Malaga City - History

by Chris Chaplow with Chris Wawn and David Wood.

Phoenicians

3.000 years ago the Phoenicians landed in Málaga, they called it MALACA (probably from the word malac - to salt) and they used the harbour as an important centre for salting fish. They built the fortress overlooking Málaga - now replaced by the Alcazaba, the interesting archaeological museum housed in the Moorish Castle, beneath this fortress contains Phoenician pottery excavated from the fortress and nearby burial grounds.

Greeks

The Greeks followed the Phoenicians in the 6th century B.C.

Romans
Málaga was further developed by the Romans, who colonised Spain in 218 B.C. and stayed for more than six centuries. They enlarged the fortress and built a theatre as its base which is now excavated and open to the public. Under Roman rule, Málaga prospered as a trading port, with exports of iron copper and lead from the mines in nearby Ronda, they also exported olive oil, wine and garum (a relish of pickled fish). 

Visigoths

The Visigoths were one of two branches of the Germanic Goths and the name meant 'Valiant People'. Malaga fiercely resisted thei invasion and when they entered the city around 490AD the Visigoths found it half deserted. The Visigoth had lived inside the Roman Empire for many years and had become Romanised in habits. The big difference however was no Emperor but an elected King and an assembly of free men who eligible to go to war.

BYZANTINE

The Byzantine Emperor Justinian forse captured the city for a time and marble and stone was exported for the construction of Sancta Sophia church in Constantinople. When the Byzantine enclaves were eradicated by 630 AD Malaga (unlike Cartagena) was not distroyed.
   

Moors

In 711 A.D. the Moors invaded Spain and called her Al-Andalus. Málaga became a major Moorish city and port - it was the main port for Granada too, famed for Figs and Wine. Moorish ruler Yusuf I built the Gibralfaro as a defence against the Christian conquerors Isabella and Ferdinand, however the defences were not enough to keep them at bay, after a bitter seige Málaga fell to the Christians in 1487. It was one of the last cities to be taken by the Christian conquerors. After the conquest Moors in the city were persecuted, and their belongings confiscated, the city mosque was converted into a Cathedral. At this point the city fell into decline, followed by a revolt in 1568 by the Moors, which resulted in their complete expulsion from the region.

Christian Period

The Golden age of 1500 to 1650 was more about Seville and Cadiz, In Malaga the nobility deserted the city, hense there is little Andalucia Christian architecture to be seen today. The port remained active including a lucrative slave trade of captured Turks, North African Berbers and indeed Moriscos. the Bubonic plaque that swept the city in 1637 is blamed on a sailor. Vinegar was the weapon against the plague and all awnings were soaked in it. The plague only subsided after 9th July when the whole of the city knelt beside the route of the Virgin of Victory which was carried to thew convent of St.Francis. They were dificult times for Malaga including great floods in 1580, 1621, and 1661 the last of which distroyed the roman Bridge of Santo Domingo. There were two large explsions in 1595 and 1618 at the gunpowder factory that stood close to La Ataranza in the Plaza de Arriola. 
A yellow fever epidemic rages in Malaga for a year in 1803.

PENINSULAR WAR

Napoleons forces invaded Malaga in 1808, the locals resisted and were brushed aside by the superior force. The Duke of Wellington aided by Spanish guerillas ousted the French in the Battle of Salamanca in 1812. The constitution of Cadiz was written that year by a Cortes in that city which limited powers of the monarchy, established a single chamber parliament without privileges for the nobility and the church. King Ferdinand VII returned from exile in France and his repressive rule sparked many rebellions. One of the most notable was by General Jose Maria de Torrijos and Robert Boyd. An obelisk was raised to their memory in Plaza de la Merced.

 

Torrijos and Boyd

One of the most notable was by General Jose Maria de Torrijos. He had spent time in London and drew support from liberals like Tennyson and Carlysle and John Sterling whose Irish cousin Lieutenant Robert Boyd had a 4000 pound inheritance and funded a ship which was seized by British authorities on request of Spanish envoy in London. Sterling withdrew after suddenly becoming engaged. Undeterred revolutionaries managed regroup in Gibraltar in 1830. They attacked San Roque, then La Linea, then Estepona but local support never materialized. The actions were putting a strain on Anglo-Spanish relations and the Madrid envoy Aldington and the prime minister Lord Palmerstone wanted to see the back of them. It looked for a while as time would wipe them out as many of the English in the band having spent their money on wine, women and song over the border in Spain, began to tire of their romantic adventure and drifted home.

