Early on in his biography of the novelist Kingsley Amis, Zachary Leader quotes a hilariously misanthropic letter Amis wrote to the poet Philip Larkin, one of his closest friends. Amis, at the time in his early thirties, was complaining about a three-month stint he and his family – including his son Martin, then five years old – spent abroad, as required by the terms of the Somerset Maugham Prize, which he won in 1955 for his first novel, Lucky Jim (Martin would also win it in 1973 for his debut, The Rachel Papers). Clearly not impressed with his surroundings in Portugal’s Algarve, Amis listed a ‘sort of basic kit’ of things he thought necessary for a visit to the country in the mid 1950s:
1: a DDT [mosquito] spray with a half-gallon storage tank; 2: a placard saying in Portuguese WHAT THE F***ING HELL ARE YOU STARING AT?; 3: a crate of detective novels; 4: a jar of pills which promote constipation; 5: a solicitor as travelling companion…
As I face my ninth summer living in Andalusia (jeans folded away, duvet removed from bed, red wine stored in fridge, air-conditioning unit dusted off), Amis’s grumpy letter got me thinking about what you need to bring or to know if you’re visiting Spain’s most southerly region during the hottest months of the year. You won’t necessarily require items four or five from his survival ‘kit’, and you certainly won’t need item three, implying as it does that there’s not a great deal else to do. But number one is a good idea (unfortunately), and number two (in Spanish, obviously) could be handy if you’re staying in tiny rural villages – although a slightly less combative tone is recommended.
Apart from that, here are a few other tips that might be useful to survive a summer visit to Andalusia:
Be near water
I can’t overstate the importance of being near water during an Andalusian summer, even if it’s just your hotel’s rooftop plunge pool. If you’re in the east, make for Almeria’s Cabo de Gata-Nijar Natural Park, especially the Playa de los Genoveses and the Playa de los Muertos (despite the latter’s wonderfully morbid name, there are no skeletons in the sand), both of which are flanked and backed by volcanic rock and high dunes. Take all food and drink as there are no facilities.
On Andalusia’s Atlantic coast, in the province of Cadiz, the star beaches are Playa Bolonia and Playa Zahara, both of which are completely unspoilt and made for sunset picnics. If you’re in Malaga, I wouldn’t recommend La Malagueta, the main urban beach: it’s dirty, overcrowded and the portaloos are harrowing. Instead, head east, where you’ll find more spacious playas, fantastic fish restaurants and plenty of chiringuitos in La Cala del Moral and Rincón de la Victoria (20/25 minutes in the car or on the M260 or M160 buses). Alternatively or in addition, venture inland to the turquoise lakes of El Chorro (an hour’s drive north from Malaga), where you can also tackle the Caminito del Rey, a hiking trail pinned to the cliffside 100 metres above the water.
Eat and drink right
Top summer dishes, especially on the coast, include pescaito frito, a platter of battered deep-fried cod, prawns, anchovies, squid and whatever else came in on the boat that morning, served with wedges or lemon and chips (patatas fritas); salads topped with hard-boiled egg, tuna, carrot, sweetcorn and anchovies, dressed with Andalusia’s world class olive oil; skewers of plump sardines cooked on beachside BBQs (espetos de sardinas, a Malaga speciality); grilled meats (carnes a la brasa) served, again, with heaps of chips unless you specifically request otherwise.
The best summer drinks are small draft beers called cañas that stay cold and crisp (pints turn lukewarm within minutes); tinto de verano (red wine mixed with lemonade), not as potent but just as refreshing as sangria; dry white manzanilla sherry; and intimidating measures of gin poured over ice and finished with a splash of tonic. A lot of places will also ask whether you want your red wine frio (chilled) or del tiempo (room temperature) – and when the mercury is nudging 40°C, believe me, you want it frio, weird as that might seem. Incidentally, if you hear a Spaniard making fun of fish and chips, as they’re fond of doing, remind them that a suspiciously similar dish also features on Spanish menus.
