Marbella’s beautiful seafront

Louise Swan, December 2016 | Areas - Our view

A stroll along Marbella’s magnificent palm-fringed promenade has long been one of the town’s special charms. With views across the Mediterranean to the Rif Mountains of Morocco and a selection of stylish beach bars at which to enjoy a relaxing drink, it is a particularly attractive way to watch the world go by. Furhermore, Marbella has an extraordinary selection of beachfront properties along the seafront.

Stretching from the eastern fringe of Marbella town to Puerto Banús, this stylish walk—known as the Paseo Marítimo—offers the chance to take exercise in an elegant setting. Of course, the concept of a seafront promenade is not something confined to Marbella alone—indeed, most of the towns and cities on the Costa del Sol have one, even if few equal Marbella’s for style and elegance—but now an ambitious project to link them all as part of a 50 kilometre long promenade is well under way.

Marbella, as is so often the case, has led the way, having started on the project seven years ago and the town has already spent €11 million on the project. It is now possible to follow a seafront route from east of La Bajadilla port all the way along Marbella town, past the opulent villas of the famous Golden Mile, through Puerto Banús and on as far as the leafy seafront of San Pedro Alcántara. In total more than 17 kilometres of the municipality’s 27 kilometres of coastline are now linked by the walk, which has made detours round natural impediments such as streams and cliffs unnecessary, and opened up to a greater public areas that had previously been relatively inaccessible.

The neighbouring towns of Estepona and Mijas have also been hard at work with their own parts of the project. To the east, a wooden walkway now stretches from La Cala de Mijas to the Calahonda urbanisation near Puerto Cabopino. The next phase of Marbella’s section will follow the beaches from Río Real and Los Monteros, along the Artola dune system to finally link up with the Mijas trail. To the west, Estepona is aiming to put in place a similar walk along the New Golden Mile as far as Guadalmina.

Ambitious as this scheme is, there are plans to incorporate it into a much longer trail that will enable people to safely walk almost the entire Málaga coastline, from Nerja’s Balcon de Europa as far as Puerto Duquesa in Manilva—a distance of some 180 kilometres.

Initiatives such as these demonstrate the importance Marbella and the Costa del Sol places on first-class leisure facilities. The region invests significant sums to ensure it retains its place as one of the world’s favourite destinations—and with a third record year for tourism in a row forecast it would appear these efforts are paying off.