 

The hard core lingered on the rock for 18 months and the authorities had to act. First bribery for a new life in the colonies. Staunch commitment to a idealistic cause is always misjudged by authority and this was no exception, the offer was rejected. Then out of the blue a (forged?) letter reached Torrijos from Viriato his second in command assuring 2,500 troops from the Malaga garrison. The band set sail from Gibraltar on 30 November 1831 in a brigantine.  They were driven onto the rocks near Fuengirola by a customs cutter and fired upon,  they were forsed to abandon the ship and run for the mountains.  On the other side of the mountain they hid out in a farmhouse in Alhaurin de la Torre but on the 5th December they were surrounded by the forces of Gonzalez Moreno, the Governor of Malaga. Under the guard of Colonel, later General Monasteria, they were roped together and taken to Malaga's Carmelite monastery whilst the Governor awaited instructions from Madrid. The presence of Robert Boyd was reported the the British Counsul William Mark but he was not allowed to see him. The word from Madrid was brutally unforgiving. All 52 prisoners were to be shot in the morning, including a 15 year old cabin boy. Whilst the catholics spent the last night confessing, Boyd wrote two letters one to his brother, the other to his friend Harry in Gibraltar. In the morning they were taken to Playa San Andres and executed, on the Sabbath!  Mark managed to claim Boyd's body "in the name of the Queen" and Robert Boyd gained the unwelcome distinction of being the first resident of the English Cemetery in Malaga. Aldington composed a formal but limp letter of protest in which he cravenly acknowledged that Boyd deserved to be shot, but feebly complained of the lack of a trail first.

An obelisk was raised to their memory in Plaza de la Merced in 1842 and nearby at the end of the Alhameda cars wiz round Plaza del General Torrijos.  There is a Calle Robert Boyd in Malaga inaugurated in 2004 by his great great Nephew Michael Boyd-Carpenter and the Malaga and "Association Historico Cultural TORRIJOS 1831" meets regularly to keep the memory alive.

19th CENTURY PROSPERITY

Following the death of Fernando in 1833 freedom and prosperity truly returned to Málaga, middle class families from the north brought wealth which they invested in factories, shipyards, and sugar refineries. In nearby Marbella and Ojen Manuel Agustin Herrera had opened his two iron ore foundries, El Angel and La Concepcion and in 1846 he joined the Larios family from La Rioja in setting up the textile company Industria Malagueña SA. Sr. Loring set up Banco de Malaga. It is from these families that the streets take their name. Meanwhile, Málaga´s dessert wine had become the favourite tipple of Victorian ladies, and thus, wine exports soared.

 

Chiefly because of the beneficial climate, Malaga became a favourite foreign residence for wealthy English invalids from around the middle of the 19th century. Lady Louisa Tenison observed in 1850. "society there is none, and with the exception of the theatre there are no amusements whatsoever which could contribute to make time pass agreeable, and no objects of interest to attract the traveler". What perverse desire for martyrdom, we wonder, made her stay?

However the prosperity was short lived, in the early 20th century the phylloxera virus (also known as the blight) struck the vineyards and wiped put entire crops, and other industries succumbed to global competition and collapsed. The city lost its reputation in the lead up to the Civil War, when several groups of radicals started a number of revolts.

 

CIVIL WAR

During the Civil War, the city was outwardly republican, the result of which was repression and persecution; convents and churches were burned to the ground and heavy bombing from Italian forces destroyed large portions of the city´s ancient architecture. As Franco´s nationalist forces came south and crossed the province, by the end of 1936 Nationalists controlled everything from the south of Estepona to Ronda and Granada leaving only a 20km strip and Malaga in republican hands and even their commander in Valencia grew disenchanted with his comrades and declared "Not a rifle or a cartridge more for Malaga." The Nationalist colonel, the Duque de Sevilla, started the offensive on Jan 17th 1937. His troops moved up the coastline from Estepona and met little offensive and took Marbella in three days. A second thrust came from the north and took Alhama. On February 3rd nine battalions of Italian black shirts and a hundred aircraft began the assault. The fighting produced panic in the city when it became clear that the Almeria corridor east along the coast might be cut. There was a mass civilian exodus along the coast road to the east which suffered ariel and naval bombardment. A monument at one particular black spot can be seen today on the old coast road. The that remained population of the city was also subjected to mass executions by conquering Nationalists leaving an emotional scar on the city.

 

 

MODERN DAY

In the 1960´s things finally started to pick up again for Málaga, the city´s big break came in the form of mass tourism made possible by the airliner. Franco who is often accused of starving the south of industrial recourses was quick to develop tourist infrastructure such as Malaga Airport and high rise hotels in Torremolinos to capitalize on the bohemian image created by escapades of Jean Cocteau in Torremolinos and the up-market already created by Alfonso Hohenlohe with the opening of the Marbella Club Hotel in 1954. The Costa del Sol had been became the hub of tourism in Europe. The AVE high speed train connects Malaga to the capital Madrid in just 2 and a half hours. Even since this website was created in 1996 when we politely described Malaga as ‘gritty' it has been transformed for tourists with a number of initiatives including the city centre pedestrian, the Picasso and Carmen Thyssen and other museums, the Muelle Uno port development.