History Of Málaga

The history of Málaga, shaped by the city's location in southern Spain on the western shore of the Mediterranean Sea, spans about 2,800 years, making it one of the oldest cities in the world. The first inhabitants to settle the site may have been the Bastetani, an ancient Iberian tribe. The Phoenicians founded their colony of Malaka ( xpu, 𐤌𐤋𐤊𐤀 ) ( grc-gre, Μάλακα, ''Málaka'') about 770BC. From the 6th centuryBC, it was under the hegemony of Carthage in present-day Tunisia. From 218BC, Malaca was ruled by the Roman Republic; it was federated with the Roman Empire at the end of the 1st century during the reign of Domitian. Thereafter it was governed under its own municipal code, the ''Lex Flavia Malacitana'', which granted free-born persons the privileges of Roman citizenship.

The decline of the Roman imperial power in the 5th century led to invasions of Hispania Baetica by Germanic peoples, who were opposed by the Byzantine Empire. In Visigothic Spain, the Byzantines took Malaca and other cities on the southeastern coast and founded the new province of Spania in 552. Malaca became one of the principal cities of the short-lived Byzantine ', which lasted until 624, when the Byzantines were expelled from the Iberian peninsula. After the Muslim conquest of Spain (711–718), the city, then known as Mālaqah ( ar, مالقة), was encircled by walls, next to which Genoese and Jewish merchants settled in their own quarters. In 1026 it became the capital of the Taifa of Málaga, an independent Muslim kingdom ruled by the Hammudid dynasty in the Caliphate of Córdoba, which existed for four distinct time-periods: from 1026 to 1057, from 1073 to 1090, from 1145 to 1153 and from 1229 to 1239, when it was finally conquered by the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada.

The siege of Mālaqa by Isabella and Ferdinand in 1487 was one of the longest of the Reconquista. The Muslim population was punished for its resistance by enslavement or death. Under Castillian domination, churches and convents were built outside the walls to unite the Christians and encourage the formation of new neighbourhoods. In the 16th century, the city entered a period of slow decline, exacerbated by epidemics of disease, several successive poor food crops, floods, and earthquakes.

With the advent of the 18th century the city began to recover some of its former prosperity. For much of the 19th century, Málaga was one of the most rebellious cities of the country, contributing decisively to the triumph of Spanish liberalism. Although this was a time of general political, economic and social crisis in Málaga, the city was a pioneer of the Industrial Revolution on the Iberian peninsula, becoming the first industrialised city in Spain. This began the ascendancy of powerful Málagan bourgeois families, some of them gaining influence in national politics. In the last third of the century, during the short regime of the First Spanish Republic, the social upheavals of the Cantonal Revolution of 1873 culminated in the proclamation of the Canton of Málaga on 22 July 1873. Málaga political life then was characterised by a radical and extremist tone. The federal republican ''(republicanismo federal)'' movement gained strong support among the working classes and encouraged insurrection, producing great alarm among the affluent.

A new decline of the city began in 1880. The economic crisis of 1893 forced the closing of the La Constancia iron foundry and was accompanied by the collapse of the sugar industry and the spread of the phylloxera blight, which devastated the vineyards surrounding Málaga. The early 20th century was a period of economic readjustment that produced a progressive industrial dismantling and fluctuating development of commerce. Economic depression, social unrest and political repression made it possible for petite bourgeois republicanism and the labor movement to consolidate their positions.

In 1933, during the Second Spanish Republic, Málaga elected the first deputy of the Communist Party of Spain, or ''Partido Comunista de España'' (PCE). In February 1937 the nationalist army, with the help of Italian volunteers, launched an offensive against the city under the orders of General Queipo de Llano, occupying it on 7 February. Local repression by the Francoist military dictatorship was perhaps the harshest of the civil war, with an estimated 17,000–20,000 citizens shot and buried in mass graves at the cemetery of San Rafael.

