Costa del Sol

The Costa del Sol (Spanish: [ˈkosta ðel ˈsol]; literally "Coast of the Sun") is a region in the south of Spain in the autonomous community of Andalusia, comprising the coastal towns and communities along the coastline of the Province of Málaga and the eastern part of Campo de Gibraltar in Cádiz. Formerly made up only of a series of small fishing settlements, today the region is a world-renowned tourist destination. The Costa del Sol is situated between two lesser known coastal regions, the Costa de la Luz and the Costa Tropical.

The region has no official limit, but it is generally accepted that the Costa del Sol stretches from the municipality of La Línea de la Concepción in the west to Nerja in the east, spanning around 150 kilometers of coastline. The term Costa del Sol was coined at the beginning of the 20th century by Rodolfo Lussnigg to promote the Almería coastline. Until the late 1960s, it was used in reference to the entire Mediterranean coast of Eastern Andalusia. The name refers to the sunny climate, present in the region most days of the year. The Costa del Sol is one of the most important tourist areas in Spain; around 35% of Andalusia's tourism is concentrated in the region; in 2009 it had 17 million overnight stays.

The region was a relatively prosperous commercial and industrial center for much of the 19th century. The tourist boom in the area began in the 1920s with the opening of the Baños del Carmen [es] in Málaga and a golf course in Torremolinos. It became an international tourist destination in the 1950s and is today particularly popular among British, German, Scandinavian, French and Moroccan tourists. The most populated city on the Costa del Sol is the city of Málaga, with a metropolitan population of close to one million. Málaga is home to the Málaga-Costa del Sol Airport, which is the third busiest airport in mainland Spain, behind Barajas (Madrid) and El Prat (Barcelona).

The A-7 highway runs through the region, as does the old national highway generally known as N-340. High-speed trains serve the coastal region and inland areas, the AVE service reaches the Málaga-María Zambrano railway station in 2 hours 46 minutes from Madrid. The Costa del Sol has a population of 1,412,541 inhabitants. The Costa del Sol has spas in Málaga, Tolox, Estepona, Benahavís, Benalmádena, Mijas, Torremolinos and Marbella, the largest concentration of golf courses on the European continent, fifteen marinas, nine theme parks (including amusement parks, aquariums and zoos), as well as an information and communication technology business park (PTA), a Google cybersecurity center and a Vodafone research and development center.

The Costa del Sol includes the city of Málaga and also the towns of Torremolinos, Benalmádena, Fuengirola, Mijas, Marbella, San Pedro de Alcántara, Estepona, Manilva, Casares, Rincón de la Victoria, Vélez-Málaga, Nerja, Frigiliana and Torrox.

This shoreline region extends from the cliffs at Maro in the East to Punta Chullera in the west. It occupies a narrow coastal strip delimited by some ranges of the Penibaetic System, including the Sierra de Mijas, Sierra Alpujata, Sierra Blanca, Sierra Bermeja [es; fr; de], Sierra Crestellina [es] and Montes de Málaga to the north and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The coast shows a diversity of landscapes: beaches, cliffs, estuaries, bays and dunes. The rivers are short and seasonal, while the agriculture is hampered by the lee effect caused by the Baetic System.

The settlement history of this coast spans about 2,800 years. The first inhabitants to settle here may have been the Bastuli, an ancient Celtiberian tribe. The Phoenicians founded their colony of Malaka here about 770 BC, and from the 6th century BC it was under the hegemony of ancient Carthage in north Africa. From 218 BC the region was ruled by the Roman Republic and then at the end of the 1st century it was federated with the Roman Empire.

Under the rule of the Roman Republic, the Municipium Malacitanum became a transit point on the Via Herculea, which revitalised the city both economically and culturally by connecting it with other developed enclaves in the interior of Hispania and with other ports of the Mediterranean Sea.