Spaniards did not mock it, and they were grateful for the paying guests; for many years this was the chief source of Spanish prosperity. It was also remarkably ugly, and this was especially true in these out-of-season months. In full sunshine it might have had a cheap and cheerful carnival atmosphere, but under gray skies it hovered, a grotesque malignancy, sad and horrible, that was somewhere between tragedy and farce. And Spain seemed distant.
I felt intensely that the Spanish coast, especially here on the Costa del Sol, had undergone a powerful colonization—of a modern kind, but just as pernicious and permanent a violation as the classic wog-bashing sort. Ithad robbed the shore of its natural features, displaced headlands and gullies and harbors with futile badly made structures. It did not repel me. It showed what unruly people were allowed to do to a magnificent shoreline when they had a little money and no taste. It had a definite horror-interest.
The landscape was obliterated, and from the edge of the Mediterranean to the arid gravelly inland slopes there were off-white stucco villas. There were no hills to speak of, only sequences of stucco rising in a hill shape, like a collapsing wedding cake. There were no people, there were few cars, and after dark only a handful of these houses were lighted. In the poorer nastier coves there were campsite communities and the footprint foundations in cement for caravans and tents.
A poisonous landfill, a dump with a prospect of the sea, dominated Fuengirola, which was otherwise just high-rises and huts. Ugly little towns such as Arroyo de la Miel sometimes had the prettiest names—in that case Honey Gulch—but the worst indication of blight on this coast was the gradual appearance of signs in English: “Cold Beer” and “Afternoon Tea” and “Authentic English Breakfast” and “Fish and Chips”—and little flapping Union Jacks. They were also the hint that we were nearing Torremolinos, which was grim and empty and dismal and sunless, loud music mingled with the stink of frying, souvenir letter openers and ashtrays and stuffed animals and funny hats stacked on a narrow strip of gray sand by the slop of the sea.
There were some tourists here—British, French, German—making the best of things, praying for the sun to shine. Instead of staying I found a train and took it back to Fuengirola, which was just as awful as Torremolinos. That night strolling along the promenade—the sea was lovelier at night—I saw a bullfight poster, announcing a
feria
the next day at Mijas, not far away.
There was a bullfight on television in a cafe near my hotel that night. The cafe was filled with silent men, smoking cigarettes and sipping coffee. A few disgusted tourists left. I watched for a while with these attentive Spaniards. It seemed just a bloody charade of ritual slaughter, a great black beast with magnificent horns trotting around the ring, snorting and pawing and full of life, reduced in minutes to a kneeling wreck, vomiting blood, as a narrow-hipped matador gloated—thiswas something that made me deeply curious, even as it filled me with dread.
I went to Mijas and took a seat in the bullring. It was a
novillada, a
bullfight with young bulls. The matadors here were also young—trainees
(novilleros)
—nervous, tentative teenagers. One walked out stiffly in tight pants. People cheered. The bull appeared from a gate. It was a small bull, because the matador was still learning; but even so this beautiful bewildered animal made him look like a punk. Attempting to be fearless, the matador knelt and was almost immediately gored. He tumbled, the bull was on top of him. The cape-men distracted the bull and after a while stuck banderillas into the bull’s neck. This tore the neck muscles, the bull lowered its head—an easy target. The matador made an attempt with his sword, but so badly the bull was crazed—surprised, fearful, fighting for its life—and chased the matador
CJ Rutherford, Colin Rutherford