It is a curious experience to look at the world from above. In From Hell, Alan Moore regarded it as divine: below, in the chaos of the streets, we are trapped in the city’s layout, in space, in time. From above we are like gods; we can perceive the city as a whole, beyond ordinary human experience. To contemplate, with perspective, the architecture of life.
Observing the map of the city from the rooftop of ME Málaga, I’m reminded of this. The place inaugurates for me an elevated and unprecedented view of the spot where I have been strolling for more than 30 years. Previously, the space that now hosts the hotel was a cinema, much lower. This experience, this vision, is therefore novel.
I see, for example, a plot that has been boarded up for years, the trace of other cinemas: the Astoria and the Victoria. A kind of caries au naturel, a wasteland improbably covered with grass in the heart of the city. Its dismantling has laid bare layers and layers of archaeological history about which we have read, but which mere mortals have never seen in situ. This unique view from above allows me to witness it: it brings me again closer to the divine, to the omnipresent.
In the distance, the cathedral with its single arm, the Church of San Juan Bautista, the Church of the Holy Martyrs, the Church of Santiago Apóstol… Once again the celestial, which in the center of Málaga stretched from corner to corner with the fervor of the Reconquista. To the right, however, the view dissolves into civil and bland rooftops, with the exception of the infamous black-and-white towers that fracture the landscape.
But all that is looked at afterward. The first thing is the Alcazaba, so close that it seems one could touch it. Mount Gibralfaro supporting it. The ebb and flow of pedestrians along Calle Granada. All this I observe with my legs in the water: an infinite pool, with transparent edges.
The watery element elevates the audacity of the situation. Also the loungers surrounding it, with their unsettling seaside air. As if instead of being in the Plaza de la Merced we were at the edge of the sea, which the hotel regards as very close. It’s true: you can reach it in a few minutes by car, you can almost glimpse it from the terrace. But I don’t think any Málaga resident would feel that the center and the beach are one and the same thing. It must be what I already know: the height, which casts a new gaze on space and time.
