Rehab in Málaga: the main options, compared

People look for this in a lot of ways: rehab Malaga, alcohol rehab Malaga, drug rehab Costa del Sol, addiction treatment Andalusia. The options below are the same whichever phrase brought you here.

The picture in Málaga

Málaga means two quite different things, and the difference matters when you are choosing where to be treated.

There is the city and the coastal strip, busy and built up, running from Torremolinos through Fuengirola and Marbella to Estepona. That is where the international private market sits, and where prices are highest. And there is the province behind it, which is farmland, olive groves and limestone hills, with Antequera and El Torcal at its centre.

The coast is built around drinking. It is a resort strip where the bars are the industry and somebody is always celebrating something. That is not a moral point, it is a practical one: a residential month spent negotiating with that environment is a harder month than one spent away from it.

Free addiction services in Málaga

Start here, before you consider paying for anything. We publish these because for a lot of people they are the right first step.

Andalusia operates a public addiction network, the Red de Atención a las Adicciones, delivered through outpatient treatment centres known as Centros de Tratamiento Ambulatorio. Treatment is free at the point of use. If you are registered with the Andalusian health service you can be referred through your centro de salud, and the ayuntamiento and the provincial drug dependency service will point you to the nearest CTA. Services are delivered in Spanish, which is the practical limitation for most people reading this page in English.

If you are a UK visitor rather than a resident, the public network is not designed for you, and a GHIC or EHIC covers state-provided necessary care rather than planned treatment.

AA and NA meetings in Málaga

Málaga province has one of the strongest English-language recovery networks in mainland Europe, which is unusual outside the UK and is free.

Alcoholics Anonymous holds English-language meetings across the Costa del Sol, including Fuengirola, Torremolinos, Marbella, Estepona, Nerja and Sotogrande. The Costa del Sol intergroup publishes the current schedule and AA Spain covers the rest of the country. Narcotics Anonymous also meets in the area, listed through the European finder.

What actually happens at a first meeting

You turn up, you sit down, and you do not have to speak. Nobody takes your surname, nobody asks for money, and nobody will make you commit to anything. People share their own experience for an hour and then it ends. If you have been putting this off because you imagine something more confronting, the reality is duller and easier than the idea of it.

Private rehab in Málaga, and what it costs

The private market in this province splits along the same coast and inland line.

On the coast, particularly around Marbella, the market is villa-based and expensive. Programmes start at roughly €4,500 a week, about €18,000 a month, the broad luxury band runs to around €35,000 a week, and at the single-client end fees run from about €47,380 to as much as €100,000 a week. Our guide to rehab in Marbella goes through that market and the licensing checks that apply there.

Inland, there are smaller residential centres, ours among them, at a fraction of those figures. The trade is straightforward: you give up the sea view and the address, and you keep most of the money.

Authorised, or just advertised? How to tell, in Málaga province

This is the most useful thing on this page, and it takes about two minutes.

Addiction treatment is a regulated health activity. Under Real Decreto 1277/2003, and in Andalusia under Decreto 69/2008, a centre treating addiction must hold a health authorisation from the Junta de Andalucía (the regional government of Andalusia) and appear in the Registro Andaluz de Centros, Servicios y Establecimientos Sanitarios (the Andalusian register of health centres, services and establishments), where it is issued a N.I.C.A. number. The Orden of 29 May 2023 sets the operating protocols. Authorisations last five years and must be renewed.

That is the legal minimum for operating, not a quality badge. A number of villa operations along this coast, marketed internationally as rehabs or clinics, hold no such authorisation, sometimes presenting instead as wellness retreats, sober living houses or coaching programmes.

The documents that are not a health licence

When you ask, you may be shown a different document. These are the ones most often confused with a health authorisation.

• A VUT or CA number is a holiday-let permit. Vivienda con fines turísticos authorises letting a property to tourists. It comes from the tourism authority, not the health authority, and it says nothing about anyone's fitness to treat addiction.
• A licence in somebody else's name. The authorisation has to belong to the centre at the address where you would be staying, not to a visiting psychologist, a separate outpatient clinic or an associated company.
• A psychology practice licence. An entry showing only U.900.1 Psicología (psychology) is an outpatient psychology consultation, not authorisation to run a residential addiction programme.

The unit that matters is U.71 Atención Sanitaria a Drogodependientes (healthcare for people with drug dependence). That is what authorises addiction care.

How to search the register yourself, in two minutes

The register is public and free at the Junta de Andalucía oficina virtual.

To check one centre: put the name into the centre name field and select the province. For us, type Sierra Recovery, select Málaga, and the entry for Sierra Recovery Services S.L. comes up with its N.I.C.A. number.

To list every authorised addiction centre in this province: leave the name blank, set Unidad Asistencial to U.71 Atención Sanitaria a Drogodependientes and choose Málaga. That returns every centre legally authorised to treat addiction here, straight from the health authority rather than from any directory. If you do one thing from this page, do that.

What a real entry looks like

For comparison, here is ours, because the point is easier to trust when we hold ourselves to it. The centre trading as Sierra Recovery, in Humilladero, is registered as SIERRA RECOVERY SERVICES S.L. and carries N.I.C.A. 67331. Its entry lists U.71 Atención Sanitaria a Drogodependientes, the unit that authorises a centre to treat addiction, and it is registered as a C.3.7.1, the register’s code for supervised treatment housing attached to a programme.

