Area guide · The coast of Mijas, Calaburras to Calahonda
Mijas Costa
The side of Mijas that faces the sea, from the lighthouse at Calaburras to the Marbella line at Calahonda. Four watchtowers, five blue flag beaches, and a fishing village that became the town in the middle.
Photograph: Werner Wilmes, CC BY 2.0
on Mijas Costa today
for a villa here
blue flag in 2026
Calaburras and Calahonda were finished
The place
The side of Mijas that faces the sea
Mijas Costa is the seaward side of the municipality of Mijas, a run of shore that starts at the lighthouse on Punta de Calaburras, just past Fuengirola, and ends at Calahonda, where Marbella begins. La Cala de Mijas sits in the middle of it, a fishing village that grew into a small town, with El Chaparral to its east, Riviera del Sol and Calahonda to its west, and the golf valley of La Cala Golf Resort a few minutes inland.
People often arrive expecting the white village in the photographs, and that is Mijas Pueblo, up in the hills behind, with a postcode of its own. The two answer to the same town hall and live very different lives. The Pueblo looks down at the sea, and the coast is where you reach it, with four watchtowers, five blue flag beaches and a timber boardwalk along the sand.
This guide sets out how the coast came to be lived on, what the towers, the lighthouse and the founding of Calahonda left behind, what living here is actually like, and what the numbers say, including the running costs that no official body publishes and that we hold ourselves.
The beach at La Cala de Mijas, looking east along the sand towards El Chaparral. Photograph: Tyk, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Where exactly it is
Between the lighthouse and the Marbella line
The coast read east to west, from the lighthouse on Punta de Calaburras to the boundary with Marbella just past Calahonda, a little under nine kilometres in a straight line. La Cala de Mijas sits close to the middle and carries the pin for the coast as a whole, with El Chaparral on the Fuengirola side of it and El Bombo beach, Riviera del Sol and Calahonda on the Marbella side.
- 1Mijas CostaPinned on La Cala de Mijas, the village at the centre, beside its 1773 tower
- 2Faro de CalaburrasThe lighthouse on the headland, with the 1575 watchtower beside it
- 3El ChaparralThe neighbourhood between the headland and La Cala, behind its blue flag beach
- 4Playa de El BomboThe blue flag beach west of La Cala, near Torre Nueva on its hill
- 5Riviera del SolBetween La Cala and Calahonda, running from the shore up into the hills
- 6CalahondaSitio de Calahonda, founded 1963, the last address before Marbella
Orthophoto PNOA © Instituto Geográfico Nacional de España. Rotated so the area reads across the frame; the north mark keeps it honest. Pins mark the centre of each place, not a boundary.
The towers were already here
A headland, four towers and a hamlet, then a town along the sand
The same frame of coast was flown twice, seventy years apart, and the fixed points have not moved. In 1956 the lighthouse, the towers and the coast road are there, with fields and scrub between them and a fishing hamlet at La Cala. What fills that ground is most of what Mijas Costa sells today.
Nothing was added to these frames and nothing was moved. The only thing that changes is how much of the ground is spoken for. Historic and current imagery © Instituto Geográfico Nacional de España, both rendered through one frame at one scale.
How it came to be
Four towers, a lighthouse, and a shore that waited
For three centuries after the Christian conquest of Mijas in 1487 almost nobody lived on this shore. The land was shared out among new settlers in 1492, and within a few years many of them had given it up, driven off by raiding ships from the North African ports. The village stayed in the hills where it could see trouble coming, and the coast was left to the watchmen.
The towers those watchmen manned are all still standing, and the council’s heritage record dates each one. The Captain General of the Kingdom of Granada released the money for Torre de Calaburras in 1574 and it was finished the following year, the same year as Torre de Calahonda at the Marbella end, which cost 560 ducats. Torre Nueva, on its hill between the two, is sixteenth century as well. The fourth is a different animal. The Torre Batería at La Cala was built in 1773 on a horseshoe plan to carry two cannon rather than a signal fire, and all four are declared Bienes de Interés Cultural.
The lighthouse came next, and it is the reason the eastern end of this coast is called El Faro. The engineer Antonio Molina designed the first light in 1861 and it was lit in August 1863, burning olive oil. A royal order of 1917 called for a far longer range, which meant a taller tower, and the white stone tower of twenty three metres that stands there now was finished in 1928. Its lantern was the first of the aeromaritime type installed on the peninsula.
The modern coast begins at its western end in 1963, when José de Orbaneja arrived, bought two neighbouring estates and joined them into the 280 hectares that became Sitio de Calahonda. The estate’s own history records that the rules of the day allowed twelve storeys and the founders stopped at five, and that the last of the original plots was sold in 2002. Between Calahonda and the lighthouse, La Cala de Mijas grew from a line of fishing boats beside its tower into the town that now serves the whole coast.
