Dirt streets, hardworking fishermen collecting the flakes and waves that sneak through the door. The Pedregalejo neighborhood of the childhood of riverside carpenter Alfonso Sánchez-Guitard, 50, is full of suggestive images. There were seines, sardines and scows in the sea. Humble picnic areas where the day’s catch was served. Long catch-up fishing discussions. “It was a place of simple people who smiled,” says with nostalgia the current head of Astilleros Nereo, where boats are still built in a traditional way. The enclosure is today one of the banners of a neighborhood with a strong seafaring identity, where the air smells of saltpeter and the old boats rest on the sand. A reference to the east of the city of Malaga that, of course, does not escape the tourism, which has transformed its coastal façade in record time and modified its ways of life. In the midst of the gentrification process, it seems that there is little time left to savor what still remains of the real Pedregalejo.
Sánchez-Guitard says that the reality of the neighborhood is discovered at five in the morning every July 16, during the rosary of dawn by the Virgin of Carmen, patron saint of fishermen. The Star of the Sea procession is filled with faithful accompanied by fishing gear. “We are all deeply involved in protection at sea here,” the master carpenter, who has been fighting for years to have the area recognized as a Site of Ethnological Interest, highlights while the activity in the shipyard takes place around him. There are young people from Europe who learn to work with wood and members of the IES El Palo rowing club—a neighborhood only separated by the Jaboneros stream, where sugar cane was previously collected—who build their own seine thanks to a training program. There are sounds of saws and sanders. Smell of tar and sawdust. Declared industrial heritage, there is also room for leisure: here they offer boating – just a group of friends who want to row – and visit its museum, open every Saturday morning. Chaired by Poseidon, it has black and white photos of the neighborhood and fishing gear that has disappeared since the eighties, when there were clams, urchins and mussels on beaches that were still made of stone.
Then the writer Miguel Ángel Oeste was a teenager who walked through the sandy alleys in Vespino and sneaked with his friends into the swimming pools in the upper part of Pedregalejo; “Where the posh people lived,” he remembers. “It was a very wild place, but in a good way. We all knew each other and there was a village feeling. This was our sacred place, a kind of universe in itself,” Oeste says today about a neighborhood that he turns into another character in his novels. It is in Bobby Logan—name of the nightclub that marked a generation when this area was the favorite of young people—and in I come from that fear and Sand, whose protagonist, Bruno, considers himself part of the landscape. Like the writer, he was a regular at the white sand beach, brought from a quarry and which lasted a couple of years when the breakwaters were built in the eighties.
The mission of the rocks was to protect the first line of homes, but the Malaga author remembers their power of transformation. Small beaches emerged and the promenade settled. La Tortuga then served as a meeting point for youth without phones or WhatsApp, also The Chancla, today a three-star restaurant and hotel. “At that time, cell phones were not necessary: you went there because you knew that your people were there,” recalls Fran Montero, who in 2003 opened The Galerna, pure novelty at that time: toast with avocado for breakfast and salads with à la carte ingredients for lunch or dinner. The menu has grown and evolved to adapt, also, to a more international clientele. “Many are already residents here,” says the businessman, who moves along the coast on a scooter and goes looking for waves in his van. Montero believes that the neighborhood still maintains its essence thanks to sights such as the boats in the boathouse, but also to urban planning issues such as the narrowness of the promenade and the low wall that separates it from the sand. It is the perfect place to sit and contemplate happiness, take a few pipes and listen to the sound of the waves, “the oldest sound in the world,” writes Málaga-born Esther García Llovet in her recent book The handsome ones.
A little over a decade ago there were at least a dozen traditional beach bars here, today almost all of them have been swallowed up by tourism. One of them, already renovated, is El Caleño, which dresses its terrace in whites and blues that seem straight out of Mykonos. Nearby, the canes of La Santería travel to the Latin American jungle. The Aimé restaurant It offers a decoration as eclectic as its menu: from Argentine entrails to seafood paella, cheeseburgers or tuna tataki. Sapino and La Machina attract young tourists with surfer-inspired offerings. A white shark on the ceiling and screens to watch football are the key in Crocodile Dundee. The red checkered tablecloths in Ciao They bring a little piece of Italy along with an ATM, an unequivocal symbol of touristification. Just like the old fishermen’s houses renovated as tourist apartments at 150 euros per night. Cremades has opened an ice cream parlor that could be in Puerto Banús. There are options for any audience. Even for a local dissident like Antonio Luque, the Mr. Chinarroa regular at one of the few terraces at reasonable prices, Kali.
Fine shells, ‘sharks’ and camperos
Scratching, with patience and a critical eye, in 2024 there are clues that continue to make Pedregalejo a seaside corner. Just get lost in its inner streets like Cenacheros or Pepote, where all the neighbors know each other. They protect their houses—as big as shoe boxes—with a forest of pots, which they avoid as best they can, tourists with suitcases with training wheels and Glovo bikers. Life travels here at a different pace. The morning plans with a Smurf Mixed glass bread in Periplo. And the rest of the day is enjoyed in those few surviving beach bars with unique names like Andrés Maricuchi or Miguelito el Cariñoso. Their thin shells and bolos are promises of the aperitif. And grilled fish, a reality that melts with sea flavor for lunch. The spirit is also nourished by the aroma of biznaga and the boats of sand and olive embers that roast sardines on a spit, for two euros at El Merlo. Past, present and future come together in just a few meters. “Today the neighborhood feeling has been greatly reduced, but there are many efforts to preserve the original,” says Javier Pérez Castillo, vice president of the Pedregalejo Rowing and Paddle Club, founded in 1998 and made up of about 200 people in the leisure section. and the competition.
Its seines—like the Boria, of intense yellow and black color—are part of that attempt not to forget the roots. Every afternoon a handful of women and men—here known as sharks either sharks— They propel them over the sand with the help of greased poles to drag the 800 kilos of weight of these boats to the sea. “I would say that it is the most photographed thing on the coast: it is incredible the number of people, from here or abroad, who take photos of us,” emphasizes Pérez-García, who highlights the rise of the seine boat for sport or for the simple made of rowing and enjoying a walk along the sea at sunset. Sometimes there is luck and the dolphins accompany while on the sand large families and young foreigners spend time at the beach.
Dinner has been served for 40 years by Mamen Salido, a neighbor born in these streets who still remembers playing in the waves dressed in her school uniform. Her mother opened Mafalda restaurant in the eighties, which became the mecca of Malaga country farmers like Anita’s Hamburger was before: the reference for having that round bread sandwich filled with cooked ham, cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayonnaise that, over time, admits and a multitude of variants. She started working when she was 15 and continued there for more than three decades until she became independent. In 2022 she opened Mya with her husband, Andrés Benegas, where possibly the best camperos in the city are served and it is not unusual to find a group of sharks dinner after training. “We looked at places in other areas, but I was born here, this is my place. “We decided to stay,” says the woman. “If you look at the people, everyone here is happy. When you are in Pedregalejo, the happiness on your face doesn’t go away,” she insists from her restaurant, just a step away from the Pez Tomillo terrace and Misuto’s tasty sushi. Also from the Balneario de los Baños del Carmen, its eucalyptus forest and the Nereo Shipyards, a now mythical place that contains the essence of a rocky area that makes people happy.
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