Marbella, Spain Summary

MARBELLA stands in considerable contrast, after another sequence of apartment-villa urbanizaciones, to most of what’s come before. It is undisputedly the “quality resort” of the Costa del Sol, where restaurants and bars are more stylish and everything costs considerably more. It has the highest per capita income in Europe and more Rolls Royces than any European city apart from London (although many of the classy cars here are rumoured to have been stolen elsewhere and re-registered in Spain). Recently the Spanish government and local police have been exercised by the arrival in Marbella of Russian and Italian mafia bosses who have been buying up property and using Marbella as a base to control their criminal empires, while in an ironic twist of history, there’s been a massive return of Arabs to the area, especially since King Fahd of Saudi Arabia built a White House lookalike, complete with adjacent mosque, on the town’s outskirts.