Andalucid Again

Tapas like it used to be

The sun got up late today and so did we (our neighbours upstairs were having a chair-scraping party until 2.00 am). Skipped brunch and contemplated lunch. "Cheap and cheerful," I said to Fred. He duly led me down narrow shuttered streets to Taberna Cofrade Las Merchanas at C/Mosquera 5, off Plaza San Juan de Dios.

Forget the fuschia leather sushi bar and the polite vegan platters of the new city. Here, to the sound of solemn march music and surrounded by Semana Santa artefacts, we shared a traditional plate of fat chorizo sausage, pocket hanky-size seared pork lomo and a lacy fried egg nestling on chips soggy with olive oil. Washed down with icy dry fino manzanilla and cañas. Looked out at the hot white street from our cool dark passageway.

We paid the modest bill and stepped back out into the 21st century. If we looked back, would the bar still be there, or did we just stumble through a wrinkle in time?

See more pics of Taberna Cofrade Las Merchanas - if we see you there, we'll buy you a cold one!

 

The sun got up late today and so did we (our neighbours upstairs were having a chair-scraping party until 2.00 am). Skipped brunch and contemplated lunch. "Cheap and cheerful," I said to Fred. He duly led me down narrow shuttered streets to Taberna Cofrade Las Merchanas at C/Mosquera 5, off Plaza San Juan de Dios.

Forget the fuschia leather sushi bar and the polite vegan platters of the new city. Here, to the sound of solemn march music and surrounded by Semana Santa artefacts, we shared a traditional plate of fat chorizo sausage, pocket hanky-size seared pork lomo and a lacy fried egg nestling on chips soggy with olive oil. Washed down with icy dry fino manzanilla and cañas. Looked out at the hot white street from our cool dark passageway.

We paid the modest bill and stepped back out into the 21st century. If we looked back, would the bar still be there, or did we just stumble through a wrinkle in time?

See more pics of Taberna Cofrade Las Merchanas - if we see you there, we'll buy you a cold one!

 

Málaga's Holy Week: a celebration of life

I tell my smartly dressed young taxi driver that we followed the Gitanos (gypsy) trono last night. Suddenly animated, he replies that he’s one of the portapasos (float carriers) for the Virgen del Rocío this week.

I ask if he’s done much training for carrying the crushing weight of what amounts to a small chapel. (This one is 50 kilos each shoulder, 240 men). “Oh no,” he says, “we don’t train. How would we suffer for the beloved Virgen if we were used to it?” I agree that his pain – and love - will be much greater this way.

It’s our first Semana Santa or Holy Week in Málaga and like our neighbours we’re getting a bit dizzy with devotion. Forty-two processions over seven days, criss-crossing the city in unruly splendour, streets jammed with penitents and followers, a mediaeval painting sprung to life. The gilded tronos swaying drunkenly, urged on by showers of applause, relentless drums and the raw, high cante jondo of the trumpets. It's the music of pain.

Following the Gitano’s dusky idols, the women sing and dance twirly Sevillanas. I don’t even bother to ask if that's appropriate for such a solemn occasion. In Málaga, the sociable city, this intense love for life in the context of pain and death is a kind of worship too.

Thanks as ever to Fred for the photos - if you want to see more candid captures of this amazing week, you're welcome to visit his Flickr site.

Wishing you a bright and hopeful Easter, wherever you are.

Crucifixion, coffee and cake

It’s Friday night and I’m sitting with Fred at Puerta Oscura, an elegant cocktail bar of Edwardian cushiness in old town Málaga (C/Molino Lario 5).   In front of me, coffee and a delicate piece of torrija, a traditional Easter treat made with a mediaeval disregard for carb count. I’m ready to take my first bite, but can’t quite pick up my fork.

In the alcove opposite me, Mary the mother of Jesus sits with John. This is a woman who hasn’t slept in many nights, haggard, puffy-eyed, bowed with grief. John is holding her hand, but it’s clear he’s run out of things to say.

Opposite them, Mary Magdalene is slumped against a block, auburn hair tangled, eyes red from weeping.  Behind her, Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea wait, grim-faced, to collect Christ’s body for burial.

Here is the supporting cast of the Crucifixion as you’ve never seen it before, far from the impassive doll-faced Madonna and Jesus figures paraded everywhere during Holy Week. Their grief is so raw, you'll do anything to avoid eye contact.

This extraordinary tableau, ‘Duelo y Tristeza’ (‘Pain and Grief’) is the work of three Spanish sculptors, made in the 1980s, in a hyper-realistic style. Juan Manuel Parra, Álvaro Abrines and Juan Vega glower at me from the pages of the Easter Week guide, young, bearded, possibly reproving.

But the three young men next to me have just settled to their gin and tonics. People stroll in to look at the figures, then stay to order drinks. There’s a buzz of voices, a clatter of cutlery.  I think about how life, devotion and death often blur together in Spain, about the bleeding Jesus posters in the windows of jamonerías and dry cleaners and everywhere else at this time of year. I pick up my fork and plunge it into the creamy heart of the torrija.  It tastes divine.