After more than a decade in limbo, Marbella’s La Bajadilla port has a new concession, a new timeline and a headline figure of over 200 million euros. Here is the history, what has actually been approved, what’s still to be confirmed, and what it could mean for owners and buyers near Marbella’s town centre.
Marbella’s La Bajadilla port is finally moving again. On 2 September 2026, the Andalusian regional government confirmed it had awarded a new concession for the expansion and transformation of the marina, which runs for 40 years, 16 years after the project was first put out to tender.
Marbella’s Mayor Ángeles Muñoz celebrated a new concession for the redevelopment of Marbella’s fishermen’s marina, more than 15 years after the project was first put out to tender.
The Mayor shared the news on Instagram following a visit from Mario Muñoz-Atanet, the Andalusian Minister for Development and Mobility, acknowledging her long ambition to rejuvenate the project, the years of work to get the plan approved again, and aspirations that the economic and lifestyle benefits the redevelopment will offer Marbella.
The new concessionaire is due to take over the port on 1 January 2027, with plans to almost triple berth capacity, accommodate vessels of up to 70 metres, and rebuild much of the surrounding site with a planned investment of over €200 million.
For anyone following Marbella real estate, this is worth understanding. Below is what has been confirmed, what remains open, and why the story has taken so long to reach this point.
Puerto de la Bajadilla is the port that sits in Marbella’s old fishermen’s quarter, between Playa de la Bajadilla and Playa del Cable, at the eastern end of the town centre seafront: locally referred to as El Puerto Pesquero (the Fishermen’s Port). It is a short walk west of Hospital Quirónsalud on Avenida Severo Ochoa, and a short walk from Avenida Ricardo Soriano and the old town. Marbella lighthouse lies roughly 800 metres to the west.
It is one of four marinas in the municipality, alongside Puerto Banús, Cabopino to the east, and Puerto Deportivo Virgen del Carmen, and it is easily confused with the two that most visitors know. Puerto Banús, to the west, is the glamour marina built around superyachts and high-end retail. Puerto Deportivo Virgen del Carmen, also known as Marbella Marina, sits just west of La Bajadilla, closer to the centre.
La Bajadilla is currently the working port: a mixed fishing and leisure marina managed by the Agencia Pública de Puertos de Andalucía, with 268 berths for boats between six and 18 metres and three metres of depth at the entrance and in the basin. Its facilities include a boatyard of around 10,800 m², a 70-tonne travel lift, dry stack storage, a fuel station supplying diesel and petrol, restaurants and a public car park. Its total service area covers just over 155,000 m², of which around 88,000 m² is water.
It has never had the profile of its neighbours, which is part of why this redevelopment matters. It is the one with genuine room to grow bringing more amenities and options to Marbella both as a town centre and broader metropolitan area.
The scope, as set out in the Junta’s announcement, includes:
Earlier versions of the plan, drawn up before the 2025 environmental review, also included a waterfront hotel of around 20,500 m². It was withdrawn after the regional Environmental Protection Service notified the promoter that the building was incompatible with Spain’s Coastal Law, citing a report from the Directorate General for Coast and Sea. A helipad that featured in the same earlier documents is not part of the scheme the Junta has described. The project announced is more focused on marina and public infrastructure than some of the early renderings suggested.
The current plan is the second serious attempt to transform the La Bajadilla port area. The saga began in 2010, when the Agencia Pública de Puertos de Andalucía (APPA) put out to tender a major expansion of the port, to be delivered as a public works concession.
The original concession was awarded in 2011 to a joint venture led by Nasir Bin Abdullah & Sons, the company of Qatari businessman Abdullah bin Nasser Al Thani, then owner of Málaga CF, with Marbella town hall as a partner. The concession itself was held by Nas Marbella, a company majority owned by Al Thani, in which the municipal marina company and the town hall also had stakes.
The losing bidder, the Marina Internacional de Marbella consortium, a group of construction, civil engineering and marina management firms including Marinas del Mediterráneo, challenged the decision to admit the rival bid. Its central argument was that the bid could not meet the tender’s conditions because a public administration, Marbella town hall, was part of it.
That challenge proved well-founded. The Al Thani-led concession never broke ground, and in November 2016 the Junta terminated the contract for breach: the concessionaire was more than four years late in submitting its construction project, works had never started, and it had gone more than a year without paying its concession fee.
