Malaga finishes dressing up for a new edition of its August Fair. From this Friday until next Sunday, August 20, the city expects to receive hundreds of thousands of visitors in a record year for tourism.. An economic plus for a city that is still too dependent on the service sector and that the unions consider the ideal scenario to demand wage improvements in the hospitality industry. CCOO and UGT have called a demonstration to demand that the employers open the agreement table.

The union organizations justified this measure, at the gates of a big week for the sector, in the need to reverse the loss of purchasing power. “During the pandemic, in an exercise of responsibility, employees accepted salary freezes, since 99% of the establishments are under an ERTE”. “The employers asked to annul the agreed increases, but this situation is more than overcome, as shown by the excellent data on the tourist situation in Malaga,” said the representatives of the workers, who highlighted that many tourism indicators, such as data from hotel occupancy, they are better than in the pre-pandemic. This, as they highlighted, should make employers reflect “on the justice of reverting part of this bonanza to the hard-working people who make it possible”.

Lola Villalba, secretary of the CCOO Málaga Provincial Services Union, stressed that the situation “has changed” and that forces employers to face wage increases that they consider “necessary”. “The strength of the hospitality sector is not reflected in the salaries of its staff,” he lamented.

The formula proposed by the unions is that of “4-3-3”: an increase in payrolls of 4% this year, 3% in 2024 and another 3% in 2025, “with salary revision to the real CPI of each year ”. But the refusal of the businessmen “pushes the conflict in the sector and the call for mobilizations”.

The first demonstration, to which all hotel workers from the capital of Malaga and the Costa del Sol are summoned, is called for this Friday morning and is expected to end at the doors of the headquarters of the Confederation of Employers of Malaga (CEM). At midnight, a fair with large numbers will begin.

According to a survey carried out by the Unión de Consumidores de Málaga, seven out of 10 people from Málaga will attend this massive event for one or two days and the average budget to spend each day is 65.38 euros..

92.3% of the sample valued the August Fair positively. The main reasons are tradition (58.3%), fun (58.3%) and family and social gatherings (50%). The small percentage of people who objected to it (7.7%) cited high prices, crowds and possible conflicts as the main reasons.

Asked about the aspects of the celebration that most concerned them, the people from Malaga surveyed highlighted safety (73.1%), the upward trend in prices (65.4%), the safety of the attractions (34.6%) , the loss of traditions (15.4%), the tourist priority (11.5%) and the commercial vocation to the detriment of the cultural one (7.7%). Along with this document, two copies from its newspaper library can also be seen: a volume of La Ilustración Española, corresponding to the year 1887, with an engraving of the historical parade of that year, and El Expreso del siglo XV, an extraordinary number published at the end of the 19th century and which pretends to be a newspaper from August 19, 1487, the date of the conquest of the city by the Catholic Monarchs.

The origin of the Malaga Fair can be found in the year 1487, the date on which the conquest of the city by the Catholic Monarchs took place.. In 1489, by royal decree of the RRCC, a market fair was granted to Malaga, which would connect with a classic medieval institution, present in a good part of the Spanish and European cities at that time..

But the effective beginning of the current festivities will take place two years later, in April 1491, when by Agreement of the Cabildo, the city council establishes to celebrate an annual fair, the day of the Virgin of August, to commemorate the conquest of the city.. This would be the first reference about the celebration of our holidays.

Throughout history, the festivities have a discontinuous and irregular character and are mixed and diluted, on occasions, with other religious celebrations, such as Corpus Christi, which for some years has the value of a fair

There were curious experiences and thus, between the years 1884 and 1886, it was decided to link the City Celebrations to the Virgen del Carmen in an attempt to give it a markedly maritime character and, likewise, favor an incipient tourism that was beginning to develop in those years..

A key milestone in the history of the Malaga Fair will be the year 1887, the IV Centenary of the Reconquest. After the intermittence in the celebration of previous centuries, a regularly annual celebration is now definitively established, lasting about two weeks and with a more lavish content.

In a historical context marked by a generalized economic crisis and unfortunate events for the city (phylloxera, earthquakes…) a new stage begins for the festivities that will now have a definitive annual continuity. The rise of tourism in timid growth and the desire for greater economic growth, after a period of general crisis, encourage the revitalization of these festivities.. Therefore, a fair with a religious, profane, playful, artistic, bullfighting character is developed…, as reflected in the multiple activities that are carried out: the Historical Parade, with the staging of the entrance of the Catholic Monarchs to the city; bullfights; Fireworks; dances; religious acts and functions focused on devotion to the Virgen de la Victoria; contests and exhibitions on Fine Arts, concerts and regattas.

In this setting, from the end of the 19th century, we must also look for the origin of the fair's posters, which in these early years will have a clear visual reference to the IV Centenary of the Reconquest. These posters also reflect over the years the evolution in pictorial tastes and the political, social or economic context in which they arise.