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.

 

To be fair, the town has been spared the worst excesses of concrete architecture inflicted upon Torremolinos. Marbella also retains the greater part of its old town - set back a little from the sea and the new development. Centred on the Plaza de los Naranjos and still partially walled, the old town is hidden from the main road and easy to miss. Slowly, this original quarter is being bought up and turned into "quaint" clothes boutiques and restaurants, but this process isn't that far advanced. You can still sit in an ordinary bar in a small old square and look up beyond the whitewashed alleyways to the mountains of Ronda.

The truly rich don't stay in Marbella itself. They secrete themselves away in villas in the surrounding hills or lie around on phenomenally large and luxurious yachts at the marina and casino complex of Puerto Banús , 6km out of town towards San Pedro. If you're impoverished, this fact is worth noting as it's sometimes possible to find work scrubbing and repairing said yachts - and the pay can be very reasonable. As you'd expect, Puerto Banús has more than its complement of cocktail bars and seafood restaurants, most of them very pricey.