Note that the trading name and the registered name are different. That is normal, and it is exactly why you ask for the registered company name rather than the name on the sign. Search the register for “Sierra Recovery” and you will find us; search it for the name on a villa’s website and you may find nothing at all.

So the register, not the website, is the thing to read. Two things to look at when you search:

• Whose name the N.I.C.A. is in. It should be the clinic, at the address where you would be staying, not a visiting psychologist, a separate outpatient practice or an associated company.
• Which care unit it authorises. U.71, Atención Sanitaria a Drogodependientes, is the one that covers addiction care. U.900.1 Psicología is an outpatient psychology consultation, a real registration for a different service.

Below is every authorised addiction centre in Málaga province, taken from that register. Ours is on it: N.I.C.A. 67331, care unit U.71, Sierra Recovery Services S.L., Cortijo Ferradores, Humilladero. Look us up first and you will know exactly what a real entry looks like before you check anybody else.

Every authorised addiction rehab centre in Málaga province

Rather than describe the register, here it is. Every centre in Málaga province authorised for U.71 Atención Sanitaria a Drogodependientes, as the register returned it on 9 August 2026. Fifty five entries in total, which is the entire legally authorised addiction provision for a province of one and a half million people.

A few things are worth noticing. Most of the province's provision is public or charitable: town councils, the Diputación, Proyecto Hombre, Cruz Roja, and long-standing associations. Most of it is outpatient. The residential authorisations, the C.3.7.1 entries, are a small minority and belong to associations, to Instituto Galeno, and to us at Humilladero.

The other thing worth noticing is what is absent. The luxury villa programmes marketed internationally from the Costa del Sol do not appear on this list. Our guide to rehab in Marbella goes through that in detail.

Use the list as a shortlist and as a filter. If a centre is not on it, it is not authorised to treat addiction in this province, whatever its website says.

The rest of the check:

1. Ask in writing for the N.I.C.A. number and the exact registered company name. A centre that holds one sends it straight back, because it is public information.
2. Look it up on the register rather than accepting a screenshot or a PDF certificate.
3. Read what the entry authorises, and when it expires. Authorisations run five years. Authorisation for an outpatient service is not authorisation for a residential unit, and neither authorises a medical detox.
4. Ask who provides medical cover, where they are and at what hours, then what happens at three in the morning if somebody has a seizure.

Sierra Recovery, Málaga, Spain

This is the one location page on this site where we can say we are actually here.

The centre is at Cortijo Ferradores, Humilladero, 29531, in the north of the province near Antequera, about forty five minutes by road from Málaga airport. It is forty hectares of working farmland, olive groves and limestone hills. El Torcal is up the road. The nearest thing to nightlife is a village bar, and that is deliberate: a residential programme works better when the environment is not offering a way out of it every afternoon.

We are entered on the Andalusian register under N.I.C.A. 67331, authorised for atención sanitaria a drogodependientes (healthcare for drug dependency, authorised care unit U.71): a registered health centre with a supervised treatment residence. It is expressly not a hospital and not a detox unit. Where a medically supervised withdrawal is needed, we arrange it in a hospital before admission and it is billed separately, and where that hospital is in Málaga province one of our therapists travels to the ward and begins therapy before you are discharged to us. See alcohol detox and drug detox.

The programme is twenty eight days, with three structured group sessions a day plus an afternoon group activity, three one-to-one sessions a week, and a seventeen-module curriculum covering relapse, trauma, family patterns and the practical business of a life without the substance. The method is adapted from PROMIS Clinics, who have treated addiction in the United Kingdom since 1986. The therapy is evidence-based rather than proprietary: cognitive behavioural therapy at the core, with dialectical behaviour therapy, EMDR and somatic work where trauma sits underneath the using, family therapy, and relapse prevention agreed before discharge. Co-occurring depression, anxiety, PTSD and burnout are treated in the same plan. We do not treat eating disorders as a primary condition.

Alongside the therapy: yoga daily, a physical session most days, equine work with horses that live on the land, walks in the olive groves, and food cooked by a Michelin-trained chef rather than reheated. Full detail is on the programme page.

The published price is £9,900 for twenty eight days with a private room included, with hospital detox and medical costs billed separately and an itemised quotation before you commit. We neither pay nor accept referral fees. The full teardown of what a month costs to run is published as well.

Getting here from the UK

Málaga airport takes direct flights from most UK airports and the journey is under three hours from London. From arrivals it is roughly forty five minutes by road to the centre, and we arrange the transfer.

The short flight matters more than it sounds. A family member can come out for a family session without taking a week off. There is one hour of time difference rather than seven, so aftercare calls happen at a civilised hour. And if something goes wrong at home, you are not thirteen hours away from it.

Which option is right for you

Start with the free services if you are resident in Spain, can manage the process in Spanish, and are not in immediate physical danger.

Use the meetings regardless. The English-language network across this province is free and it is what will still be there in month six.

Consider private residential if outpatient support has been tried and has not held, or if you need to be removed from your environment. Then apply the authorisation check above before paying anyone.

Consider inland rather than coastal if the resort environment is part of what you are trying to get away from.

If you are physically dependent, the order changes: medical advice first, detox in a hospital, then a programme.