A villa at La Cala Golf Resort, a few minutes inland. The stock here runs from flats by the sand to houses around the golf, which is what a whole coast produces and a single estate does not.
The year the watchtowers at Calaburras and Calahonda were finished, against raids from the sea.
Two estates joined in 1963 to make Sitio de Calahonda, held by its founders to five storeys.
Living here
A coast with a town in the middle of it
Hospital Costa del Sol, the public hospital for the western Costa del Sol, stands on the A-7 at kilometre 187 just inside Marbella, and Mijas is one of the nine municipalities it serves. From Calahonda it is a few minutes along the coast road and from La Cala about ten. Specialist outpatient clinics for the municipality run from the CARE de Mijas in Las Lagunas, and in January 2026 the regional health service put out to tender the design of a new health complex there, to bring those clinics, the health centre and the emergency base under one roof.
Families here have state and international schooling within a short drive of home. The Junta de Andalucía runs two secondary schools on the coastal side, IES La Cala de Mijas and IES Torre Almenara, both in the village. St Anthony’s College, which teaches the British curriculum through to IGCSE, is on the old Coín road behind La Cala, and English International College, founded in 1982 and teaching the British curriculum from three to eighteen, is on the coast road at Ricmar, just over the Marbella boundary.
The A-7 follows the shore from one end of this coast to the other, with the AP-7 toll motorway inland of it for longer runs, so most journeys start on a road you can see from the beach. Fuengirola is about ten minutes east of La Cala and Marbella about twenty minutes west, and Málaga airport is around twenty five minutes away. The Cercanías train to the airport and Málaga city starts at Fuengirola, and there is no railway anywhere west of it.
Five Mijas beaches flew the blue flag in 2026, El Chaparral, La Cala, El Bombo and two at Calahonda, which puts a flagged beach within reach of every part of this coast. The Senda Litoral joins them up as a timber walkway three metres wide on pine piles, and the council has said plainly that it means to connect the whole Mijas shore. A new 700 metre section at La Cala came into service on 1 June 2026, part of a 4.1 million euro project that also takes the path from the lighthouse to the Fuengirola boundary.
The square at La Cala de Mijas, with the Torre Batería of 1773 a street back from the sand. Photograph: Tyk, CC BY-SA 3.0.
Schools
IES La Cala de Mijas and IES Torre Almenara in the village; St Anthony’s College behind La Cala and English International College at Ricmar, both British curriculum.
Healthcare
Hospital Costa del Sol on the A-7 at km 187, about ten minutes west of La Cala, with specialist clinics at the CARE de Mijas in Las Lagunas.
Getting about
A-7 along the shore, AP-7 inland. About 25 minutes to Málaga airport, 10 to Fuengirola and its train, 20 to Marbella.
The beaches
Five blue flags in 2026, at El Chaparral, La Cala, El Bombo and two at Calahonda, with the timber Senda Litoral along the sand.
What things cost
What is asked, and what was paid
Two numbers both get called “the price” here, and setting them side by side without saying which is which is how a guide contradicts itself. So they are kept apart. Registered sale prices are published by postcode, and 29649 is the coastal side of Mijas and nothing else, from El Faro through La Cala de Mijas to Calahonda, with Las Lagunas and Mijas Pueblo under postcodes of their own. The deed figure on this page is Mijas Costa’s own.
Asking prices, per square metre
The bar is the middle half of what is being asked for each type in Mijas Costa right now, from the cheapest quarter to the dearest. The number in the row is the typical figure. Nothing here has necessarily sold at these prices; that is what the panel beside it is for.
Asking prices per built square metre, resale stock listed in Mijas Costa, 1508 properties in total, as at 8 August 2026. From our own records.
What buyers actually paid
Every figure here is a registered deed price, the amount declared in front of a notary when the sale completed, for postcode 29649. Homes completed this year at a typical €3,080 per square metre, 4 per cent above Mijas as a whole. Houses went for €2,909 over an average 190 square metres, against €2,830 for a house in Mijas as a whole.
Read the two panels together and the lesson is the usual one: asking prices run over standing stock, which quietly accumulates every overpriced home that never sells, while deeds count only what traded. The gap between them is mostly that selection effect, not a discount waiting to be claimed.
- Postcode 29649, all homes€3,0801,729 deeds
- Postcode 29649, apartments€3,1541,395 deeds
- Postcode 29649, houses€2,909334 deeds
- Mijas, all homes€2,9483,150 deeds
- Mijas, houses€2,830571 deeds
JUST Real Estate analysis of registered deed prices, Portal Estadístico del Notariado, rolling 12 months, captured 15 August 2026. Postcode 29649 covers the coastal side of Mijas, from El Faro through La Cala de Mijas to Calahonda. Las Lagunas and Mijas Pueblo have postcodes of their own. Prices are moving: the official house price index for Andalucía rose 4.1 per cent in the year to 2025 Q4 (INE); the index is not published below regional level.
