The Moorish fortress
Under the Moors, the castle was expanded into a large fortress reportedly featuring 40 towers and three gates. In 1489, shortly before the fall of Granada, the town surrendered to the Catholic Monarchs – the cross on Peñón del Santo commemorates this.
The pirates and the watchtowers
Following the conquest, the coast was exposed to attacks from North African and Turkish pirates. As a result, watchtowers were built along the entire coast so that signals could be sent from tower to tower using smoke and fire. The towers remained in use well into the 18th century. Two of them stand close to Playa Tropical:
- Torre de Velilla – also called the Taramay tower, a battery tower completed in 1767, just a short distance from the apartment blocks.
- Torre del Diablo – the "Devil's Tower", also from 1767, built to replace an older medieval tower.
The Morisco revolt
Between 1568 and 1571, the forcibly converted Muslims – the Moriscos – revolted across the Kingdom of Granada. The town's patron saint, Virgen de la Antigua, has been the town's protector since 1569, amid the unrest, and legend has it that the figure was hidden in a well during those years.
Napoleon's soldiers
During the war against Napoleon, French troops occupied the castle and destroyed large parts of it. The castle was only liberated when the British fleet bombarded it from the sea.
The Civil War
The English writer Laurie Lee was working at a hotel in the town when the Spanish Civil War broke out in July 1936. The town was divided, the church was set on fire, and Lee was picked up by a British destroyer from Gibraltar along with other Britons along the coast. In February 1937, over 100,000 people fled from Málaga towards Almería along the coastal road past Almuñécar – "La Desbandá", one of the greatest civilian tragedies of the war.
