Picasso was born in Malaga. In order to paint his tableau, La Joie de Vivre, Picasso divined the vital essence of "goat" by doing lots of studies, and represented it on canvas. Our village is in the centre of a shallow concave plateau in the mountains, about 2 kms in diameter. Around the rim of the plateau, and on the edge of the village itself, there are farms, and at least 5 of these have a goat-flock. Each flock numbers around 200 goats, so you can appreciate that, here in La Joya, goats make a big contribution to the local joie de vivre too. What's the point of this rambling? Well, yesterday, we went to Malaga to visit the very impressive and well-ordered
Picasso Gallery - you get directed along from room to room by very attentive and polite curators who get quite agitated if you go back to look at a picture twice [comments overheard from a very British, blue-rinsed lady: looking at early, naturalistic paintings, "He must have done these in his VERY young period, it's not the real stuff."; looking at a pencil sketch of the artist's eyes, drawn realistically, "Of course, if he drew eyes like that in our art class, he wouldn't last long."]. Among other things, we saw his studies of goats, made to help him to paint the mythical creatures like satyrs and fauns, derived from goats, that are dancing with the pretty nymph in the tableau (I think he'd already done plenty of studies of women, so he didn't have any trouble getting the nymph right!). The gallery is on a site occupied since prehistoric times, and when you've seen all the Picassos - in the correct chronological order, by the way - you can go down to the cellar and see - again in the correct chronological order - the Phoenecian, Roman and Mediaeval buildings that they've excavated on the spot.
On the way home, for the first time, we had to wait on the narrow road while one of the local goatherds drove his flock along towards us on their way back to their farm. It was on a long bend where the road has barriers on each side to help to stop you from driving over the verge and into the steep fields, and in that particular stretch of road there's only one point where the barrier opens onto a field path. So, llike Picasso, we mused on the goats - as they trotted, jumped or ambled before our eyes - all 200 of them!Malaga city is divided in two, North to South, by River Guadalhorce, or it would be if the riverbed wasn't so dry and sun-baked that it's covered with grass and bushes. On one stretch, near the centre of the city, they've installed a stainless steel false river bed about 30 metres long and 2 metres wide, with fountains and lights in an attempt to represent a river (or maybe its vital essence). It looked very attractive yesterday in the heat, and the sound of the water was refreshing, too. We joked that they could use the river bed as parking space, and so ease the acute parking problem they have in the city. As we settled down to bed last night there was an electrical storm. Lightning lit up the mountains and there was the rumble of distant thunder. By midnight, the thunder wasn't so distant, and by the small hours, the thunder had been replaced by a gale and driving rain that went on all night. It's been raining most of today, too, and so we stayed inside and have done things like reading, editing photos and drawing.
At lunchtime, we went to the local farmers' bar, Venta Vargas, to eat and, lo, the big news is of the chaotic aftermath of the flooding in Malaga overnight! There were film reports of people mopping out their houses, retrieving their cars from flooded streets and one man was pointing proudly for the cameras to a scorched hole in his roof where the lightning had struck. In Venta Vargas, they had a log fire going in the huge open fireplace and the place was full. There was the distinct impression that people had put in a morning's work in the fields, against the elements, and were now ready to call it a day. We had to wait until we could get a table for our "Menu del dia". They have this every day, between 1:00 pm and 3:30, and it costs 7 Euros each. For that you get a Premier Plato (usually a choice of two different soups and another simple fish or meat dish), a Segundo Plato (today there was a choice from roast loin of pork, fried anchovies, fried cod, chicken, pork and bean stew etc), Postres (ice cream, homemade flan - creme-caramel, an orange or tinned peaches), bread and a drink (the default choice is a litre bottle of their house red wine put on the table for you to finish, or not, as you wish). All this is reeled off in very fast Spanish with a thick local accent, so what you get can be a bit of a lottery. Wherever we've been in the rural parts of the area, people stop for a lunch like this, taken in a local bar. They get back to work at about 4:00 pm and then finish at around 7:00 pm. Venta Vargas is typical. a single room with a corner counter, a small kitchen behind and a big open room that acts as dining room, bar and television room, depending on how they've laid out the tables and the time of day. It's run by two small, active, quiet men who might be brothers, or not. They've obviously worked together for a long, long time because they move around the space getting all the jobs done, keeping things moving, checking on the customers without getting in each other's way, and each knowing what the other is doing at any time.The weather forecast says more rain tomorrow, but clearing later. So maybe Malaga's river has returned today, filling the city's brave attempt to represent its vital essence with the joie de vivre of fishes.
