La Manquita

"Two menus, one for you in English and one for me in Spanish!"
(said the waitress at the restaurant in the shadow of La Manquita.)

Once again, I am amazed and delighted at the notion of people in these cities going out and walking amongst one another. Today is a holiday in these parts and so there is no work or school on this Monday. We take an hour or two to walk the promenade along the beach....sort of a beach boardwalk....though it is a public sidwalk not a pier type thing.

Thousands of people are out walking. The old folks, many are dressed in their best. And the number of baby carriages would make any Priest happy for his parishioners. Malaga has lots of joggers too. We have not seen many for awhile but perhaps the sun and surf type areas bring out the I-gotta-jog-and-get-fit in people. In any case, it is good to see people go out in public and be with one another and share in something common. It is hard to get that same "community feeling" walking with others in Wal-Mart. 

The other night, the entire community was out in force walking in the Old City on Saturday night. There probably was not a person still in their homes, they were all down where we were in the center of town joining in the celebrations (whose specific significance still escape us). We were just looking for a place to eat, which was easy to do, then again, it was difficult because there were so many places to choose from. On that evening wandered around a corner of small streets and suddenly we were in a big plaza. It was beautiful with people sitting and dining and just drinking coffee or wine and enjoying the evening.

The picture above is the plaza sans a few hundred people, since I took it a day later. But then I looked to my right and I saw what the plaza was all about.

It was the grand and glorious Cathedral de Malaga (or for you non-native speakers...the Cathedral of Malaga). The only way to get a proper picture of the front of the cathedral was to stand in the back of the plaza beside someones dinner table and lean over their paella and snap a photo. It is not proper etiquette in Spain to ever lean over someone's paella...and so I had to come to the front of the plaza, in front of the outdoor seating space and bend over backwards to get this photo.

Now....look at it carefully....what is missing? (besides me standing in front of it and smiling.) One of its towers is missing. It seems they could not come up with the funds or they kept getting interrupted, by wars and lunch breaks or something and besides it took 200 years to get the building this much finished. Anyway...they never completed the second tower and so they have only one tower....thus, the people refer to the cathedral as "the one armed." And at todays costs, consider what it would take to finish it. Anyway, they love La Manquita. And it looks fine to me.

We went past the front gate. Most major cathedrals have ornate front gates which are kept locked except on worship days. Tourists, who far outnumber worshippers during the course of the week usually enter by the side or a cloister. In this case we went past a chapel where a wedding was taking place, we kept waiting for the bride and groom to emerge and we kept hearing church bells and we kept being hounded by beggers and so we moved on. The Mercedes was all decorated out on the side of the chapel. We went to another park located next to the cathedral. I noticed the side door of the Cathedral was open and a big sign posted that it was worship and no tourists were allowed. I looked in an most of the people were tourists who within about 10 minutes cames shuffling out. I had to return yesterday.

And here is what I saw.

I think it was worth the one day wait to finally get inside this wonderful cathedral. Work began on it in 1588 and it was finished (sort of) in 1782.The Catholic Monarchs forced the Muslims out of southern Spain in the late 1400s and so many of the cathedrals date from the early 1500's and we built over the sites of the towns mosques. Like so many, they are at THE center of the town and center of peoples's hearts. The irony of history is that many Muslims are back in southern and so there are mosques again.

 

This cathedral has numerous chapels, like they all do and each chapel had a particular focus, though some had numerous statues and bishops buried and patrons and recognized and saints recalled.

And of course, my favorite part of any cathedral...the massive wooden doors. They really knew how to build doors back then.

 

And this is not even THE main entrance. This was originally designed as a Gothic Cathedral but it was built in the Renaissance style with later major Baroque additions. I'll take their word for it.

Impressive. I love these Spanish plazas with their cathedrals and their sense of style. I love that you can sit in the plaza and enjoy a paella and meditate on my favorite saint, San Miquel.

Peace,   Bob