Phoenician La Rebanadilla
It's a curious fact that the main entry point to southern Spain today is Malaga Airport, whose second runway covers the remains of the Phoenician settlement of La Rebanadilla, where the first foreign visitors arrived and established themselves almost 3,000 years ago.
The latest research using radiocarbon testing has pushed back the likely date of La Rebanadilla’s founding by at least 50 years to the end of the tenth century BC, ranking the archaeological site alongside Huelva as the oldest Phoenician settlement so far discovered in Spain and the wider Iberian Peninsula.
Located in the Bay of Malaga on the Mediterranean coast near the mouth of the important Guadalhorce River and its fertile valley, La Rebanadilla was strategically positioned for local trade, self sufficiency and as a destination for Phoenician ships arriving from the east to dock before the often difficult crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar (then known as the Pillars of Hercules) en route to Cadiz.
La Rebanadilla was a prosperous coastal settlement and trading post that featured a rare religious sanctuary, structured urban residences, the necropolis of Cortijo de San Isidro, wheel-made pottery workshops and metalworks processing locally mined silver for export to the Phoenician homeland.
At its peak, the walled site featured a number of rectangular adobe brick buildings, some of which clearly served a religious function, with large rooms or temples surrounded by seashell pavements containing altars, betyls (sacred stones) and thymiaterion (incense burners).
The small Cortijo de San Isidro necropolis has yielded some spectacular finds from only 12 excavated tombs, including painted burial urns, wonderfully preserved seal-amulets (scarabs), mushroom and trefoil (three spout) mouth jugs, perfume bottles, ointment jars, bracelets and necklaces.
La Rebanadilla was occupied by the Phoenicians for perhaps 200 years, with the inhabitants apparently moving to the coastal site of Cerro del Villar in the eighth century BC, before several centuries later founding Malaka (the bustling modern city of Malaga) a short distance away.