Atalaya, where von Limburger drew the first fairways

Atalaya is one of the older addresses on this part of the coast, and it exists because of a golf course. The Old Course opened in 1968 to a design by the German architect Bernhard von Limburger, and the housing followed the fairways rather than the other way round. In 1990 a second eighteen, by Paul Krings, was cut into the hills above it, giving the club thirty-six holes and the community its two halves: the flat, mature lower ground near the coast road, and the higher, later ground behind. The club's own address is on Avenida del Coral, in Estepona.

The lower half is where the age shows, in a good way. Villas sit on level plots behind hedges tall enough to have been planted in the 1970s, and the apartment blocks are low, rendered and generously spaced. The upper ground, developed around the New Course, is later and more varied: gated townhouse rows, three-storey blocks with a communal pool, and detached houses that take the view over the Mediterranean and, on a clear day, towards Gibraltar. Very little here is brand new, and the newest product is nearly always a rebuild rather than a virgin plot.

Day to day this is a quiet, car-based place with two anchors: the club and the beach below the road. Playa de Casasola is the sand at the bottom of the hill, a broad open stretch whose gardens still hold a rebuilt sixteenth-century watchtower. The caveats are ordinary and worth stating: no village square, no walkable high street, and an approach off the A-7 in traffic that thickens every August. Paula's read is that Atalaya buyers are self-selecting — they arrive knowing exactly what the club is, and they trade town life for a fairway.

The lower ground carries the original 1970s and 1980s idiom: single- and two-storey villas with tiled roofs, arched porches and white render, on flat plots with mature planting. The apartment stock is low-rise and spread out rather than stacked, most of it with communal gardens and a pool. Higher up, the schemes built around the second course are later and tighter — townhouse terraces, three-storey blocks, gated entrances, underground parking. Contemporary building appears as individual rebuilds on existing plots rather than as new estates, so the streetscape stays mixed instead of uniform.

The rhythm is set by tee times and by the road. Mornings are busy at the club and quiet everywhere else; afternoons empty out. Almost everything is a drive: Puerto Banús in one direction, Estepona town in the other, the beach straight down the hill. February is genuinely quiet, because the seasonal trade sits on the coast road rather than inside the community, but the golf keeps a year-round population in place. The sound is birds, mowers and the A-7 behind all of it, louder in August than the brochures admit.

It suits golfers first — the club's two courses are why most owners are here — and after them retired couples and part-year residents who want a quiet, established address within easy reach of both Marbella and Estepona. It does not suit a buyer who wants to walk out to a bar in the evening, a family needing a school within walking distance, or anyone set on a new-build with a warranty: what changes hands here is mostly resale, and the best of it has already been renovated once.