The last of the four cities we are considering as a new home, Málaga is the third largest, beating out only Alicante in terms of population. Though, technically it’s the largest in terms of area. Strange.

Going in, we knew the city has some pros and cons. On the “con” side: it’s a beach city and knows it, connections to the rest of Spain go through one rail route, and the airport is small, there’s a lack of a robust public transit system (two metro lines and a bunch of bus routes), and it’s the warmest of the towns on our list. On the “pro” side: a well-known pedestrian promenade that runs along the shore, with all sorts of bougie shops and restaurants along its length, many historical sites, including some from the time of Roman occupation, and since it’s in Andalusia, it has the lowest wealth tax hit of all of the cities we’re considering.

As a reminder or the criteria we were using to evaluate the neighborhoods:

  • Walkability: we want to be able to ditch cars entirely and utilize walking and public transportation
  • Café Life: a variety of cafés and restaurants to be able to dine at, preferably al fresco when the weather allowed
  • European Charm: several story buildings (but not too many stories), with interesting architectural details, balconies (usually tiny), and painted in bright colors
  • Green Space and Public Life: parks, plazas, promenades, and other places to sit, read, observe, and socialize
  • Lots of small stores where daily shopping could occur
  • Enough people on the streets for a vibrant feeling, but not so much that it felt crowded
  • Lack of nightclubs or other facilities where loud music would be heard late into the night.
  • Proximity of stores that support our hobbies (in our case, knitting, tabletop gaming, and art)
  • A feeling of safety and comfort for a gay couple in our later years
  • Places that supported a sense of culture and lifelong learning

So, what did we think?

La Malagueta

The first neighborhood on our list was La Malagueta, a spit of land that pokes out into the sea, right up against the port, and home to the city’s bull-fighting ring. Yeah, Spain still has the “sport” of bullfighting. 🤮

On the way to La Malagueta, we walked along the Paseo del Muelle Uno, the promenade that runs between SoHo and La Malagueta. It’s definitely a port road, since there were several yachts tied up alongside it, and there were departure gantries for taller ships. Along the length of the promenade, there were all sorts of shops and restaurants aimed at tourists, including some portions that resembled a street craft fair. We also spotted a Starbucks, a Dunkin’, a Burger King, and a KFC. Bonkers! Follow the Paseo far enough and you’ll run across the Malaga cruise terminal. We did stop for breakfast at a Granier along the Paseo. It was significantly more expensive than the ones we had visited in Alicante and Valencia. No real surprise there.

Anyway, there are a lot of high-rises in the La Malagueta area, many are rather modern looking. That’s really not the European charm we have been looking for. It’s a small neighborhood so we were able to see quite a lot of it in our visit. There were sections that felt like a ghost town; no pedestrian traffic, few stores that seemed to be in business, a lot of graffiti. And then a little bit further, vibrant stores with plenty of foot traffic. Most of the foot traffic though seemed touristic in nature, and was generally concentrated in the south-eastern part of the neighborhood. My husband mentioned it felt a lot like some of the beachfront areas of Fort Lauderdale, with high-rise apartment buildings and upscale restaurants and shops. But only in a small, several block area.

La Malagueta reportedly has one of the nicest beaches in the area, but neither of us are “beach people” so we didn’t really even look. We found a nice park area next to the Fuente de Colores where we rested. I was entertained because there were people feeding the pigeons and wile parakeets there. I hadn’t seen wild parakeets in other parts of Spain be so friendly with people. After resting, we walked up the length of the neighborhood, found some nicer, yet still not European quaint, buildings and shops, then passed the Bullfighting ring on the way back to our hotel. Overall, we didn’t feel this neighborhood matched our requirements well, so we skipped checking out the night-time vibe.

Between La Malagueta and SoHo is a very lovely park, with lots of shade, beautiful plantings, and plenty of birdlife. We found a nice bench to stop and do our usual knitting and reading thing, with a steady stream of passers-by and the sound of pigeons and parakeets. My husband also took advantage of this park several times during our stay to find a bench to sit, knit, and engage in people-watching. Unfortunately, there isn’t much housing with close proximity to this park, so I’m not sure if this is something we should consider when looking for a city to live in.

