MALAGA BUS HUB
Malaga’s Estación de Autobuses on Paseo de los Tilos shares a block with the María Zambrano high-speed station: ALSA’s blue fleet covers Andalusia hourly, and the Costa del Sol runs on buses that leave from the same doors.
The terminal is a bright hall behind the Vialia shopping centre, with numbered bays, luggage lockers and a row of ticket counters — ALSA dominates, with Avanza and local Costa del Sol operators alongside. Everything interchanges here: the AVE and Cercanías platforms are through one door, the C1 airport train stops at Centro-Alameda five minutes west, and city buses loop the forecourt.
ALSA’s spine routes run Granada in about one hour forty-five, Seville in two hours forty-five and Córdoba, with Madrid services for those who miss the train fare window. West along the coast, buses string Marbella, Estepona and Algeciras — the Tarifa ferry connection; east, they run to Nerja and Almuñécar every half hour. Day-trip logic favours the bus over the car: Ronda services climb the Serranía twice daily, and Nerja’s caves need no parking hunt. Book on the ALSA app; summer coastal departures sell out by the morning.
THE TIO READ
Treat the coach station as the AVE’s budget annex. Granada is the proof: the bus takes barely twenty minutes longer than the train and costs a third. For the coast itself — Marbella, Nerja — the train does not even compete; the bus is the railway.
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