Sir Peter Chalmers: A Scottish gent who helped both sides

When the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936, Malaga's Caleta Palace Hotel, which since 2007 has been used as government offices, became a reference point for the foreign community who remained in the city during the first months of the conflict.

Retired Scottish zoologist Sir Peter Chalmers Mitchell (born in Dunfermline, 1864) was one of those foreign residents who frequented the hotel during the early months of the war and his time in Malaga started and ended there.

While there is no monument or street named after him, the film Caleta Palace, released in 2023 and directed by José Antonio Hergueta, is a homage to this knight who helped people on both sides of the conflict.

He bought the house in the upmarket Limonar district - Villa Santa Lucía - from the then honorary president of the city's British Club, a Mr Harris. The site is now an apartment building called La Gaviota.

Chalmers Mitchell's book, My House in Málaga, is a memoir of his life in the city in the early 1930s and during the first year of the Civil War. It details how he helped people on both sides of the conflict and in the introduction he says he was "neither engaged in politics, nor in arms".

Sir Peter, or Don Pedro as he was known to locals, first came to the city when his friend Joan Procter, who was living in Villa Santa Lucía, was seriously ill.

After her death, (her ashes are in the English cemetery), Sir Peter bought the house. He had formed close relationships with the servants who worked for him and his neighbours, which is one of the main reasons he returned to Malaga despite the Civil War ravaging the city.

In his final days in Malaga in February 1937, Sir Peter was arrested as the city fell to Nationalists by Franco's military press secretary, who was the nephew of the Bolín family, the wealthy neighbours he had earlier helped. Chalmers had been helping Republican sympathisers too and had lobbied for their cause in the UK press. However, he was soon ushered out from the Caleta Palace Hotel onto a British warship. He died at 80 in London in 1945.