During the military dictatorship, the city experienced the rapid expansion of tourism from abroad on the Costa del Sol, igniting an economic boom in the city beginning in the 1960s. After the end of the Francoist military dictatorship, the first candidate for mayor on the ticket of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party or ''Partido Socialista Obrero Español'' (PSOE) was elected, and remained in office until 1995, when the conservative Popular Party or ''Partido Popular'' (PP) won the municipal elections and have governed since.

Prehistory and antiquity

The territory now occupied by the Province of Málaga has been inhabited since prehistoric times, as evidenced by the cave paintings of the ''Cueva de la Pileta'' (Cave of the Pool) in Benaoján, artefacts found at sites such as the Dolmen of Menga near Antequera and the Cueva del Tesoro (Treasure Cave) near ''Rincón de la Victoria'', as well as the pottery, tools and skeletons found in Nerja. Paintings of seals from the Paleolithic and post-Paleolithic eras found in the Nerja Caves and attributed to Neanderthals may be about 42,000 years old and could be the first known works of art, according to José Luis Sanchidrián of the University of Córdoba.

Phoenician Malake

The first colonial settlement in the area, dating from around 770BC, was made by seafaring Phoenicians from Tyre, on an islet in the estuary of the River Guadalhorce at Cerro del Villar (the coastline of Málaga has changed considerably since that time, as river silting and changes in river levels have filled the ancient estuary and moved the site inland).

Although the island was ill-suited for habitation, it is likely the Tyrians chose to settle it because of its strategic location, the possibilities for trade, and the excellent natural harbor. Sailboats heading towards the Strait of Gibraltar would have found protection there from powerful sea-currents and strong westerly winds. From Cerro del Villar, the Phoenicians began trading with coastal indigenous villages and the small community at present-day San Pablo near the mouth of the river Guadalmedina. Gradually the center of commerce was moved to the mainland and the new trading colony of Malake was founded, which was from the 8th century BC a vibrant commercial center.

Economic development in the colony of Malake included industries for the production of sea salt and possibly of purple dye. The Phoenicians had discovered in the waters off the coast murex sea snails, the source of the famed Tyrian purple. The city had its own mint (Phoenician: ''sikka'') and produced coins. The Phoenician colonial period lasted approximately from 770 to 550BC.

The dominance of the Phoenicians as a Mediterranean trading power waned after the destruction of Tyre by the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar in 572BC. Cyrus the Great conquered Canaan in 539BC, and Phoenician influence declined further. Their influence did not disappear entirely in the western Mediterranean, however, as their place was taken by the Carthaginians, whose capital city of Carthage had been founded as a Phoenician trading outpost in 814BC. It is likely that much of the Phoenician population migrated to Carthage and other colonies following the Persian conquest. Having gained independence around 650BC, Carthage soon developed its own considerable mercantile presence in the Mediterranean.

Greek Mainake

The Phoenician settlements were more densely concentrated on the coastline east of Gibraltar than they were further up the coast. Market rivalry had attracted the Greeks to Iberia, who established their own trading colonies along the northeastern coast before venturing into the Phoenician corridor. They were encouraged by the Tartessians, who may have desired to end the Phoenician economic monopoly. Herodotus mentions that around 630 BC, the Phocaeans established relations with King Arganthonios (670–550 BC) of Tartessos, who gave them money to build walls around their city. Later they founded Mainake ( grc-gre, Μαινάκη, ''Mainákē'') on the Málaga coast (Strabo. 3.4.2).

Dominion of Carthage

Nebuchadnezzar II had conquered Canaan in 572BC with the intention of appropriating the rich Tyrian trade, and with the transition to Carthaginian domination of the western Mediterranean, Malake became in 573BC a colony of the Punic empire of Carthage, which sent its own settlers. The mercantile nature of the city, which developed during Phoenician rule, had taken hold, as well as such idiosyncratic cultural features as the religious cults devoted to the gods Melqart and Tanit.

The second half of the sixth century BC marks the transition between the Phoenician and the Punic periods of Málaga.