Picasso was born in Malaga. In order to paint his tableau, La Joie de Vivre, Picasso divined the vital essence of "goat" by doing lots of studies, and represented it on canvas. Our village is in the centre of a shallow concave plateau in the mountains, about 2 kms in diameter. Around the rim of the plateau, and on the edge of the village itself, there are farms, and at least 5 of these have a goat-flock. Each flock numbers around 200 goats, so you can appreciate that, here in La Joya, goats make a big contribution to the local joie de vivre too. What's the point of this rambling? Well, yesterday, we went to Malaga to visit the very impressive and well-ordered Picasso Gallery - you get directed along from room to room by very attentive and polite curators who get quite agitated if you go back to look at a picture twice [comments overheard from a very British, blue-rinsed lady: looking at early, naturalistic paintings, "He must have done these in his VERY young period, it's not the real stuff."; looking at a pencil sketch of the artist's eyes, drawn realistically, "Of course, if he drew eyes like that in our art class, he wouldn't last long."]. Among other things, we saw his studies of goats, made to help him to paint the mythical creatures like satyrs and fauns, derived from goats, that are dancing with the pretty nymph in the tableau (I think he'd already done plenty of studies of women, so he didn't have any trouble getting the nymph right!). The gallery is on a site occupied since prehistoric times, and when you've seen all the Picassos - in the correct chronological order, by the way - you can go down to the cellar and see - again in the correct chronological order - the Phoenecian, Roman and Mediaeval buildings that they've excavated on the spot. 
On the way home, for the first time, we had to wait on the narrow road while one of the local goatherds drove his flock along towards us on their way back to their farm. It was on a long bend where the road has barriers on each side to help to stop you from driving over the verge and into the steep fields, and in that particular stretch of road there's only one point where the barrier opens onto a field path. So, llike Picasso, we mused on the goats - as they trotted, jumped or ambled before our eyes - all 200 of them!Malaga city is divided in two, North to South, by River Guadalhorce, or it would be if the riverbed wasn't so dry and sun-baked that it's covered with grass and bushes. On one stretch, near the centre of the city, they've installed a stainless steel false river bed about 30 metres long and 2 metres wide, with fountains and lights in an attempt to represent a river (or maybe its vital essence). It looked very attractive yesterday in the heat, and the sound of the water was refreshing, too. We joked that they could use the river bed as parking space, and so ease the acute parking problem they have in the city. As we settled down to bed last night there was an electrical storm. Lightning lit up the mountains and there was the rumble of distant thunder. By midnight, the thunder wasn't so distant, and by the small hours, the thunder had been replaced by a gale and driving rain that went on all night. It's been raining most of today, too, and so we stayed inside and have done things like reading, editing photos and drawing. 
At lunchtime, we went to the local farmers' bar, Venta Vargas, to eat and, lo, the big news is of the chaotic aftermath of the flooding in Malaga overnight! There were film reports of people mopping out their houses, retrieving their cars from flooded streets and one man was pointing proudly for the cameras to a scorched hole in his roof where the lightning had struck. In Venta Vargas, they had a log fire going in the huge open fireplace and the place was full. There was the distinct impression that people had put in a morning's work in the fields, against the elements, and were now ready to call it a day. We had to wait until we could get a table for our "Menu del dia". They have this every day, between 1:00 pm and 3:30, and it costs 7 Euros each. For that you get a Premier Plato (usually a choice of two different soups and another simple fish or meat dish), a Segundo Plato (today there was a choice from roast loin of pork, fried anchovies, fried cod, chicken, pork and bean stew etc), Postres (ice cream, homemade flan - creme-caramel, an orange or tinned peaches), bread and a drink (the default choice is a litre bottle of their house red wine put on the table for you to finish, or not, as you wish). All this is reeled off in very fast Spanish with a thick local accent, so what you get can be a bit of a lottery. Wherever we've been in the rural parts of the area, people stop for a lunch like this, taken in a local bar. They get back to work at about 4:00 pm and then finish at around 7:00 pm. Venta Vargas is typical. a single room with a corner counter, a small kitchen behind and a big open room that acts as dining room, bar and television room, depending on how they've laid out the tables and the time of day. It's run by two small, active, quiet men who might be brothers, or not. They've obviously worked together for a long, long time because they move around the space getting all the jobs done, keeping things moving, checking on the customers without getting in each other's way, and each knowing what the other is doing at any time.The weather forecast says more rain tomorrow, but clearing later. So maybe Malaga's river has returned today, filling the city's brave attempt to represent its vital essence with the joie de vivre of fishes.
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