I am the Belgian who stayed.

I came to Málaga twelve years ago, married a malagueño, and never left. Along the way I became an official tourist guide of Andalusia and spent six years in the education department of the Museo Picasso Málaga.

The education department is the part of a museum whose job is working out how to explain the collection — to a class of nine-year-olds, to a group of adults who have never set foot in a gallery, to a delegation of EU officials, to a workshop for people who are usually left out of places like this. Six years of that teaches you something no amount of reading does: which explanation actually lands, and which one only sounds good.

Now I run my own tours, in groups of eight, in the four languages I live in: English, Dutch, French and Spanish. Dutch and French because I am Belgian, Spanish because of the last twelve years, English because it is the language most of my groups share.

What I am after is simple. I would like you to leave able to look at a Picasso and read it, instead of nodding politely at it.