When the Phoenician city-states of the eastern Mediterranean were assimilated into the Persian empire in the 6th century BC, Carthage took advantage of their diminishing control over maritime trade. For two hundred years the Phoenician settlements had maintained close relationships with the "mother cities" on the coast of Syria and Lebanon, but from the mid-6th century, these connections shifted to the north African city of Carthage as it expanded its hegemony. With the arrival of the Magonid dynasty around 550 BC, Carthaginian foreign policy seems to have changed dramatically. Carthage now took the lead, establishing itself as the dominant Phoenician military power in the western Mediterranean. Although a Punic-Etruscan fleet of 120 ships was defeated by a Greek force of Phocaean ships in the naval Battle of Alalia between 540 BC and 535 BC, and Carthage lost two more major naval battles with Massalia, it still managed to close the Strait of Gibraltar to Greek shipping and thus contained the Greek expansion in Spain by 480 BC.

Carthage proceeded to destroy Tartessos and to drive the Greeks from southern Iberia. It defended its trade monopoly in the western Mediterranean vigilantly, attacking the merchant ships of its rivals. During the 3rd century BC, Carthage made Iberia the new base for its empire and its campaigns against the Roman Republic. Although they had little influence in the hinterland behind the coastal mountains, the Carthaginians occupied most of Andalucia, expanding along the northern Mediterranean coast and establishing a new capital at Cartagena.

The Romans conquered the city as well as the other regions under the rule of Carthage after the Punic Wars in 218BC.

Roman Malaca

The romanisation of Málaga was, as in most of southern Hispania Ulterior, effected peacefully through a ', a treaty recognising both parties as equals, obligated to assist each other in defensive wars or when otherwise summoned. The Romans unified the people of the coast and interior under a common power; Roman settlers in Malaca exploited the local natural resources and introduced Latin as the language of the ruling classes, establishing new manners and customs that gradually changed the culture of the native people. Malaca was integrated into the Roman Republic as part of Hispania Ulterior, but Romanisation seems to have progressed slowly, as indicated by the discovery of inscriptions dating to the 1st century AD written in the Phoenician alphabet. During this period the Municipium Malacitanum became a transit point on the '' Via Herculea'', which revitalised the city both economically and culturally by connecting it with other developed enclaves in the interior of Hispania and with other ports of the Mediterranean Sea.

With the fall of the Republic and the advent of the Roman Empire, the territory of Malaca, which had already been occupied for two centuries by the Romans, was framed administratively as one of four legal convents into which the province of Baetica, newly created by order of Caesar Augustus, was divided. Baetica by this time was rich and completely Romanised; the emperor Vespasian rewarded the province by granting it the ius latii, which extended the rights of Roman citizenship (''latinitas'') to its inhabitants, an honor that secured the loyalty of the Baetian elite and the middle class.

According to the Greek geographer Strabo, the city had an irregular plan, in the manner of the Phoenician cities. The Romans began the construction of important public works: the Flavian dynasty improved the port and Augustus built the Roman theater. Thereafter the emperor Titus of the Flavian family granted Malaca its privileges as a municipality.

Malaca reached a high cultural and civic development in this period, having been converted into a federated city of the empire, and was governed by its own code of laws, the ''Lex Flavia Malacitana''. The presence of an educated populace and their patronage of the arts had a significant bearing on this. The great Roman baths, remains of which have been found in the subsoil of the Pintor Nogales and the Cistercian Abbey, also belong to this period, as well as numerous sculptures now preserved in the Museo de Málaga.

The Roman Roman theater, which dates from the 1st century BC, was rediscovered by accident in 1951. The theater is well preserved but has not been completely excavated. The Augustan character of the inscriptions found there date it from this period. The theater appears to have been abandoned in the 3rd century, as it was covered with a dump rich in small finds of the 3rd–4th centuries. The upper part of the stage was not covered, and its material was reused by the Arabs in the Alcazaba.

