We made a late start yesterday morning, with Owain needing to relax, and feeling the tiredness of a week's work plus Thursday's late evening arrival. It was gone midday when too the number 3 bus to the Alameda and set out to find the Museo de Vino, which we agreed would be less demanding of energy on travel to reach the bodega Hidalgo in Álora. I knew roughly where it was, having found the place on my exploratory wanderings early on in my stay this time, but couldn't quite recall the exact location, so we had to resort to Google Maps for the last two hundred metres.
On our way there, passing through Calle Pozos Dulces, we found open to visit the imposing chapel of the casa cofradia del Hermandad de la Santa Caridad de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo y Nuestra Señora de la Peña, built in 2008. It's in a quiet area slowly undergoing a mixture of restoration and redevelopment of its residential properties. This is the first and only time it's been open when I've passed by. The long title is a product of the adoption of a title belonging to an older but now defunct cofradia of Christ and a newer one of Nuestra Señora de la Peña, established in 1938. What makes this building special is the remarkable ceiling frescos, completed in 2014 by the Malagueño painter Raúl Berzosa Fernández.
The cofradia has 1200 members, and it's hard to estimate the investment of energy and finance into creating this traditional yet contemporary place of worship. Looking around the city, however, it's apparent that many of the casas cofradias are kept in good order, and others have also been built or rebuilt in recent decades. The church in Spain generally may have suffered decline as has occurred in many part of Western Europe, but there's still a vital core which not only meets religious need but also social need in local communities.
The small Plaza de los Viñeros we were looking for, is in La Goleta barrio, on the river bank side of via Carretera. The Plaza contains the casa cofradia de los Viñeros, dating back to 1605, the home of the Hermandad Sacramental de Viñeros. Not only is this one of the early Malagueño confraternities, but it was one founded by the producers of Malaga's world renowned and widely used communion wine. The museum opposite is housed in a building whose purpose was the regulation of standards for wine production. Whether this is still the case today I don't know.
We had just enough time to complete the tour before it closed for lunch at two, consisting of an exhibition of wine label art, and well designed information panels describing all aspects of wine production and the unique history and role of the diverse terrains in producing the array of sweet white through to dry red wines of Málaga Province, from the sierras to the coastal plain.
At the end of the tour there's the inevitable tourist shop, with a huge collection of the region's wines. Included in the ticket price are a couple of 'try before you buy' taster glasses. We came away with a red from the Sierras de Malága DOC region, around Ronda made of the Shyra grape (aka elsewhere Shiraz, Sirah). On our walk back to the apartment, we stopped at a bar in the Mercado Atarazanas for a beer and tapa of freshly cooked Boquerones a la Victoriana, anchovies fried with a covering of
flour, like whitebait back home, but twice the size. I remember being introduced to this tasty snack when staying in Rincon de la Victoria eighteen months ago. It's the Victorianos local way of cooking what's caught there off-shore.
When we got back to the apartment, I had a siesta while Owain went for a swim. Then, early in the evening we walked to Chirunguito Tropicana at the edge of La Malagueta beach for a fish supper. This time we shared two espetos of fish barbecueued over a wood fire, Sardinas, and Jurelas, a name which translates into English as Horse Mackerel. They are slightly fatter and larger than sardinas, and look nothing like a baby mackerel, and taste much the same to me, smoky and over salted. I've had better, but Owain was happy enough, as this was an experience from last time that he wanted to repeat.
After dark, we headed out again into the Old Town, having been alerted to an event called La Noche Blanca 2018, when all the city's museums and art galleries remain open until the small hours, and an assortment of events happen on the street as well. There was a white painted, rather tinny sounding baby grand piano in the Plaza del Obispo in front of the Cathedral, being played by succession of people, but not exactly in concert performance. How players were selected wasn't evident, and most of what we heard over ten minutes was musical pastiche, but at least it was open air night music for an audience of passers-by, at a time when the city was particularly busy with hunters after free culture.
We were both tired, too tired really to be out at midnight. Owain had hoped to hear more free music performed, but we didn't track any down. Some venues had queues outside waiting to get in, with people clutching free tickets acquired from goodness knows where, perhaps the tourist office or its website. We walked the streets for a while and enjoyed the night life, and as we headed back, we discovered there was no queue outside the Museo Revello de Toro, and we were able to talk straight in. It was busy in comparison to the day I last visited, but I was glad of the opportunity to introduce Owain to the work of another remarkable Malagueño artist who is not Picasso.
Another late night to bed, but thankfully a late Sunday start with a trip to Salinas for the Eucharist at midday.
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