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Home > Travel Spain > Spain Destinations > Velez Malaga
Velez-Malaga
Spain, officially the Kingdom of Spain, is one of the oldest inhabited regions on the planet. It is a country that is located in Southern Europe, politically organized as a parliamentary monarchy. It is the largest of the three sovereign nations that make up the Iberian Peninsula. Administratively, Spain is divided into 50 provinces, grouped into 17 autonomous communities and 2 autonomous cities with high degree of autonomy. The name Spain comes from the Latin name Hispania whose capital and largest city is Madrid.
Velez-Malaga is a municipality and the capital of the Axarquia district in the province of Malaga, in the Spanish autonomous community of Andalucia. Locally it is referred to as Velez. The municipality forms part of the Costa del Sol region. Velez-Malaga itself is a market city, 4 kilometers inland from Torre del Mar but unlike the coastal resort not dominated by the tourist industry. Notable sites include the remains of the castle on the hill above the town, the churches of Santa Maria la Mayor, Nuestra Senora de la Encarnacion, and San Juan Bautista, and the sixteenth century Palacio del Marques de Beniel.
The municipality includes a significant area of the surrounding countryside and other settlements, including Torre del Mar itself. The area of the entire municipality is 156.36 per square kilometer, and its population at the 2002 census was 57,458, 28,462 males and 28,995 females. In culture, the most important event of the year is the Royal San Miguel festival, held at the end of September and the beginning of October each year. Other festivals celebrated include the Veladilla el Carmen, Santiago and Santa Ana. There is also a Holy Week procession, one of the most notable in Andalucia. Velez-Malaga is one of the last places in Europe where public cockfighting is conducted.
Velez is currently growning rapidly, with expatriates and immigrants from other parts of Spain appearing in every part of the municipality. Ethnic minority groups include gypsies, a small Chinese community, Islamic groups especially Moroccans, sub-Saharan Africans, and expatriates from other European Union countries especially Germany and the United Kingdom. In 2003 there were 2,743 residents who did not have Spanish nationality. Since 1990 there has been a movement, with its own political party, to separate Torre del Mar from Velez. Velez-Malaga is one of Spain's most popular destinations, and is well known for the quantity of cultural related attractions and monuments that the city has embraced.
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