Irish echoes in Malaga and its economic society

The chances of the Modern Age traced the route that, through maritime charts and portulans, many families followed. Like on every good trip, there was no shortage of winds to take each ship to its destination in Andalusia. Especially in the eighteenth century. 

The ultimate reason for emigration was part of the particular baggage of each traveler. In some cases, economic interests predominated. The old aspiration of getting rich used to be present. It was the dream of finding El Dorado in a region that concentrated colonial trade with Spanish America.

On other occasions, it responded to protection provided in the communities of compatriots established already in the 16th and 17th centuries. Finally, there were the facilities that the Spanish crown granted to Irish Catholics, persecuted by the infamous Penal Laws.  

In a world that was being transformed, by leaps and bounds, by the advance of the Enlightenment and the rise of Atlantic Trade, many inhabitants of old Hibernia found in Malaga the new home they dreamed of. Its desired “Ciudad del Paraiso”, City of Paradise, the expression used, many years later, by the famous poet Vicente Aleixandre, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, to describe the city. Three thousand kilometers from their homeland, even the luckiest became a key player in the commercial bourgeoisie of the ancient city that welcomed them.

During the reign of Carlos III, Malaga experienced a period of expansion. Some of its most emblematic elements are consolidated, such as the “Manquita” its unfinished cathedral, the San Telmo Aqueduct or the neoclassical Aduana (customs house), today a notable museum of fine arts. While the sumptuous palaces of the Alameda were being built, new neighborhoods were born on the outskirts to accommodate an expanding population. The economic life of the city was based, in those times, on the export of the fruits of the city's fertile hinterland. From the port's bustling docks, tons of grapes, lemons, almonds and other processed products such as “pasas” (dried grapes), “pan de higo” (a sweet paste made with dried figs) and, especially, the appreciated wines reached the main markets of Northern Europe and the New World. It was the famous maritime trade of Malaga, in which the Irish community was fundamental, because it brought together almost 50% of those who practiced it.  

For this reason, when in November 1788, a group of city residents asked the king to create an Economic Society of Friends of the Country, eight respected and active Irish people decidedly join the project. Their names were Juan Galway, member of the Order of Charles III and the merchants Juan Murphy, Diego Power, Timoteo Power, Diego Quilty, Tomas Quilty, Diego Terry and Guillermo Terry. Despite their foreign surnames, they were motivated by the same civic pride as the rest of the one hundred and thirty-one founders of “La Económica”: promote beneficial projects for their neighbors and disseminate the agricultural, scientific and technical advances that were taking place in the world. 

Today, two hundred and thirty-seven years later, the mark of those restless and hard-working Irish remains in this bustling and vibrant Mediterranean city. which already has almost six hundred thousand inhabitants and which will witness the opening, in the coming months, of a Consulate General of Ireland. If, as in those times that we wanted to remember today in our modest article, the chances of life, or a good trip, take you from one of the thirty-two counties of Eire to Malaga, the birthplace of Pablo Picasso, do not hesitate to come to the Plaza de la Constitución.

There, in the heart of a destination as internationally recognized as the Costa del Sol, take some time to contemplate the harmonious melting pot of gray and white marbles of the Casa del Consulado facade, headquarters of the Economic Society of Friends of the Country. If you pay close enough attention, confused with the bay breeze, and the squawking of the seagulls, you will be able to hear, at sunset, the echo of those intrepid merchants. Far away from their homeland, they merged with the land that welcomed them without ever forgetting their origins on the celtic Emerald Island. 

Mr. Salvador David Pérez González (Málaga, 1978) is a Doctor in Modern History from the University of Malaga and University Expert in Heritage and Cultural Management from the University of Seville. Professionally dedicated to Secondary Education, in 2022 he was awarded with the Spain-Ireland International Research Awar,  granted by the University of Malaga and the Center for Ibero-American and Transatlantic Studies.