In little more than twenty years, Málaga has transformed into a city of museums, and that is a significant achievement. Where once there was only sun and sea for the visitor, today there is a density of institutions that few Spanish cities of its size can match: the Picasso, the Pompidou, the Thyssen, the Russian Museum, the new MUCAC, and La Térmica. Those who set out to build all of this worked hard, and the brand is effective.
I have spent years working within the cultural fabric of this city, and there is a question that the brand does not answer: for whom does all this machinery produce? Because having museums is not the same as having a scene. A museum can be filled with work from elsewhere. A scene requires that work is produced here, exhibited here, and that one can make a living from creating it.
The 2026 investment plan of the municipal agency that manages the city's museums allocates two hundred thousand euros to renovating the lighting of one of the MUCAC venues, and twenty-five thousand to acquiring work for that same museum. I am not comparing the entire culture budget with that of the artists; I am comparing two items within the same plan: that of lighting a gallery and that of purchasing what goes inside it. With the cost of lighting a gallery, very little work by local artists is produced.
I move to the regional level and find the same situation in a different key: the main grant from the Regional Government to a young Andalusian artist for producing a work is three thousand euros; a residency at the centre in Córdoba reaches, at most, seven thousand. These are respectable figures for the individual recipient, yet they are negligible as a national policy.
A museum requires light, security, and climate control, and these budget items are legitimate. The problem is the proportion, because proportion reveals priority. Investment is made readily in the container and sparingly in the local content, and the result is a city that displays art splendidly while producing little of its own. The infrastructure is oversized in relation to the fabric that should sustain it, and thus what is exhibited comes, in large part, from elsewhere.
The Russian Museum opened as a branch of a major state institution, with its base of collections behind it. When that base withdrew in 2022, the venue did not close: it remained open, now with private collections and temporary exhibitions filling the space. The brand held, the building held, but the content that justified the project had departed. It is the image of what can happen when a cultural policy relies on importing brands rather than cultivating one's own: you are left with an illuminated shell and changing filler. A solid local scene does not empty in this manner, because it does not depend on an agreement that can be broken in an office thousands of kilometres away.
This is not a nostalgic complaint from a local artist demanding their share. It is a question of what type of cultural city we wish to become: one that consumes culture produced elsewhere or one that also generates it. The latter does not arise solely from public spending, and this is where the constructive part lies, for criticising without proposing is comfortable and sterile. A scene is woven when institutions, the university, and businesses cease to operate in isolation. The university trains artists who, upon graduating, leave immediately, because there is nowhere here to produce and no way to make a living. The institutions possess the spaces and the budgets, but they programme with the visitor in mind, not the local creator. And the business sector, which has grown in this city alongside the technology industry, could support production, residencies, and collecting if someone were to facilitate that encounter. No one facilitates it. Each pillar exists, yet they do not touch.
There is a window of opportunity now, which is why I write this today rather than in two years' time. The MUCAC is currently redefining itself: it has recently been municipalised, it possesses one reopened site and another about to reopen, and it has not yet fully determined its future identity. This is the moment to demand that the new model incorporates local production, residencies, and a stable relationship with more galleries and spaces within the city, rather than merely imported exhibitions and a select, habitual group of local collaborators. Once the model is institutionalised, it will be too late to request this; the request will be made, and the response will be that everything is already defined.
I do not ask for fewer museums. I hope that the machinery we have built will also serve to ensure an artist can train, produce, exhibit, and sell without packing their bags. That the city which illuminates its galleries so well invests part of that energy into ensuring they are not, increasingly, filled with the work of others. Because a perfectly illuminated gallery filled with art from elsewhere is a shop window. A scene is something else entirely, and that remains to be built.
On the open conversation
I write this as an artist and as the head of a cultural entity, based on public budgetary data and the diagnosis already documented in studies regarding the Malaga cultural model. I acknowledge what has been built—the infrastructure and the brand are real—and I maintain that the rest is missing: a policy that fosters the local creator and weaves together institutions, universities, and businesses, something that does not currently occur. If anyone wishes to intervene from the perspective of cultural management, the university, the network of galleries and independent spaces, or from the administration itself, this notebook remains open, and in this instance, I am particularly interested in well-founded disagreement.
Sources
Public Agency for the Management of the Pablo Ruiz Picasso Birthplace and other Facilities. 2026 Annual Investment Plan (MUCAC lighting, acquisition, furniture, and security line items).
Malaga City Council, 'Las Cuentas Claras' (Clear Accounts), Culture policy (2024 data).
Junta de Andalucía, Ministry of Culture and Sport. Iniciarte 2026 Call for Applications (16 June 2026). Andalusian Centre for Contemporary Creation (C3A), 2026/2027 residency call.
MUCAC (municipal ownership; merger of CAC Málaga and MUPAM; reopening of La Coracha on 25 April 2025; Mayoristas headquarters). Russian Museum Collection (reconfiguration post-2022; municipal source Visita Málaga).
UOC study on cultural policies, museums, and gentrification in Malaga; 2025 Fundación Unicaja Arts Observatory on the Andalusian sector.