Málaga has been a trading port for roughly 2,800 years
Phoenicians from Tyre planted a colony called Malaka on Spain's southern coast around 770 BC, and it has been inhabited ever since. Carthaginians, Romans, Byzantines, Visigoths and Muslim dynasties followed, each leaving a mark on a city that now enjoys the mildest winters of any large European city.
The first settlement guarded the mouth of the Guadalmedina and served ships sailing between Phoenicia and the Strait of Gibraltar. Carthage took control around the 6th century BC, and Rome from 218 BC, when salted fish sauce called garum made the town prosperous and a Roman theatre went up. The Byzantines seized it around 552 and rebuilt its docks, until the Visigoth king Sisebut retook it in 615. Arab and Berber forces arrived in 711 or perhaps 713.
Under Islamic rule Málaga flourished. It rose after 930 under the Caliphate of Córdoba, became the seat of a small Hammudid kingdom in the 11th century, and later belonged to the Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, serving as its main port. Its figs were reportedly shipped as far as China, and around 1325 the traveller Ibn Battuta praised its gilded pottery, grapes and pomegranates. Genoese merchants were a notable presence by the 15th century, when about 15,000 people lived there.
That world ended on 18 August 1487. After a siege of more than three months, the most violent episode of the Granada War, Castilian forces took the city, and nearly all of the roughly 11,000 surviving inhabitants were sold into slavery; only about 50 people, led by the merchant Alí Dordux, were allowed to stay. Christian settlers repopulated it quickly. Industry boomed in the early 19th century, but the phylloxera pest that ravaged vineyards triggered a population fall between 1887 and 1897.
Today Málaga, with 592,346 residents in 2024, is Andalusia's second city and a growing technology hub, home to the bank Unicaja and linked to high-speed rail since 2007. It sits about 130 kilometres north of Africa, sheltered by the Montes de Málaga, which block cold northern winds. Winter daytime highs average 17 to 18 °C, and the city sees about 300 sunny days a year. Neighbouring Torremolinos, annexed in 1924 and independent again from 1988, opened Spain's first gay bar in 1962.
Source: Málaga