What you can buy
The stock that actually exists here
for sale in Mijas Costa
45% of the stock
34% of the stock
7% of the stock
No official body publishes what is available to buy, only what has already sold, so this part comes from our own intelligence. Through our network memberships we see every resale property listed through an agency on this coast, which means we know both what is genuinely on the market in Mijas Costa and where the same home is being advertised more than once. This covers resale stock only, not new construction sold directly by developers.
The shape of what comes to market says this is a whole coast rather than one estate. Close to half of everything listed is an apartment and about a third is a house, with penthouses and townhouses filling in around them, which is what a shore of low apartment communities at Calahonda, a village at La Cala and villas around the golf inland would be expected to produce. There is a real slice of building land as well, which few established addresses on this coast still have. The general plan in force was approved in December 1999 and has been modified seventy four times since, and in June 2022 the council opened public consultation on a new plan to replace it, so the planning position of a plot is something we check before you view it.
- Apartments67245% of listings
- Houses and villas51134% of listings
- Plots1137% of listings
- Penthouses896% of listings
- Townhouses775% of listings
Resale stock listed in Mijas Costa as at 8 August 2026, from our own records. Treat it as accurate to within five to ten per cent: a few near identical apartments in the same building are not always recognised as the same home when the sources are brought together.
Asking prices and supply as at 8 August 2026 · deed prices captured 15 August 2026 · refreshed each week
What it costs to own
The figure nobody official publishes
Every buyer eventually asks what a home here costs to hold, and no public body answers it. We can, because we record it. Across the Mijas Costa listings that publish their running costs, the median annual property tax, the IBI, is €600, and the median community charge is €1,680. Together that is €2,280 a year before utilities, garden and pool.
It is the lightest bill of any address on this stretch of coast, and the gap is a wide one. Marbesa, just over the Marbella line, runs at €2,617 a year on the same measure, Elviria at €3,544 and Cabopino at €4,502, and Estepona town, the other whole town in this series, at €2,522. The property tax is where the difference shows most clearly, at well under the level of any of the three Marbella addresses next door.
None of that is a reason to hesitate anywhere, it is a reason to know the number before you make an offer rather than after, and to have it in front of you when a seller’s agent tells you the fees are modest.
per year
per year
per year
From our own records, 845 listings publishing running costs, as at 8 August 2026.
Mijas Costa compared to nearby areas
The coast either side of the Marbella line
Mijas Costa and three of the easternmost addresses of Marbella share one shore, one coast road and one hospital, and a buyer who looks at any of them usually ends up looking at all four. The municipal boundary runs between Calahonda and Cabopino, and the asking prices change at it more sharply than the coast does.
| Address | Typical asking, per m² | Listed | Running costs, per year | Character |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mijas Costa | €4,315 | 670 apartments | €2,280 | A whole coast with a town at its centre, and the widest choice of the four |
| Cabopino | €5,408 | 47 apartments | €4,502 | The marina and the dunes, the first Marbella address west of Calahonda |
| Marbesa | €6,706 | 105 houses and villas | €2,617 | A small grid of villas on the beach, mostly houses on their own plots |
| Elviria | €5,306 | 167 houses and villas | €3,544 | Larger and greener, with the hillside behind it and more of everything |
Typical is the median asking price per built square metre for the type of home most listed in each area, named beside the count (houses and villas, or apartments), as at 8 August 2026; running costs are the median annual IBI plus community charge where enough listings publish them. From our own records.
Mijas Costa is the least expensive of the four to buy into and the least expensive to hold. What the Marbella side gives you for the difference is the name and, at Cabopino, the marina and the dunes. What the Mijas side gives you is a town at the centre, far more to choose from at any one moment and a shorter run to the airport. Which of those matters more depends on how you plan to use the home, and that is a conversation rather than a table.
Wider context: our Mijas property market report, and our property market data behind every figure on this page.
Who buys here
Three buyers, and what Mijas Costa gives each of them
The year-round home.
Mijas is the third largest municipality in the province, with 95,104 residents at the last official count, and La Cala is where its coastal side does its daily business. The council office, two state secondary schools and the twice weekly market are in the village, the public hospital for this coast is about ten minutes west, and none of it closes in November.
The holiday home that gets used.
Five beaches here flew the blue flag in 2026, the boardwalk puts them within a walk of each other, and three golf courses sit a few minutes inland at La Cala Golf Resort. Málaga airport is close enough that a long weekend is worth the flight, which is the practical difference between this coast and addresses an hour further west.
