The restaurants and shops are filled with guests from the Arabian peninsula, while the sights and sounds of Latin America combine with the spices and scents of Morocco.
Northern Europeans have been coming to the Costa del Sol for more years than most of us would admit to remembering. There always seem to have been hordes of Brits, Germans, Scandinavians and others crowding the beaches in the long summer days and hanging out of the bars at night.
And how the Costa seems to have grown – from Nerja to Gibraltar and beyond. It’s hard to know where the limits of the Costa del Sol actually are these days – And what exactly is the Costa del Golf, by the way? What´s all that about? And then there are the Costa Tropical and the Costa de la Luz. Where do these begin and where do they end?
The foreigners´ demographic has been changing recently too. More and more people from outside the country seem to be coming to live here nowadays. But a lot of old school low to middle income Brits (and perhaps Germans) seem to have left, squeezed out by the recession, maybe, or the ever more demanding job market or even, perhaps, the fact that it’s no longer so easy for the dodgier section of expat society to keep themselves off the radar, so to speak… But, at the same time, there is what seems to be an ever increasing influx of people from all over Eastern Europe coming to these shores, and often with plenty of money to spend… or so it seems…
And then we have both visitors and residents from various parts of the Magreb, as well others from deep deep into the African continent… The restaurants and shops are filled with guests from the Arabian peninsula, while the sights and sounds of Latin America combine with the spices and scents of Morocco in the squares and markets where the oranges and olives and potatoes harvested from Ronda, from Antequera, from Estepona sit alongside wines from all over the globe, not to mention the finos and manzanillas from the neighbouring province of Cadiz of course!
Where the frantic flamenco guitar and transfixing canto hondo mix with the beats of Davids Guetta and Morales; complementing the hypnotic beats of African drums and the infectious rhythms of the bachatas, salsas, merengues and sons that fill our ears and hijack our souls.
Welcome to the Costa, Welcome to Marbella. You´re bang inside the melting pot, my friend. Live that cosmopolitan dream!