In September 2017, Andalusia’s High Court (TSJA) ruled that the Al Thani-led bid should never have been admitted to the tender, annulling its admission and every decision that depended on it, including the award. The court was critical of the town hall’s role, finding it had left delivery of the contract in the hands of a foreign investor without proven solvency. The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in September 2018, making the ruling final. The project then stalled for years.
The Junta revived the project in 2019. The court ruling did not hand the contract straight to the runner-up: the original tender had to be taken back to the point where the irregularity occurred, and the runner-up’s proposal checked against current rules. A 2019 technical report found Marina Internacional de Marbella’s project viable, subject to environmental and coastal approvals.The consortium then adapted its proposal to new environmental and planning requirements, obtaining unified environmental authorisation (AAU) in March 2025.
In May 2026, APPA reopened the 2010 tender; in June the contracting panel excluded the Al Thani-led bid in line with the court ruling, leaving Marina Internacional de Marbella as the only admissible offer. The Junta announced the award of the concession through APPA on 2 September 2026. The concession has gone to the Marina Internacional de Marbella consortium and runs for 40 years.
It is worth being precise about what this means. The Junta has announced the award, but the project has not yet been built. The concessionaire is due to take charge of the port on 1 January 2027, after which it must still finalise a full construction project and secure the remaining permits before any physical works begin.
The figure attached to the 2026 announcement is a planned investment of over €200 million; the award proposal reportedly puts it at €200.4 million excluding VAT. Earlier stages of the same project were costed at around €124 million in the 2024 basic project, which still included the now-cancelled hotel, and closer to €100 million at the time of the 2025 environmental authorisation. No itemised breakdown has yet been published, so the figure should be treated as indicative.
On timing, the concessionaire takes over on 1 January 2027. The regional minister has said that once the contract is signed, the concessionaire will have 11 months to draft the construction project for Junta approval, followed by 36 months for the works. No start date for physical works has been set.
The Junta states that the marina will be able to host everything from recreational boats to large yachts and cruise vessels, up to 70 metres in length. The detail worth understanding is the change in scale.
The original Al Thani-era scheme was reported at around 1,220 berths and cruise ships of up to 170 metres, though figures varied across coverage at the time. The project now awarded provides roughly 750 berths and a maximum vessel length of 70 metres. Conventional small and mid-sized cruise liners are generally considerably longer than that, so the cruise vessels that can call will depend on the final design, which will be settled in the concessionaire’s executive project.
The point has history locally. When the Junta drew up earlier versions of the scheme, with maximum vessel lengths of 60 to 90 metres, Marbella town hall argued that boats of that size are megayachts rather than cruise ships, and that small and mid-sized cruise liners generally start at around 180 metres. The Junta’s position on the current scheme is that cruise vessels are part of the plan.
Final details on this point are yet to be confirmed, but the award is an extremely positive step for the port after more than 15 years of delays, even if at a more modest scale than the version that collapsed in the courts.
For buyers considering property in Marbella, whether in the town centre, on the Golden Mile or further out, the direct impact of this redevelopment is still some years away. However, a larger, better equipped marina with new retail and public space at the eastern end of Marbella’s town centre seafront has the potential to shift how that part of the city is used and perceived, in the way Puerto Banús reshaped its own surrounding area over time, though on a different scale and with a different character. On a broader level, the project should enhance what the town offers to residents, owners and visitors alike.
While nothing is certain, property owners and potential buyers can take encouragement from the fact that a long-stalled, strategically located asset in central Marbella is finally moving through the process that leads to construction.
The milestones worth watching from here are the handover on 1 January 2027, the submission and Junta approval of the concessionaire’s construction project, and the start of works. Each of these will tell us more about the real timeline and final shape of the redevelopment. We’ll continue to track this story as it develops.
If you are considering buying or selling near Marbella’s town centre and would like to understand how projects like this fit into the wider picture, our team is here to help. Contact MPDunne for tailored advice on the Marbella market.
Melinda Rendina Content Writer & Marketing Coordinator
Melinda is an experienced writer specialising in real estate, urban planning, lifestyle, architecture and design. A seasoned Marbella resident, she holds an Undergraduate Degree in Social Science with Honours in Politics, and a Masters degree in Urban Planning.
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