Costa Tropical is a comarca in southern Spain, corresponding to the Mediterranean coastline of the province of Granada, Andalusia. It is also but less frequently called the Costa de Granada or Costa Granadina. It is crossed by the N-340 coastal highway that runs southwest-northeast along Spain’s Mediterranean coast, to the border with France. Within the last 4 years the A7 has been extended from Nerja in the Malaga province to the Taramay district to the east of Almuñécar.
The Costa Tropical is made up mostly of agricultural zones and small resort towns and villages. What makes the Costa Tropical unique in comparison to the rest of the Spanish coast is that the mountains of the Sierra Nevada range fall to the very edge of the Mediterranean Sea on the rugged coastline. Except for la vega de Motril, there are no flat areas for large urban sprawl, unlike the Costa del Sol in the Málaga province.
The principal towns of the Costa Tropical are Motril and Almuñécar. Motril is principally a manufacturing and agricultural center (horticulture, vegetables, tropical fruits and some sugar cane, although the last is declining). Motril also possesses a small seaport. Almuñécar is primarily a resort town and agricultural center (tropical fruits), with the summer-time vacation population more than tripling the town’s population.
The Costa Tropical has many historical sights, including prehistoric cave paintings in nearby Nerja; many Roman ruins including roads, bridges, buildings, fish salting factories, and irrigation systems used to this day; and abundant remains of the many-centuries domination of the region by the Arab conquerors. In fact, Almuñécar served as the entry point to Iberia and establishment of a power base for Abd ar-Rahman I in 755, who came from Damascus and was the founder of an independent Muslim dynasty that ruled the greater part of Iberia for nearly three centuries thereafter.