SoHo

Our next neighborhood was SoHo, which was where the hotel we’re in is located. It was named “SoHo” with the intention to inspire a renaissance of art and culture in the area, inspired by New York’s area with the same name. The gambit seems to have paid off. It’s also a rather small neighborhood, so we were able to cover a good amount of it. We did find a huge comic book/gaming/collectible store (next door to our hotel) and a very nice bookstore in the neighborhood, which was good (more on the bookstore later). At the gaming store, I picked up a Spanish edition of the 20th Anniversary Edition of Brandon Sanderson’s first published novel, Elantris. Maybe it’s a silly thought, but I had the idea that a fantasy book I’m already somewhat familiar with would be a good foray into broadening my reading comprehension of the language. We also found a supermercado-style convenience store that seemed to be geared towards Russian immigrants. SoHo is filled with many smaller streets, along with a good handful of promenades, those walkable paths, often filled with cafes and restaurants. There seemed to be a fair number of restaurants with outdoor seating (something my husband is looking for), but not as many cafés as we’d like. There were several gelato stores, though.

SoHo abuts the Guadalmedina river on its western border, and we walked along that for a bit. At the moment, it’s barely a trickle of a creek, but we could see that it could get full during rainstorms. This area seemed to have several museums and theaters along it, which could be a place we’d frequent if we chose to settle in Malaga. However, just one street over, it seemed that most of the storefronts were vacant, which was quite the contrast.

We found some benches along the Alameda Principal (the main street through this part of Malaga) where we rested, read, and knitted. There was a bookstore near where we had camped out and I went to check it out. Being Sunday it was closed, but one of the displays was dedicated to a new book by a local author, “Ciudad de Sal” by David B Gil. An English translation is due to be published later this year. It intrigued me enough that later in the week, I visited the very nice store and picked up a copy.

After resting at the hotel, we found a nice italian restaurant for dinner, and then wandered around for a bit. While restaurants were busy, there didn’t seem to be much in the way of nightclubs, so it was possibly quiet in the evening. Of course, it was Sunday, so who knows what the noise level would be like on Friday evening.

Many of the buildings had the character that we are looking for, and there were some suitably sized apartments for rent here. It also had the only rainbow flag that we saw hanging from a balcony in the entire city. While we did encounter some people and couples that pinged our “gaydar”, the lack of rainbow flags in this city weighs heavily on me, especially compared to Barcelona and Valencia, where they were fairly common in the neighborhoods we are interested in. A lot of hotels in this area, so not as much residential space available. Overall, we think we could live here fairly well, especially since it’s close to both Centro and a metro stop.

Centro Histórico

Next on our list was Centro Histórico, which, as the name suggests, is the historical center of the city. Some of the city’s most known landmarks are here, including a number of very old churches and cathedrals. It is also home to the city’s largest central markets, which we wandered through and found to be very typical of these kinds of markets, even if the aisles seemed narrower than others. It definitely was livelier than other markets we’ve visited on the trip, and less touristy than some. I could see us shopping there for meats, breads, vegetables, and fruits. Oh, and spices. They had some wonderfully diverse spices.

Centro absolutely abounds with the European charm we’ve been seeking. Buildings between four and eight stories above ground, many with those small balconies, with lots of beautiful wrought iron decorations. The streets are all higgledy-piggledy, with blocks placed at odd angles compared to one another, but eminently walkable. Very little car traffic, though delivery vans were evident. Much of the middle of the district is pedestrian only, which is good because there were a lot of people wandering along those areas. There are tons of restaurants, some with patio seating when the sidewalks were wide enough. The famous Marques de Larios pedestrian mall runs south from Plaza de la Constitución, and it’s where all of the big fashion brand names have their stores. From YouTube videos, we know that street is the epicenter of Malaga’s Christmas decorations. There were also several museums (the Picasso museum is somewhere in Centro, but we were not looking for it) and theaters, so there’d probably be plenty to do. I even found what looked to be a really nice art supply store (which was closed when we walked by).

Unfortunately, there were very few parks in this part of the city, and the plazas we found were mostly tree-free, and benches were generally in the full sun. The other major problem with Centro is that it is ground zero for all of the tourists in the town. We’re in the “shoulder season” as far as tourism is concerned, and it was already a very lively part of town. Restaurants were crowded, streets were packed, and it was touristy-loud. If I knew this was the level of liveliness that Malaga experiences year round, I’d be fine with it. However, the peak season runs from June through September, and I shudder to think of what the crowds will look like then.

We did manage to find a shaded area with a bench. Well, the bench was part of a planter for a huge ficus tree, but it was still quite nice to rest there and do our usuals.

For dinner, I had located a Mexican restaurant in Centro and wanted to see what the Spanish interpretation of Mexican food was like. It was tasty enough, familiar flavors and dishes, though they were slightly different than what we are used to in California where authentic Mexican restaurants and taquerias abound. We did note that they did not offer the American-customary chips and salsa. I don’t know if we could have requested some; I don’t think they had any on the menu. After dinner we walked around trying to gauge the nightlife. There were several nightclubs, but perhaps we were there too early because most of them were closed. But if anything the neighborhood was livelier in the evening than it was during the daytime, including roving bands of 20-somethings belting out Spanish songs at quite a high volume.

