Cementario Ingles de Malaga

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A  beautiful Sunday morning having a ramble around the Cementario Ingles de Malaga.
The cementario is the oldest Protestant cementary  on mainland Spain {1831} and home to St Georges Anglican Church and a cat sanctuary!
Prior to the building of the cementary non Catholic people in Malaga could only have  burials at night, on the beach and in an upright position, and left at the mercy of the waves and stray dogs.
The British consul William Mark was granted a plot of land just outside the what is now Malaga old town  on the road to Almeria in 1829.
The church and cementary  is the first and oldest non Catholic church in Spain and resting place to notable people such as Spanish poet Jorge Guillén, British Hispanist Gerald Brenan, the American poet Gamel Wolsey, the Finnish author Aarne Haapakoski, and the economist Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson.
For more than 175 years the cemetery was run by successive British consuls with a little funding from the British government which was withdrawn in 1903, with the result that by the end of the 20th century it had fallen into a state of neglect. However in the early 2000s  with the agreement of the British Government, the ownership of the cemetery was transferred in 2006 to the non-profit making “Fundación Cementerio Inglés de Málaga” entrusted with the mission of preserving, maintaining, and administering it as part of the city’s heritage. The handover of ownership and transference was facilitated by  British Consul, Bruce Alexander McIntyre, M.B.E. and the foundation continues to raise funds to maintain it as a historic monument.
To this day the English Cemetery in Malaga is listed as a cultural asset (‘Bien de Interés Cultural’) by the Andalusian government since 2012, and is registered with the Association of Significant Cemeteries of Europe (ASCE) thanks to its outstanding artistic, historic, literary and botanical value.
The Cementario and St Georges Church are not only a place of historical and cultural historical interest but also of contemporary cultural siginficance with a lively musical life with indoor and outdoor musical events throughout the year, regular walking tours and various fundraising activites to go towards the restoration and upkeep of this gorgeous landmark.