The visitor wonders at the broken landscape between the airport and the city of Malaga (36 degrees North, 4 degrees West). The green hills of southern Andalusia ring the bay which cradles the city. Between the hills and the blue waters of the southern Atlantic lies a post-urban wasteland of sand and cement quarries, jumbled and unfinished building projects, cheaply-erected warehouses, factories and housing developments, shop units and anonymously blind link roads to no-where, amidst a turmoil of riven ground. It is the litter tray of the giant bulldozer of modernity, always off-shore, occasionally landing for plunder and to rid itself of waste.
Malaga is a city of light. It is the city of Picasso's birth. The visitor basks in the light and the heat, while scoffing chocolate y churros, then visits Picasso's birthplace to find a text laying out the artist's desire for spontaneity.
To express a thing with a degree of happiness.
The visitor enjoys a coffee in Cafeteria Bar Flor, beside the Bull Ring and wonders if Hemingway visited after a day in the bloodied sunlight of the killing circle. The waiter at Café de Sanchez serves home-made paella and a complimentary shot of ice-cold liqueur.
The visitor takes a tourist boat out into the bay. The city recedes towards its hill and the sea expands towards Africa, beyond the horizon. A current laden with plastic pollution cruises under the tourist boat. Flamenco music, from a speaker below the funnel, larrups the visitor. A behemoth of a cruise liner, regular as a hive for human drones, more prison ship than pleasure boat, a towering monstrous edifice, hugs the quayside. The light spangles on the waves and gulls peer mordantly at the tourist boat's wake.
The slope of Malaga's hill runs from the Phoenician lighthouse (Gibralfaro) to the Arabic palace (Alcazabra) and down to the Christian Church (Catedral). Is this downward slope the trajectory of European culture over the centuries, the visitor muses?
The visitor hears Bublé-lite Christmas songs piped from awnings above quayside shops, blandly branded with international marques. As on the tourist boat, whatever sells is sung. The tone is cloying, sentimental, mawkish and unfitting in Malaga Navidad 2012. There is more jizz on the street stalls behind the quays and below the Bull Ring. The visitor buys a bocadero and a seasonal cake – roscon de reyes. Lunch is in the quayside park, with small parrots, bursts of green light, darting and calling, high in the date palms.
Where is 'a degree of happiness' then? The visitor sees it in the light in the faces of the people who throng the streets for Cabalgata de Reyes Magos, a stupendous street parade, part-Disney, part pagan triumph, all Malaga, to mark the January 6th Christian story of the visit of the Three Kings from the East to the new born child in Bethlehem. Most of the people watch the spectacle, but, for long periods, they talk among themselves and care for their children. The visitor joins them. The crowd is the beauty. The crowd is the event. 'A degree of happiness.' The Cabalgata trundles past.
A rubbish bin, overflowing with packaging from a nearby MacDonald's outlet, loiters foetidly amidst the jostling throng. A public servant arrives with his cart, brush and spade and proceeds to diligently tidy, clean and then empty the rubbish bin. The waste produced by private enterprise is professionally removed by a low-paid public worker who comes to joke with an old man – a former colleague - at the vantage point the old man shares with the visitor. The Cabalgata stalls, then blazes on. The third King, the black one, Balthazar, waves from a coach of fake gold, rhinestones and high gloss paint. The street cleaner and the old man laugh and talk.
The visitor offers the old man some roscon de reyes. He smiles through broken teeth and wheezes gracias.
Elsewhere modernity takes a bashing. The celebrity cyclist confesses his mendacity in America. The global oil and gas war blazes into the media spotlight in Algeria. Food processors and retailers in Britain and Ireland lose track of the contents of their burgers and close the stable door after the horse has bolted.
The Cabalgata limps onward. The visitor sees a poster on a wall.
Dejan sin futuro We are left without a future
Hay culpables There are guilty ones
Hay soluciones There are solutions
The visitor mouths gracias to the street cleaner, who leaves with a sack of packaging and other waste. He pushes his cart away, leaving the street clean. The rubbish bin is pristine.
There are no gift-bearing Kings. There is the crowd. And the street cleaner.
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