Rudolf Lussnigg: The man who named the Costa del Sol

Rudolf Lussnigg was born in Vienna on 6 July 1876, when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After an apprenticeship in Vienna and various hotel positions in Austria, he travelled abroad to work in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, England, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Egypt and Portugal. Finally, Rudolf moved to Spain where he worked for the Sociedad Franco-Española de Grandes Hoteles. In 1906 he took over as director of the Reina Victoria Hotel in Alicante; a year later he took over the Regina Hotel in Malaga.

In Malaga, Lussnigg found not only a job, but also his love. In 1908, he married María Teresa Arjona Blanco from Antequera. The ceremony took place in the church of San Juan in Malaga.

The story of the Costa del Sol began in 1909 and it was not directly linked to the province of Malaga. In that year, Rudolf Lussnigg bought the Hotel Simón in Almeria, where his two daughters, Resi and Concha, were born.

Rudolf Lussnigg enthusiastically promoted his business in Andalucía. In an effort to spread the name of Almeria everywhere, he came up with the idea of giving a special name to the Mediterranean coast of Spain. On the occasion of the Ibero-American Exhibition in Seville and the International Exhibition in Barcelona in 1929, Rudolf Lussnigg linked the two cities via the Mediterranean coast, from Seville via Cadiz, Malaga, Granada, Almeria, Murcia, Alicante, Valencia and Barcelona. In this way he emulated the Côte d'Azur of France and the Portuguese Riviera.

Given the abundance of sunny days on the Andalusian coast, Lussnigg coined the name Costa del Sol (coast of the sun). This is recorded in the newspapers La Crónica de Almería, Independiente, Pueblo and others, where his promotional articles were published in 1928 and the following years. In them he spoke of Almera as the place "where the sun spends the winter".

In addition, Rudolf Lussnigg published and distributed, at his own expense, propaganda materials and brochures in English, which made the Costa del Sol known outside Spain.

Over time, the Costa del Sol became more associated with the coast of Malaga province, due to the intensive development of holiday resorts in the area in the second half of the last century.