It is no easy task finding out exactly how many people live in Marbella. The official data, which come from the National Institute of Statistics, confirm a figure of 101.141 for the whole municipality (Marbella and San Pedro de Alcántara). It is an important figure because, having passed the hurdle of 100.000 inhabitants, the grant the Town Hall will receive from the state will go up, although ¡t is not yet known by how much. The feeling locally, however, is that the true population figure is really double the official one and triple in summer. A study carried out by the supra-municipal entity, the "Mancomunidad de Municipios de la Costa del Sol", based on the amount of refuse produced in the municipality, estimated 98.377 official inhabitants in 1999, with an average monthly figure of 261.824, going up to 374.000 in August. In this research, carried out by the Institute of Tourist Studies, the population of an area was calculated on a basis of 30 kilos of rubbish per person a month. Marbella Town Hall uses another formula for estimating the real figure for the population: the number of homes, of which there are 70.000. Assuming that they are all occupied, and calculating an average of three people per home, the figure of 70,000 triples, going up to 280.000. Another of the problems for arriving at a figure for a coastal resort such as Marbella is the foreign residents. Despite living all year round in the municipality many of them do not put their names down at the Town Hall. Over ten per cent of the inhabitants of Marbella were not born in Spain, as there are 15.000 foreigners, counting those on the census alone. If the financial situation of the Town Hall were stronger the increase in state grant for surpassing the figure of 100.000 inhabitants would constitute a real injection of funds, but a good part of what Marbella receives from the central Government never leaves their coffers as it goes to offset other debts.

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