Lagunillas: Malaga’s alternative Barrio de las Artes
An obscure maze of alleyways, plazas, and vacant lots, hidden in plain sight behind Plaza de la Merced, Lagunillas is a slice of authentic urban Spain perfectly preserved amongst the city’s most touristic neighbourhoods.
Lagunillas looks unremarkable from the outside, and is easily overlooked by art aficionados visiting Malaga in favour of the better known Sojo district, which features several private galleries and the city’s Contemporary Art Centre.
What makes Lagunillas worth visiting, however, is the story behind its dilapidated front; one of a community banding together in difficult times to create what is now recognised by many locals as the most authentic corner of the city’s art scene.
Malaga’s forgotten barrio
Home to about 4,000 people, Lagunillas is located north of Malaga’s historic centre, bordered by La Victoria and La Merced.
An abandoned urban rejuvenation plan by the local government in the late 1990s left Lagunillas with a host of abandoned, half-demolished buildings and a depleted population.
Considered a marginalised community by the EU, its residents face high levels of poverty, unemployment, and crime.
Grand designs
In 2005, painter and Lagunillas resident Miguel Ángel Chamorro founded the organisation Fantasía en Lagunillas. His aim was to provide the children of the neighbourhood with a means of escape through art.
Since its conception, the organisation has been crucial to the regeneration of Lagunillas. Every available surface has been painted with brightly coloured murals depicting life in the neighbourhood. “Since the children painted them, nobody tarnishes them or wipes them away,” said Chamorro in a 2014 interview with La Opinion de Malaga.
In 2015, Fantasia en Lagunillas partnered with the CaixaProinfancia programme, funded by CaixaBank, which aims to break the cycle of child poverty by promoting the social and educational development of children from deprived backgrounds.
Fantasia en Lagunillas also created Plaza Esperanza, an old car park in Lagunillas which was transformed into a basketball court and meeting point for children to gather and play.
Though Chamorro passed away in 2017, Fantasia en Lagunillas continues to run educational support sessions and cultural and artistic workshops at its premises in Calle Altozano.
It also holds permaculture and clay modeling workshops at the nearby La Yuca urban garden.
Words into action
In the late 2000s, a decade after the urban development project that left Lagunillas in ruins, local resident Concha Rodríguez began writing a daily motivational message for her neighbours on a blackboard on the wall of Calle Vital Aza.
Lagunillas artist Dita Segura noticed her work and encouraged her to turn her phrases into street art, in the hope of attracting more graffiti artists to Lagunillas.
This led the two women to create El futuro está muy Grease, which calls itself “a cultural association of neighbours and friends of Lagunillas”. It is run by Concha and Dita, with the help of graffiti artists like Johnathan Morillas (Doger), whose work can be seen on walls around Lagunillas.
The association began in a workshop on Calle Vital Aza, where Concha used to store all the ceramic tools her aunt had left her. That workshop became a place for neighbours to meet to practice art and music.
In August 2013, it expanded to the premises next door, and now operates as a social and cultural association, helping the community through events like food drives, neighbourhood clean-ups, and art workshops.
Rebuilding from the ground up
Various other grassroots cultural initiatives have sprung up within Lagunillas, including Radio Lagunillas, a local radio station which gives the community a voice, Lagunillas Por Venir, a neighbourhood association formed to protect the interests of Lagunillas and collaborate with the public administration to revitalise the area, and La Polivente, a multi-disciplinary cultural meeting space for locals, artists and visitors.
Lagunillas today: the heart of Malaga’s urban art scene
The work of these cultural associations has transformed the streets of Lagunillas into an open-air museum that attracts locals and tourists alike.
The art found here is street art in its purest form, inspired both by the challenges of life in this neighbourhood, and by the sense of community, strength and hope among its residents.
By attracting visitors intrigued by its art scene, Lagunillas hopes to remind outsiders of the struggles that still face their neighbourhood.
“Art doesn’t look for spectators, art looks for witnesses,” reads one of Concha’s signs.
If you visit this neighbourhood, make sure to support its residents by visiting one of its local businesses, which include independent bookshop Librería Suburbia, hole-in-the-wall café La Oliva Negra, which sells artisanal empanadas, and traditional tapas bar El Tinglao de Lagunillas.
An English teacher and part-time writer with a love for literature and culture, Jen first swapped the Scottish gloom for the Spanish sun in 2019 when she arrived in Córdoba for her Erasmus year before moving to Malaga in 2021.