From Religion to Art: Growing our Understanding of Spanish Culture

Day two in Málaga, Spain here we go! We started our day by getting breakfast at our hotel, then heading down to attend a guest lecture from Dr. Beatriz Ontañón on the topic of religion and politics in Spain. She spoke at length about the pre-modern history of Spain, then went into detail about the last couple of decades, including current debates.

Hearing about how the Catholic Church has shaped Spanish politics to varying degrees over the last couple of centuries reminded me of the role that Christianity has played in shaping politics back home. I was also surprised to learn that the impact of the Muslim religion, brought over during the rule of the Visigoths, is still very visible, especially in the old architecture found in Spain. Small fun fact: our dollar sign, with the two lines over the "S," comes from the symbol of the Pillars of Hercules on old Spanish coins.

Fried green plantain with shredded chicken and sauteed jalapenos.

After our lecture, we walked to the restaurant D’Platos to have traditional Spanish food. We started off strong with three delicious appetizers. The first one ended up being my favorite (pictured above). The second was a traditional Russian salad with prawns, and the third was an assortment of croquettes. For the main dish, we got to try grilled Ibérico pork with potatoes and broken eggs with sautéed octopus.

Afterwards, we entered the Pablo Picasso Museum and were free to explore all the pieces at our leisure. All the paintings were beautiful, but I was most surprised by all the statues, pottery, and prints that Picasso also made, as my past art classes have only ever focused on his paintings.

Sketchbook spread drawn by Pablo Picasso found in the Pablo Picasso Museum in Malaga

The piece I connected with the most, as someone who also enjoys drawing, is this sketchbook spread above. The still life is very vibrant and colorful, but if you look closely, you’ll also find some math in the bottom left corner of the left page. That feeling when you need some scratch paper to do quick calculations and end up using your nearest sketchbook is universal for all artists. I ended up grabbing a small sketchbook for myself on the way out.

Me in front of a giftshop holding the small sketchbook I bought from the museum which has one of Picasso's paintings as the cover art.

After the museum, I looked at the souvenir shops and bought some magnets for my fridge. On our walk back, we spotted a really cool anime-themed ramen restaurant close to our hotel. I have never had ramen outside of Maruchan, so I thought trying it for the first time in an anime themed restaurant in Spain seemed like the perfect dinner plan. The ramen was delicious and a perfect end to a day of learning and exploring.

This concludes our second day in Spain and our last day in Málaga.

Signing off,

Andrea Guerra