The economy and the wealth of the territory were dependent mainly on agriculture in the inland areas, the abundance of the fishery in the waters off the coast, and the productions of local artisanal works. Among noteworthy Malacan products for export were wine, olive oil and the '' garum malacitano'', a fermented fish sauce famed throughout the empire and in demand as a luxury item in Rome. Regarding the social aspects of religious practice in Malaca, it can be said that each ethnic group adhered to its own cult, as did imported slaves who clung to their native religions. In 325, the year of the Council of Nicaea, Malaca figured as one of the few Roman enclaves in Hispania where Christianity was strongly rooted. Previously, there had been frequent uprisings of an anti-Roman character catalyzed by the opposition to paganism of those Hispano-Romans affiliated with Christianity.

Spain's present languages, its religion, and the basis of its laws originate from the Roman period. The centuries of uninterrupted Roman rule and settlement left a deep and enduring imprint upon the culture of what is now Málaga.

Germanic invasions and Visigothic rule

In the 5th century, Germanic peoples, including the Franks, Suevi, Vandals, and Visigoths, as well as the Alans of Sarmatian descent, crossed the Pyrenees mountain range into the Iberian peninsula. The Visigoths eventually emerged as the dominant power, and in about 511, they moved onto the Malaca coast. However, Hispania remained relatively Romanised under their rule—it did not see a decline in the perpetuation of classical culture comparable to that in Britain, Gaul, Lombardy and Germany. The Visigoths adopted Roman culture and language, and maintained more of the old Roman institutions. They had a respect for the legal codes that resulted in continuous frameworks and historical records for most of the period between 415, when Visigothic rule in parts of Spain began, and 711, when it is traditionally said to end. The Catholic bishops were the rivals of Visigothic power and culture until the end of the 6th and beginning of the 7th century—the period of transition from Arianism to Catholicism in the Visigothic kingdom—excepting a brief incursion of Byzantine power.

Under Visigothic rule, Malaca became an episcopal see. The earliest known bishop was Patricius, consecrated about 290, and present at the Council of Eliberis (Elvira).

After the division of the Roman Empire and its final crisis in 476, Malaca was one of the areas of the peninsula affected by further migrations of the Germanic tribes, especially the Silingi Vandals, who during the 5th century introduced the Arian heresy to western Europe. The province lost much of the wealth and infrastructure achieved under Roman rule, but maintained a certain prosperity, even as it suffered the destruction of some of its most important towns, as at Acinipo, Nescania, and Singilia Barba, which were not rebuilt.

Byzantine Malaca

The Byzantine Emperor Justinian I (482–565) conceived a military and foreign policy, the Recuperatio Imperii, to recover the territories which had formerly comprised the Western Roman Empire and were under the rule of the barbarians. It was led by his brilliant general, Belisarius, and succeeded in regaining North Africa, southern Iberia and most of Italy. Malaca and the surrounding territory were conquered in 552; Malaca then became one of the most important cities of the Byzantine province of Spania.

The city was conquered and sacked again by the Visigoths under King Sisebut in 615. In 624, during the reigns of the Visigothic king Suintila and the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius, the Byzantines definitively abandoned their last settlements in the narrow area they still held.

It is known that Sisebut devastated much of the city, and although it remained an episcopal see and the site of a mint built by Sisenand, its population was drastically reduced and its prosperous economy ruined. There is clear documentary evidence of the violent destruction of at least one commercial district. Such was the devastation that the first Islamic invaders of the old Visigothic county of Malacitana initially had to locate their capital in the interior, at Archidona.

Eight centuries of Arab rule

The Chronicle of 754, covering the years 610 to 754, indicates the Arabs began disorganised raids and only undertook to conquer the peninsula with the fortuitous deaths of Roderic and much of the Visigothic nobility. They were probably killed at the Battle of Guadalete against an invading force of Muslim Arabs and Berbers under the command of Ṭāriq ibn Ziyad. Roderic was the last king of the Visigoths, but his disputed succession to the throne and the resulting internal conflict may have contributed to the collapse of the Visigoth kingdom before the advance of the Moorish invaders. The Visigoths elected their kings outright rather than making the throne hereditary by right of succession