My favourite places in Marbella

When we packed up our lives in Sweden and moved the family to Marbella in 2018, the plan was simple. We would stay for two years. Get some sun, escape the Stockholm winters, and then figure out the next step. I am writing this six years later, looking out over the same stretch of coast. People hear Marbella and they picture megayachts in Puerto Banús or champagne spray at beach clubs. I'll be honest with you, if that was the reality of living here, we would have been on a flight back to Arlanda before the first year was out. I spent a stretch of my early thirties travelling around the world, mostly disconnected, looking for new environments. Now, at forty-five, I want a place that actually functions as a home. The real Marbella, the one that keeps you, is much quieter. It is built on small routines and public spaces that belong to everyone.

The morning edge of the water

The Paseo Marítimo is the long boardwalk that hugs the coast for kilometres. I try to get down there early, before the heat sets in and before the crowds wake up. There is a specific hour, right around sunrise, when the paseo is entirely given over to runners, dog walkers, and people setting up the beach cafes for the day. You walk past the marble tiles and the sand, smelling the salt and the strong coffee coming from the small kiosks. It is entirely democratic. Nobody cares what you do for a living or what you built in the past. You are just another person trying to get some fresh air before the day begins. I usually grab a cortado from a corner hatch, watch the Mediterranean for a few minutes, and head back to start work.

People hear Marbella and they picture megayachts, but the reality that keeps you here is much quieter.

Finding quiet in the old town

Later in the day, especially in the winter months when the tourist traffic drops off, the Casco Antiguo is where I end up. The old town is a maze of narrow streets and whitewashed walls. Plaza de los Naranjos is the obvious centrepiece, surrounded by orange trees. Yes, it gets busy, and yes, the restaurants right on the square charge a premium. But if you go slightly off the main drag, you find the local municipal markets. This is where I like to wander when I need to clear my head from thinking about AI architecture or product builds for Substrat. You stand next to older Spanish men buying tomatoes and fish, haggling over small change. The smell of frying churros and fresh seafood is everywhere. I spent years in Stockholm running from meeting to meeting, building Mediapilot, convinced that rushing meant I was productive. Standing in a Spanish market line on a Tuesday morning taught me otherwise.

If you want absolute silence, you look away from the water and up towards La Concha, the mountain that shelters the town. There are paths cutting up into the hills that you can reach in ten minutes from the centre. The air gets cooler up there. The pine trees block out the sound of the highway, and you can walk for hours without seeing another person. I try to hike up occasionally. Since around 2010, I have kept a written life plan, scoring my health, work, and personal time out of ten every year. Getting out into the dirt and sweating up a steep incline usually nudges the health score up a fraction. I am not breaking any speed records on those trails, but the view from the top, looking down at the tiny white blocks of the town against the sea, puts things in proportion.

The clay courts

I have to mention the tennis courts. Marbella has dozens of them, mostly red clay. I play often, and I play badly. But I love it. You rent a court, argue over line calls under the late afternoon sun, and then sit down nearby for some simple food and a glass of wine. The standard of club tennis in Spain is brutally high. Men entirely in their sixties will run you off the court without breaking a sweat, then offer to buy you a beer to soften the blow. It is excellent for the ego. When I first started playing here, I got incredibly frustrated by my own lack of progress. Now, I just accept that I am paying for the privilege of running in circles on crushed brick.

I still update that life plan every December. When I look at the scores for family, friends, and personal time, they have held steady or grown since we moved here. I do not know if we will stay in Spain forever. I haven't got this entirely figured out, and the draw of Sweden never completely vanishes. But as long as the mornings on the paseo remain clear, and the old men at the tennis club keep beating me in straight sets, it is a very hard place to leave.