The most recognisable feature on the Salobreña beach-front is, without doubt, El Peñon, or The Rock in English.
Hundreds of years ago the Rock was a small island, with the town a boat ride away. It was an important settlement for Phoenician and Punic alike, helping link the sea traders with the local communities, and providing an important stepping stone to the area’s future colonisation.
The Phoenicians were a people mainly devoted to trade. Heading out from ancient Phoenicia (present day Lebanon), they often sought sites to settle that were near the coast, as the sea was always their main commercial thoroughfare.
They primarily occupied peninsulas and islands near a river bed that would allow them easy access inland, and protection for their vessels. From the first millennium BC their early influence on the Andalusian coast can be found, but it was not until the 8th century BC when they established a colony in Salobreña, which was then called Selambina.
In most places where the Phoenicians settled there was already an established indigenous population – the late Bronze Age communities of Salobreña being a perfect example. They established a small colony alongside this indigenous population and forged close trade and cultural links with them.
The discovery of Phoenician pottery fragments dating from the 8th, 7th and 6th centuries BC in Salobreña and the former island of the Rock are evidence of this. Carthage was originally a Phoenician colony (11th -7th centuries BC), and, after Phoenicia was invaded and destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, King of the Assyrians in 573 BC, the Phoenician population moved to the colonies they had founded in the Mediterranean.
Carthage would then become the principal Phoenician colony for about half a millennium; building a Carthaginian Empire that incorporated numerous cities and colonies along the Andalusian coast: Cádiz, Villaricos, Almuñecar, and Salobreña, among others. There were also several Punic cemeteries: one on the southeast slope of the Salobreña promontory, one in the north slope area of the promontory, one on El Peñon, and one in the area of Vínculo, close to Lobres.