A statue that tells a story
Right at the
entrance of the
famous shopping
street Calle Larios
in Málaga there is a
statue of the
Marquis Manuel
Domingo de Larios,
the most important
employer of 19th
century Málaga.
1931. About a
month later the
popular rage
against the
Catholic Church
returned
throughout the
whole of Spain in
a much worse
form, the burning
of churches and
holy statues. Sharp
disagreements had
emerged after the
resistance of the
Church and
monarchist parties
against the
Republican
Government that
wanted to end
certain privileges
of the Church, for instance the public funds for Semana Santa.
The troubles started in Madrid, but were quickly under control
there. Then it spread to other cities and especially in Málaga it
got out of hand. In this city the anarchists were quite strong
and this part of the republican or left side was not averse to
violence.
Larios towers on
his pedestal high
above two other
figures, right in
front of him a
scantily dressed
woman who raises
a child to him and
that represents
motherhood or
charity, behind him a tough naked man with two pickaxes
(“pico y azadón”) that represents Labour. It looks as if the
woman offers the big boss a future worker and as if the tough
guy on the other side of the pedestal, is turning his back to his
boss, thus expresses that there will soon be trouble. The statue
group was placed here in 1899 in gratitude of the city towards
its ‘benefactor’. However, this is not just an ordinary statue, it
has a lot to tell about the history of Málaga.
Besides that the local Government did not act vigorously
against the anarchist riots. In the end more than 20 churches
and monasteries were set on fire and many catholic paintings
and statues were destroyed. Also the headquarters of the right
wing newspaper ABC and the city registers of Málaga went up
in flames. This massive rage against catholic patrimony is one
of the main reasons why the republican side was beaten in the
civil war of 1936-1939.
Marquis de Larios created many jobs in his factories for textile
and food products, however he paid his employees very badly,
which at that time was not unusual. Málaga in the first half of
the 19th century lived in an era of large bloom and
development, everything went well for the big industrial and
commercial bourgeoisie that invested a great deal of money in
grand palaces and public works, such as the Alameda and Calle
Larios. This last street was financed by and constructed on the
initiative of the Marquis de Larios, in the place of a complex
pattern of small streets and had to provide a majestic passage
from the port to the centre of the city, the Plaza de la
Constitución. For the workers and their families it life was
much worse in this period, they lived in small, filthy rooms,
especially in the districts of Perchel and Trinidad at the other
side of the river, mostly in large blocks, the "Corralones",
where they all shared their latrine and kitchen in the
courtyard.
In 1937 Franco’s nationalist revolt took over Málaga and then
harbour labourers were forced to tell where the statue of
Larios could be found in the harbour. They were then forced
to dredge it up and put it back where it was before. Of course
the allegory of Labour was also put back on its former position,
below and behind his boss. The “normal” social relations had
been restored.
In 1951 the statue was restored and healed
from its ‘war injuries’, however not
completely because the child being held
up by the woman towards Larios is still
missing an arm and a hand of its other
arm. In that hand it offered a laurel twig
to Larios in gratitude of the city. It
couldn’t be very expensive to restore this,
detailed pictures of it do exist, but it is still
not done. Maybe the issue is too sensitive
Hein Hendriks
and the city government is afraid to
revive political troubles? Maybe for that same reason in the
nineties, during the building of the large underground car
park, they placed the rather ugly concrete construction at the
foot of the monument: to prevent people from climbing on
the statue and changing the traditional relations again?
In the 1931 elections the left-wing and Republican parties
obtained a major victory over the monarchist and conservative
parties. As a consequence of that, the king was deposed and the
second Republic was founded. In Málaga the festive
celebration of this big change led the poor population to
spontaneous riots and revenge against the Church and the rich,
as well as against the absolute symbol of repression in Málaga,
the statue of Larios. The statue was torn from its pedestal,
dragged in great euphoria through the streets and thrown into
the harbour. The figure of Labour was put in place of the
employer Larios, as if to make it very clear that all those
beautiful palaces and especially the Calle Larios had been
made by the workers and not by a casual financier.
The second picture shows the changed social relations in April
HEIN HENDRIKS
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