Torremolinos - History

History

Archaeological finds including human bones, tools and pottery prove that Torremolinos area was settled as early as the Neolithic Age. Some remnants are neanderthalians and dated 150 000 years-old by radiocarbon dating.

According to the Egyptian Greek geographer Ptolemy, the Phoenicians had founded here a colony named Saduce, but the Romans are the most likey to have founded the current town, as shown by findings of edifices and a necropolis (from whose size it has been deduced that the settlement had around 2,000 inhabitants). They also built the road joining Cadiz with Málaga, passing through Torremolinos.

With the Moorish conquest of Spain, were introduced the mills from which the town takes its name (meaning "Tower of the Mills"). However, at the time the population was reduced; the tower was built by the Nasrid rulers of Granada starting from 1300. After the fall of Granada, the town remained subject to North African pirate attacks which lasted from the 18th century; during the War of Spanish Succession, the town was attacked by an Anglo-Dutch flotilla under the British admiral George Rooke and almost entirely destroyed. A document of 1769 lists a population of 106 in the town.

The mills and the city were rebuilt in the early 20th century. The mill industry, however, started to decline in the 1920s. It was largely replaced by an increasing the tourist interest from 1928, particularly British visitors. Hotel Pez Espada opened in 1960. The first gay bar in Spain, Toni's Bar, was founded in Torremolinos in 1962. The Spanish regime reacted to the free lifestyle of the city with arrests of homosexuals and other repressions during the 1970s.

Torremolinos first appeared on the map of the Ensenada’s Marques in 1748. The name comes from the words Torre (Tower) and Molino (Mill). Water mills covered all this area of which only one survives (Molino de Inca) and one tower which forms part of a restaurant. Historians believe that moulded stones discovered at beaches and mountains in Torremolinos indicate the existence of the village 150000 years ago. Further evidence of its pre-history are nine skulls, some bones, clay pots, axe heads and arrows, ornaments of necklaces and bracelets, a ring and some animal bones discovered in the excavations of the caves: cueva del Tesoro (treasure cave), cueva tapada (cover cave), cueva del encanto (charm cave), cueva del tejón (badger cave). The study of these items places them at the Neolithic in the Quaternary period, around 5.000 years before Christ at the period when man learned to cultivate, the land. It is estimated that the skeletons found at the caves and at the cape of Torremolinos were 1.5 or 1.6 meters tall (4’9 ft. or 5’2 ft.).