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The Costa Blanca has been inhabited since Paleolithic times, with cave dwellers living in the inland hills from around 50000 BC. Iberian settlements began to appear around 3000 BC. Later, two Bronze Age cultures emerged: Argaric in the south and Valencian in the north.

By 1000 BC, the Phoenicians and the Greeks were establishing trading settlements along the coast. The Carthaginians, landless after their defeat in the First Punic War, established Cartago Nova (modern Cartagena) in the 3rd century BC.

Rome crushed Carthage in the Second Punic War, marking the beginning of Roman domination of the Iberian Peninsula. The Romans brought with them their laws, their language and their roads, and established important settlements at Denia (Dénia), Alicante (Alacant) and Cartagena.

By the middle of the 4th century AD, the Roman Empire had splintered, and the Iberian Peninsula was invaded by a succession of northern tribes. The Visigoths arrived in 411 and eventually took control of most of Spain, but dynastic disputes left them ripe for conquest by the next wave of invaders.

In 711, the first Berber armies invaded the Iberian Peninsula, conquering most of it within a decade. Renamed Al-Andalus, it was ruled first by a mighty caliphate and then as a series of smaller kingdoms (taifas ). Arabic irrigation techniques created the fertile orchards which still characterize the Costa Blanca.

Pockets of northern Spain remained resistant to the Arab armies, and it was from here that the Christian Reconquest was launched. Battles raged through much of the 13th century. Mursiya (Murcia) was taken by Jaime I of Aragón in 1266; Al Lekant (Alicante) fell to Jaime II in 1296.

After the Reconquest, Jaime I reestablished the Kingdom of Valencia, with special privileges, including the right to a separate court and their own currency. These ancient rights were only withdrawn after the Kingdom backed the losing side in the War of the Succession (1700–1714).

In 1244, Murcia, strategically located on the border with the Arabic kingdom of Granada, became a vassal state of the powerful Kingdom of Castile, which annexed it outright in 1266. When Granada fell in 1492, Muslim converts (Moriscos ) flooded into Murcia. Their expulsion in the early 17th century caused economic crisis.

Spain suffered during the wars and political upheavals of the 18th and 19th centuries. However, much of the region’s most spectacular architecture was built during intermittent periods of prosperity. Simmering unrest in the early years of the 20th century erupted into the bloody Civil War (1936–9), won by General Franco.

Regional differences – including the Valencian language – were savagely suppressed under Franco’s dictatorship. The advent of mass tourism in the 1960s brought jobs, money and a swathe of new development. Franco died in 1975, and democracy was peacefully restored. Tourism continues to provide the Costa Blanca with most of its wealth.