Compared to Sevilla, Málaga felt like a small city. Compared to Málaga, Almuñecar feels like a town, although it has 28,000 inhabitants. Everything is on a smaller scale, from the historic district to the beach district to the market and town hall. The town proper can be walked in an hour or so, with plenty to see. There are 10-12-floor apartment developments along the main beach, unfortunately, but most of the buildings in the older part of town are 3- and 4-story, with shops and restaurants at street level. The mountains come right down to the sea, and the town is built along the beachfront and back up the river. The Phoenicians settled here nearly three thousand years ago, and it has been inhabited ever since.
We have settled in for two nights in a charming room on the third floor of the Casablanca Hotel. Our balconey/patio looks out over the Mediterranean, past a local statue of Abd ar-Rahman, the Damascan who landed here some 1,259 years ago and ended up establishing the Moorish empire in Spain that came to be known as Al-Andaluz. The Phoenicians, Romans, and Visigoths all preceded him, and in the hour's walk referred to above, remains from all of these cultures are seen.
Still, the town feels primarily like a seaside fishing and tourism center.
It is still off-season, so the place is pretty quiet, but the stores and restaurants are open and welcoming. We ate lunch yesterday at a small place whose owner, a soccer fan, alerted us to a Barcelona-Atlético Madrid game last night (these are two of the top three Spanish teams). After an afternoon exploring the town, we watched the game in a restaurant-bar on the beach a block away from the hotel, cheering and groaning along with the wait-staff. The game ended in a tie, with the return game next week (all Spanish soccer games are played in pairs, first on one team's home field, then on the other's).
The local castle on the hill above our hotel was first built by the Romans (who named the town Sexi), then fortified by the Visigoths, improved by the Moors, and used by the Christians after the Reconquest. Finally, the French defended it during the Napoleonic wars, but it was so badly damaged that it was left to disintegrate. Its ruins house some good historic descriptions along with old walls and passageways, and provide excellent views along the coast. There is a nice overview of it at www.almunecartoday.com/san-
In between the castle and our hotel is an ornithological park whose resident parrots make a constant noise, especially when pestered by the gulls. Bright flashes of reds, blues, yellows, and greens among the foliage against the brown cliffs are about all we can see; for some reason the park is closed.
Our other principal stop was at the archaeological museum, a small but beautifully presented collection of items removed from excavated sites of the four cultures that have inhabited this place. It is housed in the storage cellars of a once-Roman building, tucked under now modern houses. The prize piece, oddly, is a beautiful large 16th-century BC Egyptian vessel sculpted from solid quartz, with a hieroglyphic inscription dating it to the pharaoh Apophis I. Amazing how close the ancient Mediterranean world seems to be.
We scouted the town again this morning, ending up at the municipal market, with its attractive stands of fresh foods.
We had a lovely lunch of grilled fresh sole, and a relaxed time unwinding from all our more urban explorations. Tomorrow we will head a little further along the coast to Cabo de Gata, a prime environmental preserve that promises even more open country and sea.