Marbella

Marbella passed to the Crown of Castile on 11 June 1485 without a fight, and the Catholic Monarchs rewarded it with the title of city and kept it as royal land, never granted to a lord. The Moorish town was remade in Castilian fashion around the new Plaza de los Naranjos, and in 1554 Charles V added the Fuerte de San Luis to guard the shore. Sugar cane, brought here in 1644, spread along the coast and filled it with mills. The greater change came with iron. In 1828 the Málaga merchant Manuel Agustín Heredia began mining the magnetite of nearby Ojén, burning charcoal from the slopes of the Sierra Blanca, and in 1832 his works lit the first blast furnace in Spain built for other than military use.