My girlfriend and I are going to spain to rent an apartment through the winter.

Although we are both in love with Marbella we both couldn’t help but notice how much petty crime goes on, for example bag snatching, pickpocketing and house burglaries. We also observed that the majority of street criminals look south American and usually work in groups.

With this in mind I am seeking an area in Marbella to live with the lowest crime and where the locals / neighbours are English or Spanish, I don’t mind living outside of Marbella as long as it’s accesable by bus.

Petty crime can be a problem in any of the built up areas on the costa really.

So, if you are looking to distance yourself somewhat from those built up area where anti-social behavior is more likely to happen then your best strategy in my opinion would be to either look at moving to move to one of the smaller towns along the costa from Marbella, or look inland where generally things are a lot slower paced than on the coast.

If you prefer to remain on the costa, then I would recommend looking at some of the less built up areas such as La Cala, Las Chapas, or Elviria etc.

Inland closest to Marbella is the small hillside town of Ojen, or if you dont mind living further inland there is a few larger towns in the Guardelhorce Valley you could look at in Coin or Alhaurin El Grande.

There is currently a fast road under construction due to open early next year between Alhaurin/Coin to the Coast (Fuengirola/La Cala area), which should hopefully substantially improve travel times from those 2 towns to the coast to around a 25 mins drive or so.

Did you not notice the large villas, the Russians etc in very expensive cars.

That big statue in Banus, the giant, that was donated by the Russian Mafia.

Its one place I learn’t that if you have a driver cut you up and you feel the need to do some road rage, think twice before acting.

On the Golden Mile after some heavy rain I found out how slippery the roads get, I rear ended a Merc, not a large hit, but enough to start sweating, turned out to be a Russian guy, very nice guy, he immiedietly got out, looked at the car, noticed some damage and promtly said no problems, forget it, he didn’t want Insurance details to be swapped or any repairs paid for, nice guy, surprised the hell out of me, we both drove off straight away.

Did a few calls to Russian clients, don’t know if they were Mafia, but they had Ferraris, designer suits and very thick, not stupid, just very backward, not the kind you meet in suits, the Director of companies type, more thugs in suits type that cannot work out basic mathmatics so instead give you money, then ask if thats enough and keep tha change, when there isn’t any.

Don’t worry about the petty crime, its the ones that run the type of crime that involves bodies and concrete you should be concerned about and the Irish, there are a lot of ex IRA type peeps in CDS, like the recent hit on some Irish guy in a bar there a few weeks ago, must be a real downer when someone gets shot in the head in your local bar in Benalmadena, seems to happen every year.

The CDS also has the reputation of being Englands Largest council estate, with Benalmadena streets seeing serious anti social events the likes of which not found in the UK.

Thanks to the amount of families fleeing council estates in the UK for the cheap sun and sangria and there children fighting with local Spaniards and South American gangs.

Thanks guys, I will certainly give Ojen a look, we have decided to take our car with us to Spain for the time being.

With regards to Mafias, I understand that there are gangsters driving round in expensive cars in Marbella, because we have that here too in every single city in the UK, the reason it’s less noticable in the UK is because there are generally more people with expensive cars, so they mostly go unnoticed.

I presume that a drug lord is not going to be interested in snatching my girlfriends purse in the street and thus as long as we don’t crash into their cars we should hopefully be ok 😉

ratty - 09 August 2010 12:46 PM

I presume that a drug lord is not going to be interested in snatching my girlfriends purse in the street and thus as long as we don’t crash into their cars we should hopefully be ok 😉

Your girlfriends purse will be safe….....

Good luck.