey, in his, "The Lovers a Rock" in which the lovers were a Muslim girl and her father's Christian slave.

An excerpt:

The Moorish chief unmoved could see

His daughter bend her suppliant knee;

He heard his child for pardon plead,

And swore the offenders both should bleed.

He bade the archers bend the bow,

And make the Christian fall below;

He bade the archers aim the dart,

And pierce the maid’s apostate heart.

The archers aimed their arrows there;

She clasped young Manuel in despair:

“Death, Manuel, shall set us free!

Then leap below, and die with me.”

He clasped her close, and cried, “Farewell!”

In one another’s arms they fell;

And, falling o’er the rock’s steep side,

In one another’s arms they died.

"The Lover’s Rock"

Robert Southey (1774–1843)

Above: One of the Alcazaba fortress towers and surrounding countryside.

The prism through which many visitors and writers of the past have made sense of the "re-conquest" of Spain has been heavily influenced by 18th century Romanticism, as evidenced by Southey's poem quoted above. Even Washington Irving's Chronicles of the Conquest of Granada, quoted in my last post, has a long line of literary forerunners romanticizing the Moorish era and downfall of the city - as if it were a kind of Troy.

Irving's stated aim was to correct "Spanish fabrications" and "amatory embellishments" with his "history" but many contend he added to the mythos rather than correcting the vast number of romances about it

Image of Antequera in the 16th century from the city's Archeological Museum at Plaza Coso Viejo where we also stayed.

View over the town from the Alcazaba

In 1504, the humanist university of the Real Colegiata de Santa María la Mayor was founded; it became a meeting place for important writers and scholars of the Spanish Renaissance. A school of poets arose during the 16th century that included Pedro Espinosa, Luis Martín de la Plaza and Cristobalina Fernández de Alarcón.

Above: Statue of Pedro Espinoza on the Plaza de Los Escribianos in front of Santa María La Mayor.

A school of sculpture produced artists who were mainly employed on the many churches built, and who were in demand in Seville, Málaga and Córdoba and the surrounding areas. The newly built churches included San Sebastián in the city centre and the largest and most splendid of the city, Real Colegiata de Santa María, with its richly decorated mannerist façade.

Below: Santa María La Mayor with El Torcal in the background. Further down, the proto-Gothic, mannerist facade...

The interior includes a saint riding the hydra headed monster. It is in fact a modern recreation of a 1760 float of a lady on a castle (signifying her invulnerability) called a "tarasca". The lady carries a monstrance, the traditional display in Catholic churches of the Eucharistic host (the Corpus Christi). The monster has seven heads to represent, of course, seven deadly sins.

And it rained again...

...but this did not detract from Antequera's beauty by day or by night, it only added to the romance.

 

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