“¡Arriba la roja! (Up the red!)”

by Elizabeth Johnstone

La roja is the Spanish national football team. You heard their battle cry everywhere in Spain last year. The red, black and yellow flag fluttered proudly from every balcony. As our taxi drove from Málaga Airport to our holiday destination of Nerja, we knew we were in for a treat. Spain was playing in the final of the World Cup the next day and gearing up for the biggest fiesta of the year. I would love to claim we had planned our holiday around the match, but it was merely our good fortune.

Nerja has been a favourite holiday destination of ours for several years now. We have gone self-catering in Calabella apartments, choosing the two-bedroom apartments with their fabulous view over the bay in preference to the one-beds overlooking a noisy pedestrianised street. We booked through Hoseasons in the UK and made our own travel arrangements although, post-ash, I would now go for a package. Living, as we do, not far from Luton airport, it was straightforward to fly to Málaga with easyJet. Part of the treat was not to have a car, so we arranged a taxi transfer from the airport. No car for a fortnight. Bliss. The Rough Guide to Andalucía was our bible, and the staff at the local Turismo were helpful, too. We have been to Nerja three times in a row, so some of my comments refer to experiences in different years.

Although Nerja has expanded like so much of the Spanish coastline, it retains a degree of charm in its casco viejo. A superb feature of the old town is the Balcón de Europa, a perfect venue for the ritual evening paseo. Our apartment balcony looked out over the bay and the Balcón, providing hours of entertainment and people watching.

The apartment was excellently furnished and it was no hardship to knock up delicious lunches and suppers when we just wanted to relax on our own balcony and watch the world go by, accompanied by the plangent sounds of the indigenous South Americans - magnificent in their full feathered head-dresses – playing on the Balcón. And I had a washing machine! At a stroke, the weight of my suitcase was halved, because I knew we didn’t need so many clothes with us.

The most famous feature of Nerja is the Caves, a short bus or taxi journey outside the town. They are massive: one chamber is used as a concert hall. Every year, international artists perform in the Festival of the Caves of Nerja. Last year, Estrella Morente starred; we did not see her in the Caves but I had already seen her in London. Her recent smash hit Volver was the theme of the Almodóvar film of the same name.

Back to Nerja. One of the pleasures of Spain is its restaurants and nightlife. There are too many restaurants to describe individually (and I shall draw a veil over the ‘guaranteed English Sunday roast’ type of establishments) but I must mention a couple. Pacomari  combined super value and tourist-friendly menus with great service in an attractive patio. A set meal with a starter, paella, a dessert and half a bottle of wine for approximately 16 euros was unbeatable. A more Spanish option was El Pulguilla. Facing the main pedestrianised street is a typical Spanish tapas bar, knee deep in used napkins, television blaring in the corner, Spanish people yelling to be heard. But if you walk through to the back, there is a large outside seating area for the seafood restaurant. It was fascinating to watch it filling up from 10pm onwards with noisy Spanish families, complete with baby in the pram/granny in the wheelchair. The food here was not over-elaborate, but so fresh it had only just stopped flapping. The kitchen was open to view and rivalled an operating theatre in its cleanliness and orderliness. We went there many times and enjoyed seabass, sole, razor clams, red mullet and mixed fried seafood, the local speciality.

 Once we found ourselves beside a French couple who rather snootily praised the cuisine, adding ‘Et nous, on est français, on est exigeant.’ (‘And we’re French, we are demanding.’) Make of that what you will. The whole operation was presided over by a human dynamo of a proprietrix who frequently yelled for the hapless ‘Pedro!’

Other nightlife was on offer. We enjoyed the flamenco shows at the Burro Blanco. A very reasonable 5 or 6 euros was added to your first drink, thereafter normal bar prices, for three or four presentations with complete costume changes. There are some photos, now under lock and key, of me joining in on the dance floor towards the end of the evening.

Once, we got chatting to the teachers accompanying an American school trip. The teens were over for a month of intensive culture. A few looked as though they were suffering from culture overload, but some got into the music. I later discovered that their teacher, Tony Orza, had been decorated with the Spanish Ordén del Mérito Civil for his work over the years promoting Spanish culture. A larger than life character, in every sense.

I also loved the bar El Molino with its live music every night. As its name suggests, it was an old mill, and the guitarist sat in the former olive-pressing area which offered a dance floor for the impromptu sevillanas which were often performed by enthusiasts in the audience. A couple of days later, I saw the guitarist bossing the staff around at one of the big beach-front restaurants, so I’m guessing he was the owner who played for the pleasure in the evenings.

The World Cup final was absolutely fantastic. The town was packed. The diehards who wanted to watch the whole match got settled in the bar of their choice early in the evening. We wandered around to get the atmosphere, came back to the apartment to watch some of the match, then went back out to savour the victory celebrations. If anyone decided to import the vuvuzela into Spain, he probably lost money as the Spanish need no lessons in making noise.

Another fortuitous bit of timing was the local fiesta. It started with free beer and sardines on the first evening but we did not have the patience to queue for them. The main event the next day was a procession, where the seamen’s confraternity, barefoot, carried the statue of the Virgin (pictured below) around the village. They then took her out to sea in a special boat and landed her back in the bay right under our apartment. The best seats in the house! Of course, being Spanish, the operation had to be carried out at night, with noise and fire. A bar was set up on the Balcón. Without the slightest shred of irony, beer was served under the images of Jesus crowned with thorns and the sorrowing Virgin weeping tears of blood. Only in Spain.

We have had three fantastic holidays in Nerja and I am only telling you about them because we are going elsewhere this year. We could hardly top the experience of the fiesta and the World Cup, so that has provided a natural break. So it’s off to Austria this summer, to the lakes and mountains of the Salzburger Land. But I’ve feeling we’ve not seen the last of Nerja...


First published in VISA 96 (Apr 2011)