What’s Hans Christian Andersen doing on the Plaza de la Marina?

If you’ve ever walked past the bronze figure sitting so casually on the bench — top hat, book in hand, duck peeking out of his bag — you might have wondered who that is, seated so centrally in town, as if he belongs there.

Hans Christian Andersen arrived in Málaga in the autumn of 1862, in the middle of one of his long wanderings through Europe. He stayed several days at the Fonda de Oriente on Alameda Principal, watching life unfold from his balcony: the crowd beneath the green trees, horsemen and peasants passing by, the harbor light glimmering at the edge of the city.

He was struck by how easily the city welcomed him: its warmth, its light, its people, and that wide horizon that seemed to stretch all the way into the imagination.

In his travel memoir Journey Through Spain, published shortly after his visit, Andersen wrote something that now lives engraved beneath him on the plaque of his statue:

What a confession from a man who spent his life wandering.

Because if you know Andersen’s stories, you know he was never truly writing about castles or mermaids or birds. He was writing about belonging. About the ache of not knowing where you fit. About the bravery of living before you’ve found your place in the world.

When Andersen wrote The Ugly Duckling, he didn’t give us a story about self-improvement. He gave us a story about self-recognition.

The duckling doesn’t become worthy of belonging. He survives long enough to find his people: The swans who look at him and recognize him as kin.

Again and again, Andersen’s characters — the Little Mermaid, the Little Match Girl, the misfits and the dreamers — teach us the same truth: the outsiders are never wrong for being different. Their suffering doesn’t come from being flawed. It comes from being misplaced.

You cannot truly belong in a life that isn’t built for who you are. Love is not about winning approval. Belonging is not about performance.

Andersen teaches us to stop asking, “How do I fit?” and start asking, “Where am I already allowed to be myself?” That is where love finally feels like home.

After years of wandering, Andersen caught a glimpse of that feeling here in Málaga.

And, in our own way, after our own wanderings, so did we, and this city became our chosen home, the place where we began to live a life in which we are allowed to be ourselves.

A Statue that Invites You to Sit beside Him

In 2005, on the bicentennial of Andersen’s birth, Málaga was gifted a statue in his honor, not a distant monument to admire, but a figure you can sit beside. Commissioned by the Danish Royal House and sculpted by José María Córdoba, the bronze of Andersen rests in gentle repose, as if waiting for someone to join him and share a story.

The statue was unveiled by Princess Benedikte of Denmark, sealing this small corner of Plaza de la Marina as both a cultural bridge and a human invitation.

Now he gets to remain here timelessly, watching the city he once loved.

And if even a lifelong wanderer like Andersen could find ease here... then perhaps we, too, can learn in this place what it truly means to belong.

Love from Málaga,
Val