La Costa del Sol revisited…

40+ years later

In the 1970’s I lived in Fuengirola on the Costa del Sol for a year. Life was fun and carefree. Every day began between noon and 2:00 p.m. with a few hours on the beach baking in the sun, reading, and working the International Herald Tribune crossword puzzle. After dinner meant drinks with the owners, employees, and friends of O Mamma Mia Pizzeria, followed by dancing at the discotheque till dawn and breakfast at the hotel café afterwards. Those were the days!

Those were also the days when the town of Fuengirola had far fewer inhabitants and tourists. Fuengirola then was hardly a small fishing village, but now, it seems like an extension of the British Isles! So many Brits! Some of my best friends are Brits! Ha ha. But all of the Costa del Sol now feels like a foreign place, not a part of Spain. It just made me so thankful I made the decision to move to Catalunya and the Costa Brava! I hope I’m not offending any readers with ties to or a love of Andalucía. I still love it too, but I need to be far from the madding English-speaking crowd! It’s such a shame because there is so much history, beauty, and culture in Andalucía – the Alhambra in Granada, the Mezquita in Córdoba, the Alcázar in Sevilla, plus the fairs, the flamenco, the sun. But unbounded tourism has really hurt it and I think it has lost a lot of its appeal, at least to me.

But my recent trip to the south also included several highlights: an odd museum in Málaga that combines classic cars and fashion (weird combo to appeal to women?)…

The cars were fantastic. It reminded me of the exhibit at the Houston Museum of Fine Arts a few years ago that I saw three times because the cars were so beautiful and I wanted to show it to friends.

Then there were the lush green, rolling hills in the province of Cádiz, with Africa in the background..

And there’s an out-of-the-way wind-surfing spot in Tarifa at the Straits of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic. In March, it was almost deserted…quite the opposite of the Costa del Sol…

As you can see below, it is still green here in Catalunya, but the drought is enduring. We’ve had some rain, but not enough to make up for three years of drastically reduced amounts of rainfall. In Barcelona, I saw signs everywhere, many in English, to remind residents and tourists to save water, but especially tourists who may not be aware of the situation. Residents are aware of the restrictions in place and the strong penalties for over-use of water. As they say, water water everywhere…

P.S. My arm is better. I can finally drive myself and I can take the curves just as fast with one arm as I can with a fully functioning two!