What would you be willing to do for love? Would you die? Would you give your body and soul? Would you hang from a tower to write your beloved’s name? That’s what José Carlos Selva must have thought when, in 1993, he decided that a bouquet of flowers was not enough.
At 15 years old, after a typical adolescent argument with his girlfriend, Mónica Vallejo, he climbed the 96 metres of the chimney of the old lead factory in Los Guindos, an industrial relic in Málaga visible from throughout the bay, to paint in large white letters a name that marked the city: Mónica.
This graffiti turned the structure into what the locals dubbed Torre Mónica, an urban legend that, three decades later, remains alive over two thousand kilometres away, in the south of Tenerife. There, in San Isidro, the couple settled, married, and raised three children. From Granadilla de Abona, they have seen that the memory of Málaga does not fade, as they look at the Montaña Roja and compare the beach that witnessed their love, Playa de la Misericordia, with El Médano, where they write their daily lives today.
This story stems from a fight “typical of the age,” they both recall. “I don’t know if we had broken up, but she was very angry,” Mónica admits.
José Carlos, a lover of extreme sports, sought to reconcile in a big way. “The graffiti took me four hours; I was going to make it bigger. It was an act of love,” he describes.
After finishing his work, he went to pick up his partner. “She looked at it with indifference and nodded, as if I had put anything in front of her,” they now laugh.
As a result of this youthful tale, the entire city renamed the chimney as Torre Mónica, transforming it into a local icon, part of the boquerona identity.
The romance with the Los Guindos tower soured when the historic mayor, Francisco de la Torre, announced that it would undergo restoration. “It was said that those two kids wouldn’t be together anymore,” Mónica remembers. She herself denied the rumours on social media: “I am the real Mónica; the artist was my husband… and we are still married.”
Since then, the couple has recounted their story to media outlets and friends over and over again, increasingly surprised by the echo that gesture, as daring as it was adrenaline-filled, achieved, which became their greatest memory as a couple.
In the year 2000, they decided to change their lives. They moved to Granadilla de Abona. It was their way of becoming independent together. Later, they married. “There (in their hometown) there was work, but it paid less. Here, with a job, it was like having two there,” José Carlos explains.
They have laid down roots in the Islands, where their three children were born: Yeray, Carlos Airam, and Yaiza. “It’s a paradise. We don’t want to move,” he assures.
The tower was eventually restored, and the graffiti removed. In 2007, the Málaga City Council allocated over €500,000 for the rehabilitation of the chimney and its surroundings, returning it to its original appearance. The decision was not without controversy: the city sparked an intense debate weighing the preservation of industrial heritage against popular memory. “I felt very sad,” confesses Mónica.
A Declaration
On their last trip to their city, they went with Canarian friends who doubted the famous story. To test the legend, they made a wager: they would pose as tourists and ask several young people on the promenade:
“Would you be so kind as to tell me the name of that tower on the beach?”
The result was unanimous: ten out of ten identified it.
More than three decades have passed since that climb. The echo of what was the greatest declaration of love in the peninsular south still resonates in the middle of the Atlantic.
