There was a time when sitting on a terrace for a coffee was an everyday gesture, almost a natural right of the Malagueño. You sat down, ordered a white coffee and had enough left over for the newspaper and the tip. That time, friends, has passed away.
Today you order a coffee on a city-centre terrace and the waiter, on bringing the bill, adopts a grave tone, like a doctor delivering delicate news. Four euros fifty. For a coffee. Which, if you sit inside, is two, but of course, inside there’s no sunshine, and sunshine, as everyone knows, is traded on the stock exchange.
Because that is what you pay for: the view, the sun, the privilege of watching people go by while your wallet slims down. It is the tax on open-air happiness. And you pay it, of course you pay it, because the human being is a creature of habit and the Malagueño a creature of the terrace.
So there we remain, slowly sipping a coffee we now treat with the respect a luxury product deserves, stretching it out for an hour to recoup the investment. It is no longer a coffee: it is an experience, a small economic ceremony. And when the waiter asks whether we’d like another, we smile and say no, one was enough. For today and for this quarter.
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