Marbella Entertainment

With its reputation as a playground for the rich and famous, Marbella is not short on either day or evening entertainment options. Your choices depend very much on your budget and it’s fair to say that if you have money, the options are considerably greater, especially if you can afford to venture into the exclusive Puerto Banus resort. However, for weekend trippers and average holidaymakers, the town offers some fairly typical Spanish venues with something to suit all budgets. Restaurants, bars and nightclubs are on hand across the resort and cater very much for the visiting population.

Nightlife

While Puerto Banus is known as being the resort where the elite gather, its nightlife venues are not strictly exclusive and regular holidaymakers will find a good selection of restaurants, bars and nightclubs within their price range. Middle range restaurants serve some of the best Spanish food in the city and stay open until midnight, while the 20-something bars in the area include Irish pubs as well as Spanish establishments. There are nightclubs that stay open until at least 05:00 for those wanting to dance the night away. Away from Puerto Banus and in the centre of Marbella, a similarly impressive selection of venues is available with Spanish-style taverns or English and German pubs drawing many of the holidaymaking crowd.
For dancing, venues such as La Notte, OH! Marbella and Olivia Valere are popular city spots.

Theatre and music

Forget Marbella if you’re looking to fill your evenings with Shakespeare and West End or Broadway-style entertainment - the city’s cultural entertainment scene is comprised much more of live music and Spanish dancing. The Marbella Municipal Theatre is perhaps the only place in town to catch traditional theatre productions, while elsewhere among the local bars and big hotels, you’ll find flamenco dancing displays as well as live music invariably featuring some fantastic Spanish guitar players.

Festivals

There are a number of annual summer festivals that are unique to the city, with highlights including:

• The Three Wise Men Parade is celebrated on the 5th of January, followed by Three Wise Men Day on the 6th to commemorate the time when the infant Jesus was visited by the three prestigious figures following his birth in Bethlehem. The parade sees candy distributed to children at the roadside (January).
• Corpus Christi is a religious festival held across Spain. Marbella sees its own fair share of celebrations, with processions in which the streets are strewn with flowers while the faithful carry the Eucharistic Host around the town in a giant gold and silver monstrance (June).
• San Bernabé Fair is Marbella’s annual celebration of the life of its patron saint and is a week-long affair where both locals and visitors turn out in large numbers to enjoy a variety of street-based activities. Singing, dancing, drinking and eating comprise the daytime events, while come the evening, the masses head for the fairground and continue partying until the early hours (June).
• Fiesta del Cármen is an annual event that sees the city celebrate its humble past with a traditional street procession in which a statue of the Vírgen del Cármen is paraded around the beach and through the town (July).