Fuengirola

Fuengirola has become one of the favourite destinations of tourists who come to the province of Malaga; thanks to important infrastructure development. This town, which belongs to the Costa del Sol, is located in the centre of this wonderful coastline and is easy to access from anywhere which facilitates the arrival of many tourists throughout the year. It is no coincidence, of course, that 5,550 British have chosen Fuengirola as their place of residence.

If you are looking for a vacation on the beach without the bustle of big cities, but with all services, we recommend that you check everything that can offer Fuengirola.

• It's best to take the AP-7 paid motorway to get to Fuengirola from Málaga. It's the fastest way and takes between 25 and 30 minutes. Another option is to take the E-15 until you merge with the AP-7, taking 35 minutes.

  On public transport, you can take the C-1 Cercanías commuter train from Málaga with the trip taking an hour.

  By bus, the M-113 departs from Muelle Heredase and takes about 45 minutes with a ticket costing a little more than €2.

Fuengirola was founded by the Phoenicians under the name of "Suel". They established a fish salting factory in the area, which soon became a major trading spot in the Mediterranean. Under Emperor Augustus, the Romans turned it into a municipality annexed to the conventus of Gades. Evidence of the worship of god Neptune has been found, as well as elements that point at the existence of a powerful nobility.

On the slopes of the mount where the Sohail Castle sits, archaeologists found remains of the Suel Iberian-Phoenician settlement then colonised by the Romans: the plinth of a statue, a funerary altar, and so on. The ruins of the Torreblanca baths and the Finca del Secretario site attest to the Roman presence. The so-called "Venus de Fuengirola" was unearthed here.

When the Arabs came to the Iberian Peninsula, Suel became "Suhayl". The fortress was expanded under Abd-ar-Rahman III. It was here that King Henry II of Castile and Yusuf I, Sultan of Granada signed the 1340 truce that led to the revival of trade and commerce. According to scholar Juan Temboury, Suhayl was an educated town, the birthplace of illustrious writers like the poet As-Suhaylí, who dedicated a poem to his hometown after the fire.

Like many other towns in Andalusia, Suhayl fell to the Christian troops in 1485. By then, it had changed its name to "Font-jirola". After the Reconquista, the town was repopulated with old Christians, but they did not stay for long: in 1511, chronicles registered the village as "depopulated"; it was only a defensive spot, used for coastal surveillance. This led to the lands allocated to Fuengirola during the Repartimientos (land allocation plan) ending up in Mijas.

In February 1841, a group of residents in Fuengirola sent a petition for independence from Mijas. They got the autonomy three months later, and Antonio García Cortés was elected as the first town mayor. The newly elected authorities embarked on an expansion of the town"s boundaries, a fruitless endeavour that went on until the early decades of the twentieth century.

The local economy was badly affected by phylloxera in the nineteenth century, since most fields were vineyards. The first signs of recovery came with the arrival of the railroad in 1916, followed by the supply of drinking water 20 years later.

As early as 1935, the provincial weekly La Provincia referred to Fuengirola as a holiday resort. The first (small) hotels were built in the 1950s. They were the seed of the world-class infrastructure that this town in Western Costa del Sol has to offer today.