Estepona is what Marbella was forty years ago, and that's a compliment. The town calls itself "Garden of the Costa del Sol" and you get it the moment you walk into the old quarter — almost every whitewashed wall is decked in flower pots, and since 2012 the council has been commissioning huge murals that turned the old fishing centre into an open-air gallery.
The difference from Marbella is the scale. Estepona's beachfront promenade runs nearly 1.5 km, wide enough for joggers and families and grandmothers on bicycles, and ends at Puerto Deportivo where the fishermen still unload their daily catch. We come here for the Thursday-morning mercadillo behind the marina, and for Sunday tapas on Calle Real where the abuelas still bring their chairs out onto the pavement. This is the Costa del Sol without the show.
