Foreign influencers in southern Spain
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Tony Bryant
Malaga
Friday, 23 August 2024, 15:20
Many towns in Malaga have streets, plazas and monuments that honour a foreigner who has left their mark for one reason or another, but not many of these gave their lives in the process, as was the case of Robert Boyd. Boyd was a soldier with the 65th Native Bengal Infantry Regiment. After returning from India, he joined a young radical student society founded by Alfred Tennyson and Boyd's cousin, John Sterling, son of the editor of The Times newspaper. The group's clandestine meetings were frequented by General Torrijos, at that time in exile in London for his liberal ideas against the absolutist power of Ferdinand VII of Spain.
A 26-six-year-old Irish-born Briton of noble descent, Boyd participated in the plot in 1831 to end the reign of Ferdinand and restore the Constitution of 1812. The attempted coup failed and Torrijos and his men were arrested by the authorities after being betrayed by a presumed ally. After the briefest of periods in prison in Malaga, the general and his companions, who included Boyd, were, without any semblance of justice, taken out and executed by firing squad on San Andrés beach in the city on 11 December 1831.
His corpse was the first to be buried in the new English Cemetery due to his Protestant faith. It was an act that the romantic writer Richard Ford suggested might have secretly pleased William Mark, the cemetery's founder. Ford showed his support for Boyd's execution: "Certainly, if anybody in the party deserved shooting it is a meddling foreigner," he wrote.
In 2004, Malaga honoured Boyd with a plaque in the cemetery that declared him a 'Romantic Hero'. There is also a cenotaph in honour of Boyd in the cemetery. Along with this, city hall named a street in Boyd's honour, while his name also appears, along with his comrades, on the Torrijos monument, located in Plaza de la Merced.
The Torrijos 1831 cultural association marks the anniversary of the failed coup with historic reenactments each year.
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