“It was not only in Farol that brusque changes were taking place…they were happening at a breakneck pace all over Spain…. Roads, the radio, the telephone and now the arrival of tourists… were putting an end to the Spain of old. And for those who wanted to see it as it had been, there was not a moment to be lost.” – Norman Lewis – ‘Voices of the Old Sea’
When we visit Spain we usually avoid the tourist areas of the Costas but arriving in Malaga at the heart of the Costa Del Sol we planned a drive west along the coast before heading inland to the town of Ronda.
The reason we avoid the coast is that we find it over developed, commercialised, overrun with barbarian holidaymakers from Northern Europe and totally unrepresentative of real Spain.
Tourists have been flooding into this part of Spain for seventy years or so but this isn’t a new phenomenon because it has always been a popular place with visitors and settlers.
The first inhabitants to come here may have been an ancient Celtiberian tribe almost three thousand years ago. The Phoenicians founded their colony of Malaka here about 770 BC, and from the sixth century BC it was under the control of ancient Carthage in North Africa. From 218 BC the region came under the control of the Roman Republic and then at the end of the first century it became a part of the Roman Empire.
The decline of the Roman imperial power in the fifth century led to invasions by Germanic tribes and by the Byzantine Empire. The southern Mediterranean coast was part of Visigothic Spain from the fifth century until the Muslim Arab conquest of Hispania and it remained part of the Moorish Caliphate of Al-Andalus until the success of the Christian Reconquest.
For almost five-hundred years the area settled down into a life of existence farming and fishing centred around small villages spreading west from Malaga but real change came in the mid twentieth century with the explosion of tourism and the Northern Europeans came again with their beach towel invasion of the beaches.
In 1950 a Russian émigré called Vladimir Raitz founded a travel company in London called Horizon Holidays and started flying people to Southern Europe and the package tour was born. In 1957 British European Airways introduced a new route to Malaga and the designation ‘Costa Del Sol’ was allegedly conceived as a promotional name when it first launched its new service on Vickers Vanguard planes with four propeller driven engines at the start of the package holiday boom.
Close to Malaga, Torremolinos was the first traditional fishing village to begin to disappear under a blanket of concrete and high rise hotels that blotted out the sun and tradition and its popularity as a tourist destination had a domino effect, and nearby municipalities such as Benalmadena, Fuengirola and Mijas, also saw a rapid growth in the number of tourists. This period of often unplanned and uncontrolled development brought a radical and irreversible change in the appearance of the once small fishing villages.
This is far from the Spain that we like but as we were here we decided to pick out one of the resorts for a lunch-time stop-over.
After picking up the rental car we headed immediately to the Autopista del Sol, an ugly, charmless toll road which conveniently by-passes the congested coast road and moves traffic from east to west with brutal efficiency. It reminded me of what Laurie Lee had to say about it: “The road to Malaga followed a beautiful but exhausted shore, seemingly forgotten by the world. I remember the names, San Pedro, Estepona, Marbella and Fuengirola. They were salt-fish villages, thin ribbed, sea hating, cursing their place in the sun. At that time one could have bought the whole coast for a shilling. Not Emperors could buy it now.”
We drove quickly past the sprawling resorts of Fuengirola, Belamadena and Marbella, the marinas, the golf courses and the condominiums and eventually left the motorway and pulled into Puerto Banus.
Puerto Banus is an expensive, crude, brassy, show off, bragging sort of place where people with money and style but no class or imagination sit on their yachts in their expensively logoed designer shirts or occasionally bully their way around the streets in open-topped sports cars. At the other end of the social scale tattooed Brits wander around the port showing off their sunburn and cheap holiday clothes and imagine themselves to be temporarily part of the jet-set.
Ever pestering Looky-Looky men prowl along the beer stained promenade displaying cheap counterfeit watches and other dodgy goods and then scatter like starlings when the sparrow-hawk police car appears and drives pointlessly along the side of the port.
We wanted a traditional bar with simple tapas but most holiday-makers and the ex-pat Brits that live here want pizza and chips and Chinese restaurants so we struggled to find what we were looking for and reluctantly eventually settled on a plastic restaurant and had an instantly forgettable meal at an inflated price.
As you can probably tell, we weren’t especially thrilled with Puerto Banus but we really shouldn’t have been surprised by that because this is really not the best part of Spain to visit and with nothing to really detain us we returned to the car and without a single backward glance took the road towards the town of Ronda.
This involved a forty-five kilometre drive through the razor edged Sierra Bermeja mountains as we climbed continuously along a dramatic road, the Carreta De Ronda, that never at any time had a single straight section of more than a hundred yards and which clung to the side of the collapsing mountains and zigzagged dramatically all of the way to our destination. There was light rain and some low clouds but we could just about make out the coast line and the sea as we drove through first oak and then pine forests of this protected ‘natural area’ of outstanding beauty.
