Torremolinos, Spain

Torremolions is located in southern Spain on the ”Costa del Sol” region of Andalusia. This part of Spain is very close to the African continent and shares a lot of culture with North Africa due to shared history and proximity.

Apparently the term “Andalusia” is a Spanish rendition of the Arabic term “Al-Andalus”, which in itself was apparently an Arabic rendition of the North African (Amazigh) term used to refer to the ”land of the Vandals”. There are competing theories, including those claiming the term comes from the corruption of the world ”Atlantis”. ref.

Whatever the case may be, it’s one of the most beautiful parts of the world that I’ve ever experienced. Back when I visited, I travelled only with my beautiful little film camera, the Olympus 35 RC and a pack of Kodak Portra 800. It was the wrong film, since the Costa del Sol, has a lot of Sol, thus needed a much slower speed film to capture the colours without blowing too much out.

Thankfully the film exposure latitude on Kodak Portra saved the day. I managed to shoot at the maximum shutter speed of 1/500 and only overexpose by 2 stops, which is fine for film. If it had been a digital camera limited to those settings, all of the photos would have been completely unrecoverablely blown out.

The photos above are from Benalmádena and Playa Carolina. The earthy brown, beige and the blue and white of the sea and light houses made such a perfect scene time after time. I still dream of some of the vistas there, including the small little ground floor apartment that I stayed in. The owner was a retired Irish bloke who lived on the top floor ( with better views of the ocean) and rented out the ground floor to holiday makers. It wasn’t much - just a room with a bathroom and tiny kitchen area, but I wasn’t spending time indoors anyway.

I haven’t been back to Andalusia since, and I hope to go back soon. I particularly want to visit Gibraltar and maybe even Portugal in the process. One of my dreams would be to do a boat crossing to Morocco, but the situation there right now is pretty uncertain. Recently some African migrants were beaten to death by the security forces, both Spanish and Moroccan I believe, in that genera region. So, even though that’s a dream of mine to visit that part, I’ll be avoiding it until there’s stability.