James Bryce
The foreigners who helped to shape Andalucia.
11. KING FAHD OF SAUDI ARABIA
Influential royal had a home in Marbella and spent huge sums in the area (it’s estimated an extra 30,000 euros a day was spent during his visits) and built a mosque and a palace resembling The White House
So important was he that the town marked his death with three days of mourning, while he has since been declared an ‘adopted son’ and his family continue to spend big every year.
12. WILLIAM KIRKPATRICK
A Scottish merchant and grandfather of the Empress Eugenie.
He served as US Consul to Malaga from 1800-1817 and is credited with aiding commerce and business growth in Malaga through his cotton plantations and mining enterprises.
13. MICHAEL JACOBS
The author and journalist has written extensively about life in Andalucia in his books and in the UK press. These include a celebrated book on the Alhambra and his fabulous tome A Factory of Light, about life in rural Jaen.
14. LAURIE LEE
Wrote three books about his time in Spain (much in Andalucia) and joined the International Brigades fighting Franco.
He spent many months in Almunecar and later spent six months in Andalucia, in the 1950s, when he wrote A Rose for Winter.
15. ARTHUR WELLESLEY (1ST DUKE OF WELLINGTON)
Helped Spain defeat the French in the War of Independence after victory at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813.
In acknowledgment he was awarded a huge estate near Granada, which today still provides employment for many local people.
16. GINO HOLLANDER
The American artist lived in Pizarra, Malaga for many years.
Collected archaelogical artefacts which were later put on display in the town’s Municipal Museum.
Indeed it was the reason the museum was built.
“Everything I was looking for was in Spain,” he later wrote, adding: “There was no poverty of spirit. People might not have had a lot of money, but their spirit was magnificent.”
17. HUGH MATHESON
A 19th century Scottish Industrialist he led the purchase of Rio Tinto Mines from the Spanish government and was the company’s first president.
Employees Alexander Mackay and Robert Russell, both doctors, went on to form Spain’s first football club, Recreativo de Huelva, for the mine’s workers.
18. BETTY MOLESWORTH ALLEN
Now, an ‘Honorary daughter’ of Los Barrios, she wrote a string of books on the botany of Andalucia, even publishing one on flowers at the age of 80 from her home near Algeciras.
She died in Marbella in 2002.
19. SIR ALEXANDER HENDERSON
Responsible for the construction of the Ronda to Algeciras line (later extended to Granada).
Today, the ‘Mr Henderson’s Railway’ walk, between Benaojan and Jimera de Libar, continues to attract visitors to the area, including British Prime Minister David Cameron.
20. ALASTAIR BOYD
The Ronda-based writer, aka Lord Kilmarnock, wrote a number of books on the Serrania de Ronda between spells working in the British House of Lords.
He later became a keen ecologist, who campaigned against the controversial Los Merinos golf development until his death in 2009.
There remains some mystery about Laurie Lee – Cider with Rosie, As I walked out … etc. The people of Almuñecar have no recollection of his having lived amongst them. People have tried to follow his route over the Pyrenees – and failed. His description of a corrida makes one wonder if he ever saw one, and so on. All very strange. And I am not sure he “helped shape” Andalucia, merely by writing about it. Not in the sense Wellington or Henderson did, anyway.
instead of my image there is on the above copy a nice lookin gal and”the trick to stay awake advert”..and …that is life for sure.after 28 years in La Chopera and Las Yeguas…..left in late 1990 on a medical necessity to stay alive..guess I was right as it’s now 21 years later and still painting at 87..but all requerdos are of our lives in Andalucia…with love