A novel rescues the lost papers from the wreck of the Gneisenau, the "Malaga Titanic"

Crossing the bridge over the Guadalmedina River, near the Church of Santo Domingo, his father told him about the origin of that iron footbridge known as "the Germans' Bridge" because it was a gift from Germany to the city for the assistance provided during the sinking of the training ship Gneisenau at the port of Malaga. A story that bounced around in his head for decades until he decided to investigate the event and discovered some little-known passages, such as the disappearance of part of the official report on the shipwreck, which was cut with a "knife". Lost papers and a mystery that add, if possible, an even more intriguing touch to the new novel by J. Francisco Guerrero López (Torre del Mar, 1957), a writer and professor at the University of Malaga, who titles his new book with the name of the legendary and ill-fated vessel: 'Gneisenau'. "It is the Malaga Titanic," he declares with the determination of a survivor of this literary adventure.

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And it is that this disaster, which occurred just steps from the port and the Lighthouse, remains more than a century later the maritime catastrophe most present in the memory of Malaga. The author notes that there have been more destructive ones, such as the 5,000 sailors who died in 28 galleys of the Spanish Armada sunk while escaping a storm in 1563, but he points out that the sinking of the Gneisenau is the one etched against all odds in the history of the city. And he gives the key to its fame. "It is the most iconic, the shipwreck par excellence because the people of Malaga saw and lived firsthand how it sank and how many jumped into the sea to save the Germans, even losing their lives," argues Guerrero López about the impact of that event comparable for today's society to the live collapse of the Twin Towers. Only in that December of 1900 there were no cameras broadcasting the horror and death, so it was only recorded in the memory of the people of Malaga who continue to remember this tragedy, precisely next December marks the 125th anniversary.

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The book

• Title: 'Gneisenau'

• Author: J. Francisco Guerrero López

• Publisher: Ediciones del Genal, novel, Spain, 2025, 400 pages, 22 euros

The shock not only continued in the following days with the most attended funeral in Malaga at the time, but also with the echo of this tragedy in which 41 sailors and, it is believed, about twelve Malagueños who participated in the rescue died. All of them are portrayed by J. Francisco Guerrero López in 'Gneisenau', which, starting from exhaustive documentation, reconstructs from fiction the days leading up to the sinking, described with a surprising level of detail. And it is not only that he searched in archives and interviewed naval experts, but he also did fieldwork and went with an east wind to the site of the wreck to feel in his own flesh the "anguish" and the conditions faced by the shipwrecked and rescuers. "I only missed getting into a boat with those waves," he says, adding a touch of humor.

Tribute to his father

To tell this story, the author also draws on his own experiences. Thus, the entire story is told through a science information journalist who makes a theatrical visit to the English Cemetery where the deceased German crew members are buried, where he meets an old woman, a former professor at UMA and who had been a nun, who keeps a document recounting everything that happened in the shipwreck. "This character is inspired by a university colleague and great feminist, now deceased, who, when she fell ill, we learned in the hospital that she had been the mother superior of an order, so this novel is a tribute that she would have liked," assures the professor, a specialist in autism and attention to diversity, who likes to break with the academic field when he puts on the suit of a fiction writer.

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Author of 'El doble de Picasso' (2013) and 'La casa de las seis cabezas' (2022), J. Francisco Guerrero López reveals that the novel is also a tribute and a pending account with his father, José Guerrero Perdiguero, a ship captain who planted the seed of this novel when he was still a child by telling him the story of the origin of the Bridge of the Germans. The book also clarifies a common mistake in the chronicles of the sinking since the Gneisenau "was not a frigate as it is often said, but a Bismarck-class corvette", in addition to offering a "realistic" portrait of the charranes, poor people who lived from the sea and slept on the beach, but who often drag a particular black legend.

The author claims the charranes as the humblest class of people who lived from the sea in Malaga against the portrayal of these characters as criminals

"They were also called the tiznaos because they collected remains of coal from the water, which was what then moved the world and the boats," explains the writer and professor at UMA who, against the image of these humble characters as criminals, offers a closer and more understanding look at these aspiring jabegotes. "The charranes were the lowest class of those who lived from the sea and some committed crimes because they had nothing to eat, but living on the beach I am convinced that they were the first to come to the rescue of that shipwreck," recounts this witness in deferred of that tragedy that also vindicates a writer today forgotten, Manuel Martínez Barrionuevo, who wrote 'El padre eterno', starring a charrán, "figures that were still seen on the beaches 50 years ago."

The prominence of the people of Malaga in the rescue of the ill-fated vessel with 470 crew members that the sea crashed against the rocks is very present in the pages of 'Gneisenau'. "In the chronicles they talked about the deceased sailors, but little about the Malagueños who lost their lives in the rescue and even afterwards due to the shipwreck," emphasizes Guerrero López, who gives the example of a man who went to save several people, but died days later from pneumonia contracted during the rescue. "They were heroes, but in reality we do not know for sure how many Malagueños died," concludes the novelist who pays his particular tribute to both locals and foreigners in these papers recovered from the most painful shipwreck experienced in the city.