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Fuengirola
is a town and municipality on the Costa del Sol in southern Spain in the
province of Málaga and the autonomous community of Andalusia. It
is a major tourist resort on the Costa del Sol, with more than 8 km of
beaches, and home to a mediæval Moorish fortress. The area enjoys
a subtropical Mediterranean climate, with annual average temperatures of
18°C.
Fuengirola
now offers all the facilities to be expected of a major tourist centre
- hotels, restaurants, bars, discotheques, sports clubs, a yacht harbour,
and broad beaches along a promenade extending east and west from the town,
that includes smaller adjacent villages. Of the approximately 60,000 inhabitants
registered in the municipality, 25% come from other countries, mainly European
(United Kingdom, Ireland, Finland and Sweden, among others), and also from
Morocco and Argentina. In the summer especially, the town plays host to
throngs of visitors both Spanish and foreign, but in particular British.
The English community in particular is large enough to support a fully
developed programme of activities and local groups. Fuengirola Zoo is well
known. Once an old-fashioned collection of cramped cages, the zoo was modernized
in 2001 to feature "tropical-forest" dwellings. The zoo specializes in
captive breeding for endangered species, chimpanzee-group research and
tropical-forest education. |
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