If it weren’t for the crowds, Centro would definitely rate high on my list of potential neighborhoods in Málaga. But the threat of tourist crowds, and how much harder it would be to get a table at a restaurant there, is a heavy deterrent. Better to live somewhere less touristy and head into Centro when desired or needed.

La Merced

The fourth neighborhood we toured was called La Merced, and it sits on the northeast border of Centro. It was a neighborhood that was more on my husband’s list than mine.

On our way there, we passed the ancient Roman amphitheater and the path up to the Alcazaba. Since we were on a schedule and didn’t have time to play tourist, we sufficed with what we could see of both by walking by. Once we’re living in Spain, be it in Malaga or elsewhere, we both want to come back and explore these attractions. But perhaps not in a time when it was full of groups of student tours.

La Merced was much smaller than either of us had expected. There was a nice plaza with plenty of Jacaranda and Mimosa trees, with some benches in the shade, but that was about it for La Merced in terms of outdoor places where we could spend time in the shade. Otherwise, it had a strong character of a working-class neighborhood. Some stores, but many vacancies, graffiti, and weathered infrastructure. More vehicles here and fewer pedestrians. Also, as I discovered as I perused Idealista, Spain’s most used website for apartment listings (rental and sales), virtually no apartments over 100 square meters, and most with two or fewer bedrooms. Since we are looking for 3 beds and at least 120 square meters, we determined that La Merced was not a good fit for us. Ah, well. At least we got to see the ruins of an ancient Roman amphitheater along the way to the neighborhood.

We didn’t find any other resting places, but did find ourselves near the place we had rested the previous day. Since we had already decided La Merced wasn’t viable for us, we chose to spend our rest time in Centro and then find lunch as we walked back towards the hotel. We found a nice, but tiny, fast Italian restaurant, which I would definitely try again. We rested at the hotel and then found a burger joint in SoHo for dinner.

Huelin

Our final neighborhood for Málaga was Huelin. My husband was attracted to it because of its lower cost and a large park on the neighborhood’s border. But it’s outside of the central city area, so we had to use the Metro to get to it. (Which obviously means we’d need to use the Metro to get to the city center if we chose to live in Huelin.) On the way we hit up a Granier just outside the main El Corte Ingles for Malaga.

The metro station itself was very nice, and felt rather new. Very clean as all of the Metro stations we visited on the trip were. It also felt oddly spacious, like it should have a lot more going on in it, but was primarily open space with the occasional video billboards. After boarding the train, our stop was only a few stops away.

Huelin quickly revealed itself to be a working-class suburb, but one with a lot of one-story buildings surrounded by buildings that were much taller. It did have a small central market, which had all of the staples, and it is served by a good-sized supermarket (which we didn’t visit), so food shouldn’t be a problem. But there weren’t very many other “daily life” amenities. We didn’t really see any cafés and no hardware stores (they could have been on streets we didn’t visit), but we did see a couple of “lots of random Asian-made products” kinds of variety stores. There were green spaces, but mostly in the private courtyards of large apartment buildings.

We did wander around Huelin Parque, and found it to be quite nice with several kid playgrounds (segregated by the size of the children), an artificial lake, a dog park, a rose garden, and lots of benches. The park was actually quite busy with lots of families and elders. It was difficult to find benches in the shade that were not adjacent to children’s playgrounds. So that’s where we would up to read and knit. Oh, well. No-one seemed to care.

On the way back to the hotel, we found a street with a number of restaurants, so we grabbed a quick (and tasty) lunch. But in the end, we both agreed that while it had some nice points, Huelin wasn’t somewhere we wanted to live. We found a different burger joint (a sister of one that we had found in Alicante) in Centro for dinner.

The next day was a laundry day, but that didn’t take long, so we wound up venturing into Centro again to stop by a yarn store that had caught my husband’s eye, where he bought some skeins and double point needles since he had managed to snap some of the ones he had brought with him on the trip. We also stopped by a small but well stocked art store. I didn’t buy anything there but stoked my burgeoning interest in watercolor.

Conclusions

In the final analysis for Málaga, there were one and a half neighborhoods that could have made good homes, which isn’t much. We did find the kinds of stores that would allow us to continue pursuing our hobbies should we choose to live here, but the areas that had the most charm also had the most issues due to tourism. I really wanted to fall in love with Málaga, since it would be the least expensive city for us, specifically due to its much lower wealth tax. But I just didn’t love it as a home. It’s a place I’d love to visit on a regular basis, including during the holidays, but it did not feel comfortable enough to want to live here.