Castillo de Suel

The hill on the right bank of the Fuengirola river mouth, rising 38 metres above the sea, was settled in turn by Phoenicians, Carthaginians and Romans; the salting vats for garum that survive at its foot belong to Suel, or Suelitania, a Roman municipium whose name the castle still carries. The river was then navigable by shallow-draught boats some way inland, and the hill commanded the land road between Málaga and Marbella, which ran through the hollow beside it.

In 956 the Córdoban caliph Abd ar-Rahman III ordered a small citadel raised on the ruins of the Roman town, quarters built probably around a watchtower, to stiffen the coastal defences of al-Andalus.

The fortress's Almoravid origin is plain, though most of what stands today is the work of later rebuilding. In the 12th century the Almoravids raised a walled enclosure of irregular, roughly octagonal plan — eight lengths of curtain reinforced by towers set at the angles, making an alcazaba; it has no keep. The main approach faces north-west and climbs a ramp defended by a barbican before passing through the gate-tower, the largest of them, with its horseshoe arch. The tallest tower to the north was the original entrance; another to the west is distinguished by its merlons, and both are roofed, reached by a narrow spiral stair. Successive occupants left a mix of building methods: rubble masonry laid with courses of brick, rammed earth, and ashlar where the walls needed strengthening.

The castle fell to the Christians on 7 August 1485, during the Reconquista, and was left all but destroyed by the fighting. It was rebuilt, and then altered repeatedly by each set of occupants. In the 16th century the main tower ceased to serve as the way in and a new entrance was opened; the tower on the east side was taken down altogether to make room for a gun battery, finished with a machicolation looking out to sea.

On 8 February 1810, during the Peninsular War, the French army seized the castle. Eight months later, on 15 October, the British general Sir Andrew Thomas Blayney, 11th Baron Blayney, landed on the beaches of Fuengirola with a combined Spanish and British force of 2,500 men. Blayney himself was taken prisoner in the days of siege and the battle of Fuengirola that followed, and the garrison holding the castle was relieved by 3,000 French troops under General Sebastiani.

General Ballesteros took Fuengirola and the castle back for Spain on 16 April 1812. As they pulled out, the French blew up the south-west tower and the stretches of wall beside it; those were never rebuilt, and the perimeter was closed instead with the loopholed wall that stands there now.

Sold at auction into private hands, the castle spent the 19th and 20th centuries in intermittent service, quartering cavalry detachments of the Spanish army, then Carabineros and Guardia Civil. During the years after the Civil War the castle and its surroundings housed people who had contracted tuberculosis. Guns abandoned by its various occupants were found in 1914 and stood for years along the seafront promenade before being brought back inside the walls.

Restoration began in 1969 under the last private owner, Leopoldo Werne de Bolin. The castle passed into municipal ownership in 1989, when a full consolidation and rehabilitation project began, and between 1990 and 1997 the Escuela-Taller Castillo Sohail carried out the works. The interior and its approaches were adapted as an auditorium in 1997, since when the Festival Ciudad de Fuengirola has been held there each year, joined from 2000 by Las Noches del Castillo.