[ Feb.2018 ] On the second day of our short holiday in Andalucia in Spain, we went to Malaga from Marbella where we stayed to join the free walking tour.
These kinds of walking tour are always good, so since we joined first time in Gdansk in Poland a couple of years ago, we join them as much as possible whenever we come across them.
Although they say ‘free’, we pay some as a tip at the end.
This time in Malaga, the guide told us firmly that he was expecting some tip.
The guide, Xavier was a funny man like a comedian and he said “You can pay me as much as you want. Nobody has 
paid me €500 so far, but if you do, I will take a picture of you and attach it to a magnet to put it on my fridge to worship every day”.
The number of the people who joined the tour was about 30 on the day.
I had thought many would be English or German, but no.
Many were from eastern Europe, like Russia and Lithuania as well as Americans, New Zealanders, Swedish, Moroccan, etc.
The tour started at the Plaza de la Constitucion.
This square used to be called Plaza Mayor and they had bull fighting here.
The first electric light was on in this square and people were trying to blow it out.
Now on the ground you can see the copies of the newspaper on the day of enactment of the constitution.
Between this square and the another square called Marina by the sea, there is a street called Larios.
Larios is the name of a wealthy man who controlled the industries in this town, such as textiles, wine and minerals in the 19th century and he built this street to connect the main square and his house.
At the end of the street, there is his statue.
And there is a story behind this statue.
At first, the statue was standing looking towards Plaza de la Constitucion, but early in the 20th century when they had a revolution, people pull it down and sank it in the sea and instead, they moved the labourer’s statue which was on the side to the top.
But when Franco got the power, the original statue of Larios was pulled up from the sea and put on the top again.
They made labourers do this job as a punishment, and those labourers put the statue up not looking at the square, but to the west where many poor people lived.
So Larios is still looking to the west now.
We moved from Larios Street to the narrow alleyways.
Many of the streets in the old town were built by Muslim people during their ruling and because they were from hot countries, they built streets very narrow so that the sunbeam did not reach to keep it cool.
He pointed out a street called Calle Fresca (Fresh Street).
Near here, there was a picture on the wall which reminded us of the game Space Invaders all those years ago.
This is apparently an art installation and in Malaga, there are 37 of them.
He said that if you find all of them and take photos, they will give you some prize.
We only walked a few streets, but already learned many interesting things and started feeling familiar towards Malaga.
