Founded in 1831 the English Cemetery in Malaga is the oldest non-Roman Catholic cemetery in Spain and has a very unusual backstory. Prior to the establishment of the cemetery there was no provision made for the burial of non-Catholics in Spain. In Malaga this meant that non-Catholics could only be buried under the cover of darkness, on the beach, in an upright position and their corpses left to the whims of the sea, local dogs and other wild animals! It was established by the work of a man named William Mark, who was British Consul in Malaga from 1824 until 1836. Mark had seen the burials first hand and was disgusted that due to being Protestant the burials could not take place on any consecrated grounds. Mark campaigned and due to his efforts was given permission to create a cemetery just outside the city walls by Ferdinand VII on 11^th April 1830. The first burial was that of a ship owner named George Stephens who drowned in the harbour in January 1831. That same year a wall was built around the inner precinct of the cemetery and the first burial inside its walls was the Irishman Robert Boyd, who was shot in Malaga in December 1831 due to his part in the failed uprising led by General Torrijos. Boyd was born in Derry in 1795 and joined the British Army aged 19, he went on the volunteer to fight in the Greek War of Independence against the Ottoman Empire of the 1820s. In 1829 he returned to Derry and eager for further adventure joined a group known as ‘The Cambridge Apostles’ established by his cousin John Sterling. The Apostles were collaborating with the exiled Spanish general José Maria de Torrijos to overthrow the absolutist regime of the monarch Ferdinand VII. Boyd had received a large inheritance and subsequently earmarked this for use in the cause of the Spanish Liberals. He told Torrijos, “that his existence and his assets were the patrimony of liberty, which he did not consider the prerogative of certain peoples, but the beneficent goddess that should reign over all the earth”. After the conspiracy was exposed Boyd and his comrades were shot dead on the beach of San Andrés on 11^th December 1831, he had just turned 26. On his cenotaph is the motto ‘La Primera en el Peligro de la Libertad’ (The first in the struggle for freedom). Other notable burials include that of Edward FitzGerald “Gerald” Brenan, and Anglo-Irish writer and hispanist born in Malta, and the Spanish poet Jorge Guillén. There is also the mass grave of the captain and another 42 casualties from the accidental sinking of the German ship Gneisenau off the coast of Malaga in 1900.

The cemetery is a lovely quiet, pleasant visit with the inner precinct and its graves marked with shells and scallops, sadly set alongside many infant graves making it a very poignant place. The cemetery had fallen into a state of disrepair in the late 1900s and into 21^st century but with the agreement of the British Government the ownership of the cemetery was transferred to a Spanish charity in the style of ‘Friends of the Cemetery’ in 2006. They now charge a small entrance free to try and carry out repair work and upgrades within the cemetery.

GPS: 36.72122, -4.40716