Gibraltar is surely familiar to everyone, and its Spanish border town is La Línea de la Concepción. La Línea is a bustling, small industrial city with a population of about 63,000.
The common border between Gibraltar and its northern neighbor La Línea is 1.2 kilometers long. Gibraltar has been a significant European military base for centuries, controlling maritime traffic between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, and La Línea is Gibraltar’s only border town.
The town of La Línea is located on a peninsula, with long sandy beaches on both the west and east sides of the peninsula. Depending on the prevailing wind, you can always choose the sheltered beach for sunbathing. Even though children happily splashed in the sea in the middle of summer, the warm Mediterranean water was nowhere to be found because the cool Atlantic water flows into the Strait of Gibraltar.
Alcaidesa Marina is located next to Gibraltar, yet on the Spanish side. The marina is huge, with over 600 berths and a vast parking area for motorhomes, there were even about ten funny boathouses for rent as well.
We got for Suwena a really good annual berth from the pontoon dock. The docks are good, modern, and very sturdy. Additionally, there are also med-mooring places available. For maintenance purposes, the finger pontoon is more convenient because as you’re constantly moving stuff around, you don’t have to walk across the gangway all the time.
The internet is full of warnings that La Línea is a shady smuggling place. If it ever was, it certainly isn’t anymore. Whether we walked around the city day or night, it felt just as safe as anywhere else in Spain.
The initial impression of the marina was positive; everything worked well. From maintenance buildings to marina services, everything was well taken care of. However, Alcaidesa was the first marina where incoming packages for the boat were not notified in any way. Usually, an email or message was sent from the marina office when a package was ready for pickup. Similarly, this was the first marina for us where electricity and water were not included in the annual berth fee.
Fortunately, during our autumn sail to Fuengirola, we obtained proper heavy-duty metal springs with wrist-thick mooring lines for Suwena and now they became very handy at Alcaidesa Marina. The marina basin was constructed so that the walls of the concrete docks are vertical. When the waves reflected from the Bay of Gibraltar into the marina, they stayed there for a long time. They just bounced back and forth between the walls of the marina, causing a jerky swell. No worries, Suwena gracefully bobbed in the safety of her new springs.
The marina turned out to be a real hub of sailors. We visited the boat several times throughout the year, and each time, in addition to the familiar annual berth holders, there was quite a bustle on our dock. Some were coming from the Mediterranean to continue across the Atlantic, while others from Central and Northern Europe were headed towards the Med. Many provisioned their boats here in La Línea just before the next long leg to somewhere in the world.
From marina there is only about an 800-meter walk, and you’re already in the town center. Here you’ll find a very pleasant pedestrian area formed by a few streets, with restaurants side by side on every square and small alleys with their own terraces. Throughout the year, the downtown restaurants were mostly filled with locals, and I must say, they seemed really relaxed and happy, content with their own lives. Here, people were really friendly, chatting among themselves and helping tourists. The atmosphere in the downtown alleys is truly cozy. The same cannot be said for some tourist spots on the Costa del Sol.
In Spanish style, restaurants were empty and some still closed at eight in the evening. An hour later, the places were packed to the brim, and getting a table without a reservation became almost impossible. Andalusian tapas naturally took center stage in the restaurant offerings. There’s also a restaurant in the marina, which was filled every night with diners. The food there was quite ordinary, but oh, the delicious freshly grilled catch of the day from the restaurant’s own outdoor grill was a delight. Unfortunately the barbecue was open only during the summer months. In the summer also chiringuito restaurants are very popular along the sandy beaches of La Línea. Chiringuitos are beachside seafood restaurants built on sand where fish is grilled over an open fire pit.
We also accidentally stumbled upon the largest village summer festival of La Linea, La Feria de la Linea, in the middle of July. The pedestrian street was decorated and illuminated festively. The roads were closed due to performance stages, where both young and old performed, danced, sang, and gave speeches. People followed the performers very attentively from the tables set up on the streets, and the atmosphere was relaxed.
Boat provisioning requires a bit more time and effort here because there are no big supermarkets right next to the marina. With a local bus for €1.15 or a taxi for less than ten euros, you can reach the supermarkets on the other side of the town: Lidl, Mercadona, and Carrefour.
When you take a bus from the nearby bus station to Algeciras, the bus circles around the other side of Gibraltar Bay to neighboring cities, halfway through, about a 20-minute bus ride, there’s a large shopping center with several separate hypermarkets. There you can find Carrefour, Lidl, Leroy Merlin, Jysk, MediaMarkt, Decathlon, etc. We did our biggest provisioning there when preparing Suwena for the new sailing season. Even though these are a bit further away, it’s faster to go there because the bus station in La Línea is right next to the marina.
Bus route tips:
From the beginning of Calle Real, the pedestrian street; take the bus L1 to get close to Lidl and Mercadona, and bus L2 will take you near the Carrefour hypermarket of La Línea.
When you want to go to larger stores, take the bus M120 from the bus station towards Algeciras. At the halfway point, stop at Cruce Carrefour. It’s a good idea to ask the bus driver from which stop you should get off.
Alcaidesa Marina was a really good wintering place for Suwena. We visited here several times. Although there is no airport right next door, except of course the Gibraltar airport that is 650 meters from the boat, there are several options. Flights from Gibraltar all go to the UK, and after Brexit, flying via the UK is more challenging. You can reach Malaga Airport in just two hours by direct bus from the nearby bus station. From the neighboring town of San Roque, you can take a train to Madrid in 4-5 hours. There is also a direct bus connection from La Línea to Seville, which takes 3-4 hours. We tested all these routes, and they all worked well.
Suwena spent the whole winter in the water, so spring maintenance naturally includes bottom work. We inquired about boat haulout possibilities from several places and eventually decided to use Alcaidesa Marina’s boatyard. It was just a short distance from the dock to the lifting area, as we drove to the other end of the marina. Another advantage of Alcaidesa’s boatyard was that you could do maintenance work yourself. This is not the case in many Spanish boatyards. We did ask them for quotes for various jobs, but they only used designated subcontractors and the prices were ridiculously high, so we ended up doing all the maintenance ourselves. They did not allow living on the boat when the boat was on hard, so during the days we worked hard on Suwena, and at night we stayed in the adjacent hotel. Everything worked at Alcaidesa’s boatyard that we ordered. However, it’s worth emphasizing that we “ordered”, as they really charged for every little thing. Even ladders were not included in the haul-out, let alone power washing. Suwena got a clean bottom, new anodes, and Andrus vigorously sanded and polished Suwena so that she is now ready to start a new sailing season and explore the Mediterranean once again.
