José Carlos Selva and Mónica Vallejo, the protagonists of the graffiti on the La Misericordia chimney, are still together and remember the night in 1993 when he climbed to ask for forgiveness.
José Carlos Selva and Mónica Vallejo were 17 and 16 years old when a teenage fight separated them one Friday afternoon. He, who practiced climbing, decided to ask for forgiveness in the riskiest way: by climbing the 106 meters of the chimney of the old lead factory of Los Guindos, on La Misericordia beach, and painting her name at the top. The story, which Diario Sur has reconstructed with the protagonists 33 years later, remains alive in the memory of Málaga.
On the Saturday night of 1993, José Carlos and his friend Roberto climbed step by step to the top. From ten at night until two in the morning, he painted in the dark. He had miscalculated the paint and changed the initial 'Mónica Te Quiero' to a simple 'Mónica'. “If you stood there at the edge, you could feel the air moving the chimney,” he recalls.
The next morning, he went to pick up Mónica on his Vespino. “Get on, I’m going to show you something,” he told her. She saw the name from afar: “I couldn’t believe what he had done!” she says. Although she initially pretended to be tough, they made up immediately. In the afternoon, Mónica took her friends to the beach to show off.
“If I had permission from the City Council, I would paint it again, of course, but nowadays this is the city's heritage.”
The graffiti remained a family secret for a year. José Carlos's mother found out one day at the beach when some neighbours pointed it out. “When my husband confirmed that it was him, my mother-in-law almost had a fit: 'Are you crazy to climb up there?!'” Mónica recalls. Over time, the feat generated urban legends that she found in forums: “They said that the one who did the graffiti was a drug addict, that he had died, that he had committed suicide...”.
The couple moved to Tenerife at 18, where they still reside with their four children. They return to Málaga whenever they can, and visiting the tower is a must. The chimney, reduced to 96 meters due to the risk of collapse, no longer displays the name, but the bond with the city remains.
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