ASIANOVERLAND.NET LONDON TO SYDNEY DAY 262: BARCELONA TO TARRAGONA, COSTA DEL SOL, SPAIN

The settlement history of the Costa del Sol coast spans about 2,800 years. The first inhabitants to settle here were the Bastuli, an ancient Celt (Celtiberian) tribe. The Phoenicians founded their colony of Malaka here about 770 BC, and from the 6th century BC it was under the hegemony of ancient Carthage in north Africa. From 218 BC the region was ruled by the Roman Republic and at the end of the 1st century it was federated with the Roman Empire.

Under the rule of the Roman Republic, the Municipium Malacitanum became a transit point on the Via Herculea, which revitalised the city both economically and culturally by connecting it with other developed enclaves in the interior of Hispania and with other ports of the Mediterranean Sea.

The decline of Roman imperial power in the 5th century led to invasions of Hispania Baetica by Germanic peoples and by the Byzantine Empire. The southern Mediterranean coast was part of Visigothic Spain from the fifth century until the Muslim Arab conquest of Hispania (711–718). The city, then known as Mālaqa, was encircled by defensive walls and became part of the Muslim Empire. In 1026 it became the capital of the Taifa of Málaga, an independent Muslim kingdom ruled by the Hammudid dynasty in the Caliphate of Córdoba.

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