Marbella

Traces of Phoenician settlement from the 7th century BC have been found at Río Real on the eastern edge of the municipality, and the Romans, who called the place Salduba, left baths, a villa and a small bridge along the coast. The town took its present form under Islamic rule: after Norman raids in the 10th century the Caliphate of Córdoba fortified the coast, and the Moors built a citadel and walls around a town of narrow streets surrounded by fig and mulberry orchards. The traveller Ibn Battuta called it "a pretty little town in a fertile district", and in 1286 the Treaty of Marbella settled peace between the Marinid and Nasrid dynasties.

The town passed to the Crown of Castile without bloodshed in 1485, and the Plaza de los Naranjos was laid out soon afterwards. Sugar cane arrived in 1644, and in 1828 a Málaga businessman founded an ironworks using magnetite from the Sierra Blanca; for a time it produced much of Spain's cast iron. When the furnaces closed, the Marquess of Duero founded a farming colony for the workers in 1860 — the origin of San Pedro Alcántara — but the late 19th century brought poverty and hunger.

After the Second World War Marbella was a village of about 900 people. Ricardo Soriano and his nephew Prince Alfonso of Hohenlohe drew aristocrats and film stars from the 1940s and 1950s, and Puerto Banús opened in 1970. From 1991 the mayor Jesús Gil presided over a building boom that ended in corruption convictions; in 2006 the Spanish Senate suspended the city council, the first time this had happened in democratic Spain. Ángeles Muñoz of the People's Party became mayor in 2007.

Marbella's reputation was made by its visitors — aristocrats and film stars from the 1950s onwards — and the image of yachts, villas and beach clubs is still central to how the city sells itself. Behind it is an Andalusian town with its own calendar: the week-long fair of San Bernabé, the patron saint, in June, a fair for San Pedro Alcántara in October, a pilgrimage to the Cruz de Juanar in May, and the Día del Tostón in November, when people go out into the fields to roast chestnuts. Through the summer most barrios hold their own neighbourhood fiestas.

Music and film fill the warm months. An international opera festival has been held in August since 2001, there is a reggae festival in July, and an international film festival is held in June. The city has an auditorium in Constitution Park, a cultural centre in the old sugar mill at San Pedro, a theatre and a music conservatory, and Marbella University, the first private university in the province, opened in 2009.

The city is strikingly international. Visitors come especially from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Sweden and Germany and from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, local newspapers appear in Spanish, English and German, and the city has British, Swedish and other international schools. People from Marbella are called marbellís, a name popularised in the mid-20th century.

About 156,000 people lived in the municipality in 2023, making it the second-largest in Málaga province, and the population rises sharply in summer when visitors and second-home owners arrive. Most people live in two centres, Marbella itself and San Pedro Alcántara, with the rest spread through Nueva Andalucía and the developments of Las Chapas along the coast and up the mountain slopes. Only about a quarter of the people living there in 2001 had been born in the town.

The economy runs on services: hospitality, property and business services dominate, and the city has some of the highest household incomes in Andalusia. The legacy of the corruption years still shapes local politics — thousands of homes were built illegally, and schools and health centres did not keep pace with the population. Residents of the municipality travel free on the urban buses, which matters in a city with no railway.

Daily life follows the Spanish rhythm of long lunches and late dinners, and in summer the beach promenade fills in the evening. Local news in Spanish and English follows issues such as long waiting times for surgery at the Costa del Sol Hospital.

The traditional cooking of Marbella is that of the Málaga coast, based on seafood. The most typical dish is fried fish — pescaíto frito — anchovies, mackerel, mullet or squid coated in flour and deep-fried in olive oil, with salt as the only seasoning. On the beaches, espetos are sardines threaded on long thin rods and roasted over a wood fire in the sand.

Gazpacho and garlic soup are everyday dishes, and ajoblanco, the cold soup of Málaga and Granada made with bread, crushed almonds, garlic, olive oil and water, is often served with grapes. Bakeries sell oil cakes, wine doughnuts, borrachuelos — aniseed pastries fried with a little wine and dipped in syrup — torrijas, similar to French toast, and churros.

The bars of the old town serve tapas all day, and garlic prawns, patatas bravas and fried peppers are common. Alongside the Andalusian kitchen, Marbella has many restaurants serving international and fusion food, most of them around Puerto Banús and the Golden Mile.