We stopped a couple of times for the views but it was cold so not for very long and late in the afternoon we arrived in Ronda and booked into our hotel.
Love your banner header, Andrew! 🙂 I was in Torremolinos in the bad old days. Just once was enough. 🙂
Italy next? I noticed your reading matter.
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No, not Italy. I won that book by entering a competition by fellow blogger – https://margieinitaly.com/.
Ireland next for me, what about you?
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Home sweet home? 🙂 🙂
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I am ashamed to admit that I was a barbarian tourist on my first ever unaccompanied trip abroad. A supersaver deal to Benidorm in 1983. All English breakfasts, happy hours and nightclubs!
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Benidorm was my first venture to Spain in 1977. I went back for a day in 2006 and found that I rather liked it. Way better than the Costa Del Sol, although Marbella was wonderful and I will tell you about that later!
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I wonder whether the pink panther club is still there!
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Perfect description of Puerto Banus – absolutely spot on in every way. We too left without a backward glance…
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I won’t be going back that is for sure!
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I’ve happily avoided it. 🙂 –Curt
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It is worth taking a detour Curt!
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Marbella, Torremolinos, Benidorm. I motorcycled along the coast from Gibraltar to Barcelona in 1970. Busy, busy, busy. It has always amazed me that British tourist destinations in Spain and Greece are packed with pubs, chip shops, and English breakfasts (fried everything). The only thing they can get there but not in England is a sunburn, and even that is possible if you work at it.
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We generally avoid these coastal areas John but as we were close and it was on the route we thought we would drop in to see if we were missing anything – we weren’t!
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Love your cheeky banter. When people rave about areas, even if deserving, it doesn’t give the kind of valuable info that your *thoughtful critiques* do! Since we are spending 4 days in Malaga in September (never been there, had to) I appreciate the forewarning.
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Malaga was a revelation I have to say. Vibrant and cosmopolitan with plenty of things to see and do. I think you will enjoy it there!
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Andrew our cycling trip in Spain began and ended in Santander in August. I believe there were a million or so Spaniards on the beach. Although prone to exaggeration I believe it to be slight in this case. I can understand getting to less touristy or crowded areas.
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Those beaches in the north can be busy but interestingly they are mostly Spanish people from the south to get away from the heat and the boozy Brits! My advice is avoid the south and east coasts!
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True lots of Spaniards for sure. Some Brits as well but not that many.
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Don’t knock the north Europeans too much. They must bring a lot of money into a very shaky economy. I’d forgotten the Vickers Vanguard. A very workmanlike aircraft.
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But money and manners are two different things!
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Wow. That banner really pops. Stunning.
Too bad about the tourist trade ruining real Spain. Pretty soon no matter where you go, it will all look like anyplace else in the world: big hotels, sprawling restaurants, and tourists traps if that trade has done well there. 🙂
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I wouldn’t recommend it to you Tess!
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I wouldn’t either. Sigh.
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Great post. Further east – the Costa Tropical – changes things. There are still expat places (e.g. Nerja) but Almuñecar, Salobreña and our own `local’ beach – Playa Granada are much more Spanish. La Herradura is pretty too with no high-rise blocks. It’s not a sandy part of the coast but lovely all the same. Have been inspired to but Voices of the Sea. Thanks.
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I don’t like Costa Del Sol but I did like my final day in Malaga, I thought that was a great place!
‘Voices of the Old Sea’ is well worth a read!
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Ronda is a place I always remember very well, Andrew. The climb up the mountain route was spectacular and although we only spent the day there, it was one of the best places in Spain I’ve visited. We were there in 1999, so it may well be very different now. I still don’t know why to this day we never went back. I’m guessing the very expensive tacky villa and a very spoilt and immature member of the party we went with, probably put us off.
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Ronda would certainly make my Spain top 10
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I went in 2003, I have to say that it hasn’t changed a great deal!
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Hi Andrew, A very good post and interesting comments. Where was the photograph taken of the boy on the wall, I am sure it is L’Escala, Northern Spain?
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Yes it is indeed – good spot and thanks for the comment!
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A great read. “Barbarian tourists”…. love it! We live in a lovely quiet Spanish area just outside Fuengirola which really is full of the tourists you describe! Union flag bermuda shorts, 20 superkings, and a can of special brew. Enjoyed your post.
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We visit Spain every year but rarely go the coast, much prefer the countryside and the cities.
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Seville is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Not so many Brits abroad there!
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I would like to visit more places in amazing region which is Andaluzia 🙂
I leave you my post about celebration of New Year’s Eve in Madrid
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Beautifully written post. Just wrote about my vacation there more than a decade ago and agree that now the coastal areas would have commercialised a lot more. Have a go through my post for when the crowds were still limited.
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