Málaga: 2,800 Years in One City

Text 1 · A very old city

From 770 BC to 1487

Málaga is about 2,800 years old. It is one of the oldest cities in Western Europe.

Sailors from Phoenicia (today Lebanon) came here in about 770 BC. They called the city Malaka, and they traded fish and salt.

Later, the Romans arrived, in 218 BC. They called the city Malaca, and they built a theatre. You can still see it today.

In the early 8th century, Muslims from North Africa conquered the city. In the 11th century they built a palace and fortress on the hill: the Alcazaba. In 1340, King Yusuf I of Granada built a castle at the top: Gibralfaro.

In 1487, after a siege of four months, the Christian king and queen, Ferdinand and Isabella, took the city.

Text 2 · The modern city

From 1528 to today

In 1528, the people of Málaga began a big cathedral. They never finished it: it has only one tower, so people call it La Manquita, “the one-armed lady”.

In the 19th century, Málaga had factories, ships and vineyards. Families like the Heredias and the Larios became very rich. Then, in 1878, a small insect killed the vines, and many people lost their jobs.

Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga in 1881. During the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939), many people in the city died or lost their homes.

In the 1960s, tourists started to come to the beaches of the Costa del Sol. Today Málaga is famous for its museums, its food and its sunshine.

Plan your visit

A walk through 2,800 years

Walk: the Roman theatre → the Alcazaba → Gibralfaro (bus 35 goes up) → the cathedral → Calle Larios → the Plaza de la Merced, where Picasso was born. Everything is in the city centre.

Your task: write five sentences about the history of your own town or city. Use the past simple and in, in the or ago.

Before you read

One hill, many peoples

Stand on the terrace of the Alcazaba and you can see the whole story of Málaga at once: a Roman theatre at your feet, a Moorish fortress around you, a Renaissance cathedral below, and cruise ships in the port. Each people that came had built on what the last one left.

Read the two texts, then do the practice.

Text 1 · Malaka, Malaca, Mālaqa

From about 770 BC to 1487

Phoenician traders from Tyre founded Malaka in about 770 BC, near the mouth of the river Guadalmedina, and the town lived from the sea, salting and selling fish. By the 6th century BC it had come under the control of Carthage, and in 218 BC, during the war between Rome and Carthage, it passed to the Romans.

Roman Malaca grew rich on garum, a strong fish sauce that was sold all over the empire. By the end of the 1st century AD, the town had received its own municipal law, the Lex Flavia Malacitana, and a theatre had been built at the foot of the hill. It lay buried and forgotten until 1951.

After the Romans came Vandals, Byzantines and Visigoths, and in the early 8th century Muslim armies from North Africa took the city. As Mālaqa, it became a busy port of al-Andalus. In the 11th century its rulers began the Alcazaba, using columns from the old Roman theatre, and in about 1340 Yusuf I of Granada built the castle of Gibralfaro above it. The poet and philosopher Solomon ibn Gabirol, one of the great Jewish writers of the Middle Ages, was born here. By the time the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, besieged it in 1487, Mālaqa had been a Muslim city for more than seven centuries. It surrendered after four months, and the monarchs made it a Christian city.

Text 2 · Industry, crisis and the sun

From 1487 to today

Work on the cathedral began in 1528, but by the time money ran out in the 18th century, only one of its two towers had been finished, which is why it is still called La Manquita, “the one-armed lady”.

In the 19th century, Málaga became one of the most industrial cities in Spain. Manuel Agustín Heredia built ironworks, the Larios family built textile mills, and the city’s sweet wines and raisins were sold across the world. In 1891 the elegant Calle Larios opened. But by then the boom had already ended: phylloxera, an insect from America, had arrived in 1878 and destroyed the vineyards, and the factories were struggling.

Pablo Picasso was born in the Plaza de la Merced in 1881. During the Spanish Civil War, the city suffered on both sides: in 1936 there was violence against people and churches in Republican Málaga; in February 1937 the Nationalists, with Italian troops, took the city, tens of thousands of refugees fled along the coast road to Almería, many of whom were killed, and harsh repression followed.

From the 1960s, tourists came in their millions to the Costa del Sol. By the early 2000s, Málaga had begun to change again, from a gateway to the beaches into a city of culture: the Picasso Museum opened in 2003.

