27 Jun Benalmádena – a gem on the Costa del Sol
With only 13 kilometers to Málaga airport, Benalmádena has become one of the most desirable cities for many northern Europeans who dream of “a second home in the sun”. One of the reasons for this is the good connections by car, bus and train as well as its perfect location on the Mediterranean Sea. Benalmádena is also one of the most popular municipalities for sun-thirsty visitors.
Benalmádena has Torremolinos as its nearest neighbor to the east and Fuengirola to the west. The municipality is 27.2 square kilometers in size and has a population density of 2,490 inhabitants per square kilometer. The city has 66,939 inhabitants, which is the eighth highest population on the Costa del Sol, and is the municipality with the third largest area after Málaga and Torremolinos, which includes three main urban areas: Benalmádena Pueblo, Arroyo de la Miel and Benalmádena Costa.
Benalmádena Pueblo
About three kilometers from the beach lies the original core of Benalmádena at an altitude of 280 meters. Benalmádena Pueblo, like Mijas Pueblo, is an authentic Andalusian mountain village with picturesque Andalusian houses, cobbled streets and narrow flower-adorned alleys. Despite high demand for real estate and increased new construction over the past 20 years, the village has managed to retain much of its charm. It wasn’t long ago that El Pueblo in Benalmádena was an almost undeveloped rural community.
Arroyo de la Miel
Arroyo de la Miel (Honey Brook), which was originally a separate town, is located between Benalmádena Pueblo and Benalmádena Costa. It is the largest and busiest part of the municipality in terms of housing, but also commercially. The development mainly consists of large apartment complexes that are close together. Here is also the train station, which is connected to the final stations of Málaga and Fuengirola.
Arroyo de la Miel is also home to Tivoli World, the largest amusement park on the Costa del Sol with more than 40 different attractions. Just outside the amusement park, a cable car starts that goes up to the top of Mount Calamorro at an altitude of 769 meters. In Arroyo de la Miel there is also the dolphinarium Selwo Marina and the only ice rink in Andalusia.
Benalmádena Costa
The most touristic part of the municipality of Benalmádena is called Benalmádena Costa and stretches ten kilometers along the Mediterranean Sea. This is also one of the most important and largest tourist destinations on the Costa del Sol and one of the places with the largest range of hotels. Here you will find almost all the hotels in the immediate area and lots of bars and restaurants. The internationally renowned port Puerto Marina is located in Benalmádena Costa and has been named the world’s best marina on two occasions by an international tourist magazine.
The historic Benalmádena
The Arabs gave the place its name, Ben-al-Mádena which in Arabic means “sons of the mines”. For almost 800 years the Arabs ruled the area. When the Christian conquest began in the middle of the 15th century, Benalmádena was partially destroyed and in 1456 a large part of the population abandoned the city and moved, among other things, to the neighboring municipality of Mijas. When things calmed down, many returned to rebuild the city, only to experience its destruction again in 1485, when the Christian royal couple Ferdinand and Isabel’s troops retook it by force. The next disaster for Benalmádena came at the end of October 1680 when a powerful earthquake destroyed the city and leveled almost all the buildings to the ground. The coastal part was also destroyed. During the 18th and 19th centuries, great efforts were made to rebuild Benalmádena. In 1784, Félix Solesio bought the area of Arroyo de la Miel and built six paper mills here. They started with viticulture and cultivated moscatel grapes, which once again gave the town momentum. People started moving in again and the city slowly grew.
More modern times
In 1890 the vineyards were destroyed by a vine louse, (Phylloxera vastatrix) which originated from America. It destroyed most of Europe’s vineyards and it was not until after World War II that they fully recovered. Diseases such as cholera, malaria and typhus ravaged the population, and large numbers of residents emigrated.
At the end of the 19th century, Benalmádena had just over 2,000 inhabitants, which decreased slightly during the 20th century until tourism made its entrance in the 1950s. During the 1970s there was a sharp increase and in 2000 Benalmádena had around 30,000 inhabitants, which today amounts to an incredible 66 939 according to the latest census in 2015.
