About the cemetery

Established in January 1831 at the behest of the then British Consul, William Mark who successfully appealed to the Governor for a piece of land on which to provide British subjects of the protestant faith with a decent burial.

The first recorded burial was that of George Stephens, Captain of the brig “Cicero”, who drowned in Malaga harbour, and which took place on 22 January 1831. This was followed by that of Robert Boyd, executed by firing squad with the Liberal leader General Jose Maria Torijos and his followers on 11 December of that year. Subsequent burials of interest include:

• Dr Joseph Noble, Member of Parliament and physician, who died in 1861 the victim of cholera, and in whose memory his family built the Hospital Noble which until recent times served the people of Malaga;
• William Nutter, British landscape painter, died 1871;
• 42 officers and men of the Imperial German Navy sail training ship “Gniesenau”, which foundered outside Malaga Harbour in December 1900;
• George Langworthy, owner of the first hotel to be established in Torremolinos, and which would subsequently lead to the Costa del Sol becoming a popular tourist resort, died 1945;
• 4 Commonwealth War Graves of the Second World War;
• The Finish author and journalist Aarne Viktor Haapakoski, aka “Outsider” and “Henrik Horna”, died 1961;
• The English author and Hispanist, Gerald Brenan (died 1987) and his poetess wife, Gamel Woolsey, an American citizen (died 1968);
• The Spanish poet Jorge Guillen, 1984.

In 2006 agreement was reached with the British government for the ownership of the cemetery to be transferred to The English Cemetery in Malaga Foundation, a Spanish registered charity, whose aims are the maintenance and promotion of the cemetery as a place of historic and cultural interest. In November 2012, the Andalucian Regional Parliament agreed to the inclusion of the cemetery on the Regional Heritage Register as a monument of historical and cultural interest.

Contacts:
English Cemetery in Malaga Foundation
Avenida de Pries, 1 29016 Málaga

Tel: +34 952 223 552
www.cementerioinglesmalaga.org