Plan your visit

A walk through 2,800 years

Route (about 3 hours): the Roman theatre and its visitor centre → the Alcazaba (look for the Roman columns) → up to Gibralfaro, on foot or by bus 35, for the view → down to the cathedral → along Calle Larios → the Plaza de la Merced and Picasso’s birthplace → the Picasso Museum.

Your task: write a short history of your town (100–120 words) for a visitor. Use the past perfect at least three times, and by, until, during and after.

Text 1 · A city written over itself

From about 770 BC to 1487

Few cities wear their history as openly as Málaga. Founded by Phoenician traders from Tyre in about 770 BC, Malaka was a port before it was anything else, and the sea has shaped every chapter since. Absorbed first by Carthage and then, during the Second Punic War, by Rome, the town prospered on garum, the pungent fish sauce that seasoned the empire’s food. The granting of its own municipal law, the Lex Flavia Malacitana, under the emperor Domitian, made its free-born citizens Roman; its theatre, buried for centuries and rediscovered only in 1951, still sits at the foot of the hill.

The collapse of Roman power brought Vandals, Byzantines and Visigoths, and in the early 8th century the city passed to Muslim rule. For almost eight centuries it was Mālaqa, a port of al-Andalus exporting figs, raisins and silk. Having become the seat of the Hammudid rulers in the 11th century, it gained the Alcazaba, built partly with columns taken from the Roman theatre: a literal case of one civilisation constructed from the pieces of another. In about 1340 Yusuf I of Granada crowned the hill with the castle of Gibralfaro. The city was also home to a Jewish community that produced Solomon ibn Gabirol, one of the great poets and philosophers of medieval Europe.

In 1487, having refused to surrender, Mālaqa endured a siege of about four months by the armies of Ferdinand and Isabella. Its fall opened the way to Granada, completed five years later, the final step of a reconquest that had lasted centuries. The terms were harsh, as was customary at the time for a city taken after resisting: most of its Muslim inhabitants were enslaved, and Christian settlers repopulated the city.

Text 2 · Boom, bust and reinvention

From 1487 to today

The cathedral, begun in 1528 and left unfinished in the 18th century, is the most visible monument to the city’s ambitions and its limits: the missing south tower gave it the nickname La Manquita. A popular story claims that the money was sent instead to support the American colonies against Britain; historians disagree on how much truth there is in it.

In the 19th century Málaga reinvented itself as one of the first industrial cities in Spain. The founding of Manuel Agustín Heredia’s ironworks and the Larios family’s textile mills, together with a worldwide trade in sweet wine and raisins, made a handful of families immensely rich, and their mausoleums still crowd the San Miguel cemetery. The city was also politically restless, liberal and rebellious: in 1831 General Torrijos was shot on its beach after a failed rising. The arrival of phylloxera in 1878, followed by the decline of the ironworks and the mills, ended the boom within a generation; Calle Larios, opened in 1891, was in a sense the monument of a fortune already fading. Picasso, born in the Plaza de la Merced in 1881, left as a child, and his family with him.

The Civil War divided the city against itself. In 1936 Republican Málaga saw churches burned and many people killed for their politics or their faith; in February 1937 Nationalist and Italian troops took the city, tens of thousands of civilians fled along the coast road to Almería under attack, and a severe repression followed. Estimates of the dead on every side vary widely, and exhumations at the San Rafael cemetery in the 2000s recovered the remains of thousands.

The opening of the Costa del Sol to mass tourism in the 1960s transformed the province, and the arrival of the Picasso Museum in 2003, followed by the Carmen Thyssen and the Centre Pompidou, completed the city’s second reinvention: from industrial port to city of culture. Today the debate is about balance: how a city can welcome millions of visitors and still remain a place where its own people can afford to live.

Plan your visit, and write

A palimpsest walk

Route: the Roman theatre → the Alcazaba (find the Roman columns in Muslim walls) → Gibralfaro → the cathedral’s missing tower → Calle Larios → the Plaza de la Merced (Picasso’s birthplace and the Torrijos monument) → the Atarazanas market, whose Nasrid gate survived the market built around it.

Write (220–260 words): a short history of a city you know, for a guidebook, in a formal written style. Use at least three participle clauses and three nominalisations, and handle one disputed claim honestly.