The marina at Puerto José Banús was built on a stretch of empty riverbank that carried no permanent settlement before 1970. José Banús, a Catalan developer who had made his name constructing social housing under Franco, chose the mouth of the Río Verde for a harbour styled as an Andalusian fishing village. The inauguration in May 1970 drew Prince Rainier and Grace of Monaco, the Aga Khan and Hugh Hefner. Marbella's transformation from agricultural coast to yachting address dates precisely from that evening. The architecture is deliberate mimicry. Low whitewashed blocks, terracotta roofs and stepped terraces imitate a pueblo blanco that never existed on this site, arranged around a basin holding roughly 915 berths. Vessels up to 50 metres moor along the outer quay, where the Levante wind funnels between the breakwater and the promenade. Behind the harbour, La Concha rises 1,215 metres, its limestone shoulders visible from almost every mooring. A puerto banus boat charter departs into water the Phoenicians and later the Romans worked for tuna and garum, though nothing of those industries survives in the marina itself. The Costa del Sol coastline west of Marbella remains unusually productive for cetaceans. Common dolphins, striped dolphins and bottlenose pods feed on the shelf where the Alborán Sea meets Atlantic inflow through the Strait of Gibraltar, some 80 kilometres southwest. Sightings occur year-round, most reliably in calm morning water. Sailing conditions favour the same hours: thermal breezes build through the afternoon and the sea state stiffens accordingly. What makes the harbour legible today is the tension between spectacle and utility. The superyacht row is theatre. Two hundred metres away, licence-free tenders and mid-size sailing boats leave for the same headlands, and Marbella coastal sailing operators run the ordinary work of getting people onto the water. Puerto banus boat charter tours from this basin reach Puente Romano, the Golden Mile villas and the cliffs below Istán within an hour of leaving the fairway. The marina area itself carries no entrance fee — 0 EUR — and stays open 07:00–20:30 every day of the week, so the quays function as public promenade as much as private mooring. Fernando Higueras and Noldi Schreck contributed to the original scheme; the surviving detail, from the arcaded ground floors to the belltower silhouette, was designed to age like something older than it is. Fifty-six years on, it largely has.