What a decade!

A photo popped up on Facebook a week or so ago reminding me that on 15 January 2016 I was on the Balcón de Europa in Nerja. Although I had visited several times before, that particular trip would probably have been one of my very first reports as Axarquía correspondent for SUR in English. An opportunity for the role had come up after the previous Axarquía correspondent left and as I had already been working for the paper and lived in the area, I was deemed to be fit for the job.

I don't remember why I was in Nerja, but I know at the time it was the only town hall in the Axarquía to have an office specially dedicated to the foreign community and was still then the main town in the area with a significant number of foreign residents.

2016 was also the year that the Brexit referendum happened and by January rumours were abound, with then UK prime minister David Cameron formally announcing it in February. Nobody then really thought that the UK would actually vote to leave the EU. How wrong they were. Much more has happened globally in the 10 years since then: the Covid pandemic, wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Trump's two elections and countless UK prime ministers...the list goes on.

A lot has changed in the Axarquía too and I have been in the fortunate position of either reporting on it, or translating news stories written by my Diario SUR counterpart, Eugenio Cabezas.

While Nerja was the main town that foreign residents and tourists flocked to then, they have now discovered other parts of the Axarquía and both coastal towns and inland villages have seen a steady increase.

The local tourist board seemed to be largely focused on national tourism, but 10 years later and they have just come back from their first trip to a tourism fair in Helsinki, having become regulars at ITB in Berlin and the WTM in London.

While I'm pleased to say that my 'go to' organisations are all still going, there has been a shift to younger foreign people moving here and more business networking groups cropping up. It also feels that every shop assistant and waiter automatically speaks English with me, which was almost unheard of back then.

The Axarquía skyline is filled with cranes and new homes appear to be occupied before the builders have moved out. In Maro, the farmers whose leases have just been terminated, with possible plans to build hotels and a golf course on the land, made a very pertinent point: "It's one of the last truly rural, non-urbanised landscapes left on the Costa del Sol."

The Balcón de Europa has remained largely unchanged since 2016, but the news last week was that it is set to undergo a transformation too. The Balcón is changing in an Axarquía and a world that are both beginning to feel like very different places from those of 2016.