In other posts we brought you Malaga traditions such as the biznaga, the Christmas lights of Calle Larios or the Holy Week of Malaga. Well, today we bring you the figure of El Cenachero, perhaps the least known of all.
The ashtray
Before delving into other issues, let’s analyze the main question, El Cenachero is a traditional figure of Malaga who was dedicated to the sale of fresh fish in the streets of the city.
Normally, El Cenachero were children who collected fresh fish in the bay of Malaga and distributed it by street selling, in fact the word Cenachero comes from cenacho, which are the baskets where the fish was transported.
It was quite a hard job because each cenacho had a rope tied to each of the ends of the cenacho and with their arms in a jar they carried each one of the cenachos, so that you can see it better, we provide a nice picture of a cenachero.
El Cenachero Malaga
As you can see, this is a black and white image, as the figure of the Cenachero in Malaga lived its strongest years between the 19th and early 20th century, although the profession may have been created earlier.
Obviously today it is a profession that does not exist, because apart from the fact that the workers were minors, today it is not allowed due to the danger of keeping the fish in those conditions.
As can be seen in the photo, Los Cenacheros traded the most typical fish of Malaga, especially anchovies and sardines.
If you have read our post about espetos, you will know that the sardine season is the months that do not contain the letter “r”, that is, May, June, July and August, which are the hottest months of the year, so El Cenachero in Malaga had to work in very hard conditions (if you look at the photo they were not even wearing shoes) and the fish could get in a bad state.
Sculpture Cenachero Malaga
Being such an emblematic figure of the city, there is a sculpture, created by the artist Jaime Fernández Pimentel and originally placed in the Paseo de la Farola. Later, El Cenachero was moved to a more central location in La Plaza de La Marina, next to Calle Larios, where it is currently located.
Nowadays many tourists who come to our city, take pictures with the statue of the cenachero when they see it because they find it very curious. In fact, on countless occasions they have shown us the photos during our guided tours asking what it was about.
