| The Costa del Sol in Spring |
The Costa del Sol in Spring
(The empire of the senses) |
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Spring flowers early in Málaga as challenge to the orders imposed by seasons. Life Blooms in the calendar with no respect for the ignored winter, colours, shapes, aromas all sprout impatienly, all sensory fillaments germinate without obstacles or censorships.
Text: Esteban Montero / Photos: Patronato de Turismo de la Costa del Sol, Ayto. de Málaga y F. Quevedo.
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The south of Spain has the habit of beginning spring when other points of the geography continue to have winter lodged in the thermometers. It is a unique privilege that materialises thanks to the climate, under its shield and protection. This gift, granted by the atmospheric gods, is manifest with a special intensity in the province of Málaga. Here spring is more than a stage, it is a complete cycle. It shamelessly invades the chronological possessions of autumn and winter and it allies with the extensive summer so as to, between both of them, dominate the passing of almost the whole year.
Nature, that does not understand dates, has the instinctive need to change, to transform itself, when the elements around it so demand: warmth, light, water... Mother Earth feels in her interior the irresistible contractions of life, she perceives the wish to come into the world and detonate in its joyful diversity. Spring unfolds like a luxurious birth, without logic, without reason, without prejudices.
In Málaga it sprouts with an extreme virulence and again the voracious contrasts that characterise this area of Andalusia emerge. The chromatic scale broadens to unsuspected limits. Each large space, each small place, undergo a spectacular metamorphosis. An irreversible mutation which, at times, causes landscapes of an unrestrainable vitality to unfold.
In the regions of Antequera and the Axarquía, mainly, the almond trees magnificently explode. The trees are covered by a flowering snow, grey-haired branches that symbolise the contradictory renewal. The perfumed white of the fruit in bloom clashes with the soft green of the skin of the mountains.
The Málaga olive groves, so many and so scattered, rest after the olive picking. Taking advantage of this respite, armies of poppies and daisies paint the copper agricultural ground with excited reds and yellows. Everywhere, as barren as it may have seemed only weeks before, all kinds of vegetation grow unbelievably. Flowers conquer the ground, but also the air, with their travelling aromas. The crowns of the trees shine in a festive salute to the sun. The puffed gall oaks, the twisted holm oaks, the spiky palmettos, the warm chestnut trees or the blushing cork oaks, stripped of their cork armour, are dazzling. The golden wheat fields, as valuable reserves of gold cereal, are blinding. The valleys, the mountains, the rivers and forests all shine.
The land of Malaga, possibly tinted by the fragments of a rainbow fallen from the sky, receives the premature spring with the wild and free determination to install its reign of sensations without restrictions. |
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