The buyer comparing with Marbella.
Calahonda ends where Marbella starts, and the sand, the coast road and the hospital are the same ones on both sides. Asking prices and running costs on the Mijas side of that line sit below Cabopino, Marbesa and Elviria next door, and for a buyer who wants this stretch of coast rather than a particular name that is the whole argument.
Common questions
Questions we are asked about Mijas Costa
What is the difference between Mijas Costa and Mijas Pueblo?
They are two parts of one municipality, a few kilometres apart, and they are not the same place. Mijas Pueblo is the white village in the hills, with its own postcode, 29650. Mijas Costa is the shore below it, postcode 29649, running from the lighthouse at Calaburras through El Chaparral and La Cala de Mijas to Riviera del Sol and Calahonda. Las Lagunas is the third part and has a postcode of its own as well.
How far is Mijas Costa from Málaga airport?
The drive is around twenty five minutes from La Cala de Mijas, a little less from El Faro and a little more from Calahonda. Fuengirola is about ten minutes east and Marbella about twenty minutes west. The Cercanías train to the airport and Málaga starts at Fuengirola.
Which beaches on Mijas Costa have a blue flag?
Five of them flew it in 2026, El Chaparral, La Cala, El Bombo and two at Calahonda, the Riviera beach and the Royal Beach and La Luna stretch at the Marbella end. Between them they put a flagged beach within reach of every part of this coast.
What type of property for sale on Mijas Costa is most common?
Apartments come first and houses second, as you would expect of a whole coast rather than a single estate. Of the 1508 resale properties currently listed here, 672 are apartments and 511 are houses, with 89 penthouses, 77 townhouses and 113 plots of land alongside them. That is a far wider choice at any one moment than the Marbella addresses next door can offer.
What does it cost to run a home on Mijas Costa?
A home here costs less to hold than at any of the Marbella addresses beside it, and the figures are ours. Across the listings that publish their running costs, the median annual IBI is €600 and the median community charge €1,680, together €2,280 a year before utilities and garden. Cabopino, just over the boundary, runs at €4,502 on the same measure. No official body publishes this figure. It comes from our own records.
What are the watchtowers on the Mijas coast?
There are four of them along the shore, all protected as Bienes de Interés Cultural. Torre de Calaburras, beside the lighthouse, and Torre de Calahonda, near the Marbella boundary, were both finished in 1575, and Torre Nueva, on a hill between them, is also sixteenth century. The fourth, the Torre Batería in La Cala de Mijas, was built in 1773 on a horseshoe plan for two cannon, and the council restored it as the interpretation centre for all four.
For sale now
Current property for sale in Mijas Costa
A selection of what is for sale in Mijas Costa right now. Every home we are listing here, with asking prices, is on the page for property for sale in Mijas Costa.
3 bedroom penthouse for sale in Buena Vista, Mijas Costa
- 3 beds
- 2 baths
- Interior: 136 m²
3 bedroom ground floor apartment for sale in Buena Vista, Mijas Costa
- 3 beds
- 2 baths
- Interior: 128 m²
2 bedroom ground floor apartment for sale in El Chaparral, Mijas Costa
- 2 beds
- 2 baths
- Interior: 60 m²
3 bedroom town house for sale in Cala de Mijas, Mijas Costa
- 3 beds
- 3 baths
- Plot: 17 m²
- Interior: 137 m²
3 bedroom apartment for sale in Cala de Mijas, Mijas Costa
- 3 beds
- 2 baths
- Interior: 109 m²
2 bedroom apartment for sale in Cala de Mijas, Mijas Costa
- 2 beds
- 2 baths
- Interior: 103 m²
Free download
The Marbella Buyers Guide
Everything a buyer needs before the first viewing in Mijas Costa or anywhere else on the coast: the purchase process step by step, the taxes and fees, the checks that decide whether a property is sound, and how the market has actually been behaving.
- ProcessReservation, private contract, completion at the notary, and the timings between them.
- CostsTransfer tax, VAT on new build, notary, registry and legal fees, worked through on a real price.
- ChecksCadastre, land registry, planning status, community accounts and running costs.
Prefer to read it online? The buyers guide page. Every figure on this page sits in our property market data.
Talk to us
Tell us how you want to live on this coast
El Faro, La Cala, the golf valley and Calahonda are four different lives at four different prices, and the difference is not only money. Tell us what the days should look like, and we will send you the streets that deliver it, with the honest drawbacks of each and the running costs in front of you before you view.
A person reads this and a person replies, usually the same day. No automated drip, no passing your details to another agency, and no obligation to view anything.
We have 25 years of experience in this market.
