Most flamenco styles are named for a feeling, a rhythm or a town. Only a handful carry the name of a whole city — and Málaga has one of them. The malagueña grew out of the old local fandangos in the nineteenth century, slowed right down, stripped of its dance, and turned into something a singer could pour their whole chest into.

What makes it special is its freedom. The malagueña is sung a compás libre — without a fixed beat — so the guitarist follows the voice rather than the other way around. That leaves the singer room to stretch a single line into a small drama, holding a note until the whole room holds its breath with them.

It travelled fast. By the early twentieth century the malagueña had spread across Spain and jumped the Atlantic, taking root in Mexico and across Latin America, where it grew new melodies of its own. Ask for a malagueña in Veracruz and in Vélez-Málaga and you will hear two cousins who left home long ago.

For all that wandering, it still sounds like here: the light, the sea, a certain proud melancholy. When a Málaga singer opens a malagueña, they are not performing history — they are speaking the city's own dialect of song.