About Arriate - PropertyArriate.com
Arriate is a town and municipality in the province of Málaga, part of the autonomous community of Andalusia in southern Spain. The municipality is situated approximately 120 km aprox. from Malaga capital and just 5 km from the famous mountain city of Ronda, sometimes romantically described as "the city of dreams". It has a population of approximately 3600 residents. The natives are called Arriateños (the letter ñ is pronounced "ny" so it is Arriatenyos).
Arriate today is a lively town. Although quite small it is very forward thinking and embraces all things new. Despite the last comment it should be understood that Arriate is still a traditional Spanish mountain town with traditional ways of life and religious views, the church plays a very important part in the lives of the residents of Arriate.
The population is of mixed age and there are few forigeners here at the moment in comparison to other towns along the Costa del Sol. In general the people of Arriate are very friendly and welcoming, in our experience even more so than most inland Spanish towns but the Spaniards are a very forgiving and easy-going bunch anyway.
There is a great diversity of business here in Arriate. Local business's include the traditional Butchers and Bakers, ironmongers, hardware stores and a few small supermarkets. There are also many other retail stores and small groceries run by the husband and wife teams that seem to have all but dissapeared in places like England now.
The nightlife is passable unless you want a disco or nightclub but there is plenty of live music in Arriate from flamenco to pop, jazz, rock and salsa, the number of musicians does seem at odds percentage wise to the population. There are plenty of bars and cafes both traditional and more modern or themed.
The local Ayuntamiento (town hall) run a course each year for forigeners to learn Spanish and for the Spanish folk to learn English but do bare in mind that this is Spain and you really do have a duty to at least attempt the language, not least of all because very few people here can speak English or any other language come to that.
But fear not, we here at Property Arriate have developed a short and very basic guide in 'Spanglish' that will get you through the initial weeks or months or holiday.
Available for just 1.50 euro via email or by clicking here
All in all, Arriate is a good place to be. there are all the local services you need and if you find you want more hustle and bustle then it is a short 5km drive into ronda city center. Failing that, there is the Malaga and Marbella on the coast just an hour or so away and Gibraltar as well for English shops such as Morrisons.
More information (in Spanish) about Arriate can be found on the Town Hall's website at www.arriate.es