Time your visit to coincide with a feria
Running from Seville’s Feria de Abril just after Easter until the celebration of the grape harvest in Jerez de la Frontera in early September, summer in Andalusia is a non-stop party season. Every village, town and city hosts its own feria (fair), most of which take place in July and August. The next big one is in Malaga from 12 to 19 August and features a vast recinto (fairground) on the outskirts of the city with rollercoasters and pop-up bars and restaurants in marquees called casetas, as well as celebrations on and around Calle Marques de Larios in the Old Town.
During the day, buy a bottle of the feria’s signature drink, a sweet white wine called cartojal (you’ll get little paper cups with it) to sip as you weave among the brightly-coloured flamenco dresses, join the impromptu street parties and enjoy live bands on the Plaza de la Constitución. A siesta will be required to re-energise for the night session on the recinto, where the casetas shake with flamenco until breakfast. Take hard currency, because a lot of the casetas, even in big cities, don’t take cards.
Observe the siesta hours
If there’s one thing you might have to tell yourself repeatedly during a trip to southern Spain in the summer, it’s this: ‘I am not a bum for sleeping in the day.’ The notion of lying in a darkened, air-conditioned room after lunch is an alien – or unnecessary – one to a lot of British visitors, but it’s essential during July and August, for two main reasons. First, the hottest part of the day falls between about 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., when temperatures of 35°C or more make sightseeing an ordeal; and second, everything happens later in Andalusia in the summer, so you’ll get more out of your day if you restart it at around 5 p.m., perhaps with a coffee and a plate of churros (sweet, donut-like snacks served with cups of melted chocolate for dipping). Refreshed, you can then join the paseo – evening stroll – just before sunset (when everyone emerges from their air-conditioned lairs), enjoy a couple of drinks and then eat dinner when the Spaniards do – i.e from about 9.30 p.m. onwards. Also bear in mind that most shops (big supermarkets excepted) close between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. and aren’t open on Saturday afternoons or at all on Sundays, and that a lot of restaurants close around 4 p.m. and don’t re-open for supper until 7 p.m. The 24-hour culture simply hasn’t caught on in Andalusia.
Discard rigid notions of time
Time takes on an Einsteinian elasticity in Andalusia, especially in the summer, when the intense heat slows everything down. The Spanish day is divided into two hazily-defined halves: the morning (la manaña, also the word for ‘tomorrow’), which runs from breakfast to early afternoon, even though it’s technically correct to start saying buenas tardes to people after 12 p.m.; and the afternoon (la tarde) which begins around lunchtime (2-4 p.m.) and incorporates what’s thought of as the evening in the UK before at some point morphing into la noche (there is no Spanish word corresponding to ‘evening’ in English). Epic lunches – especially on summer weekends – exemplify this lack of rigidity, which again might require adjustment if you’re visiting Spanish friends. I moved here with a typically British attitude to the midday meal, according to which you leave the table when you’ve finished and move on to the next part of the day, with no lounging about after dessert. I’d never experienced a sobremesa (literally,‘around the table’), an unnervingly elongated post-lunch session, usually fuelled by spirits, that at some point blends into pre-dinner drinks, which in turn lead smoothly into dinner.
If you’re curious, attend a bullfight
The corrida de toros or ‘running of bulls’ (there’s no literal Spanish translation for ‘bullfight’) hails from Andalusia and is still an integral part of the region’s culture. During the summer, every town and city holds at least one – and often several – as part of its feria. Tickets in the plaza de toros fall into two price categories, the most expensive being in the sombra (shade) and the cheapest being in the sol (sun). The extra 10 or 15 euros is worth it: not even factor-50 suncream or a massive parasol will protect you entirely from three hours under the Andalusian summer sun.
Supported by their respective teams, three toreros will kill two bulls each and the award system works as follows: one of the animal’s ears is given to the torero for a good performance, both of them for a very good performance and two ears and the tail for something truly exceptional. Even rarer is an indulto (pardon), where the bull is judged to have performed so well that it is let out of the ring alive. Take a white handkerchief to petition the bullring’s president for ears, a cushion for the concrete seating and a cool bag full of beer. A.L. Kennedy’s On Bullfighting provides a thought-provoking introduction to this controversial spectacle.
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