Rehab in Marbella: the main options, compared

People look for this in a lot of ways: rehab Marbella, luxury rehab Marbella, alcohol rehab Costa del Sol, private rehab Spain. The options below are the same whichever phrase brought you here.

The picture in Marbella

Marbella is the most concentrated luxury addiction treatment market in Spain, and the property came first. The town already had the villas, the private aviation, the discretion and the international money. Treatment followed all of it down the coast.

Two quite separate things now sit under the word rehab here. There is a Spanish public system that treats residents for free and that most British searchers never hear about. And there is an international private market, largely villa-based, marketed almost entirely in English to people arriving from elsewhere, at prices that are among the highest in the world.

The second group is where the money and the marketing are, and it is also where the licensing question is worth asking.

Free addiction services in Marbella

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 local ayuntamiento and provincial drug dependency service can point you to the nearest CTA. Services are delivered in Spanish, which is the practical limitation for most people reading this page.

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. That is the honest reason most British readers end up looking at private options or at treatment back home.

AA and NA meetings in Marbella

This is the strongest free resource on the coast and it runs in English.

Alcoholics Anonymous holds English-language meetings in Marbella itself and along the Costa del Sol, including Fuengirola, Estepona, Torremolinos, 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 and lists meetings 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 than that, the reality is considerably duller and easier than the idea of it.

Private rehab in Marbella, and what it costs

The private market here is overwhelmingly villa-based: a large private house, one client or a handful, a live-in team, and a programme built around privacy. The residence is usually the centrepiece, so it is worth asking separately about the clinical week.

The prices span a range most people do not expect. Villa programmes on the Costa del Sol start at roughly €4,500 a week, about €18,000 a month. The broad luxury band runs from there to around €35,000 a week. At the ultra-private end, where a centre treats one client at a time, fees run from about €47,380 to as much as €100,000 a week, which is €190,000 to €400,000 for a month.

What the top of that range buys is not four times the therapy. It is the whole house, the whole team, and the certainty of meeting nobody. For a small number of people that is genuinely worth it, and it is a real reason to pay a premium. It is also worth knowing that a small centre in the countryside inland offers a good deal of that privacy simply by where it is. Our breakdown of the luxury rehab market in Spain goes through the segment in detail.

The licensing check in Marbella, and how to settle it in two minutes

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

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

This is the legal minimum for operating. It is not a quality mark or a voluntary accreditation.

The rule is simple. If a residence delivers addiction treatment, it needs the authorisation, held by that centre, at that address. A property let as a holiday villa, or presented as a wellness retreat, a sober living house or a coaching programme, is authorised for something else. So is an arrangement where the clinical work belongs to a visiting psychologist or a separate clinic and the house provides the accommodation. None of that is visible from a website, which is why the register is the thing to check, and why it is a fair question to put to any centre including this one.

What the authorisation gives you is concrete: the premises have been inspected, the staffing has been approved, a health authority has assessed the place as fit to treat people, and there is a public register behind it. Where it is absent, none of those checks has happened, whatever the standard of care may be. That is what you are confirming when you look a centre up.

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 is issued by the tourism authority, not the health authority, and it does not cover fitness to treat addiction. A VUT authorises the property as a holiday let, which is a separate question from the clinical one.
• A licence in somebody else's name. Check whose entry it is. A registration held by a visiting psychologist, a separate outpatient clinic or an associated company does not cover the house you would actually be living in. The authorisation has to belong to the centre at the address where you will be staying.
• A psychology practice licence. An entry showing only U.900.1 Psicología (psychology) is an outpatient psychology consultation. It is a real health registration, and it is not authorisation to run a residential addiction programme.
• Private accreditations and memberships. Certificates from international associations can be worth having, and they are separate from the legal register. They are not a substitute for it.

The unit you are looking for is U.71 Atención Sanitaria a Drogodependientes (healthcare for people with drug dependence). That is the entry that authorises addiction care. If it is not there, the centre is not authorised to treat addiction, whatever the website says.

How to search the register yourself, in two minutes

The register is public and free at the Junta de Andalucía oficina virtual. There are two searches worth knowing, and the second one is the powerful one.

To check one centre: put the name into the centre name field and select the province. To check 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 a province: leave the name blank, set Unidad Asistencial to U.71 Atención Sanitaria a Drogodependientes, and choose the province. That returns every centre legally authorised to treat addiction there. It is the definitive list, it comes from the health authority rather than from any directory, and a centre that is not on it is not authorised. If you do only 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.

None of which requires you to take our word for it, because you can settle it yourself in about two minutes. Two things to look for:

• The N.I.C.A. should belong to the clinic itself, at the address where you would actually be staying. An authorisation held by a visiting psychologist, a separate outpatient practice or an associated company is a real registration for that service, not for the residence you would be living in.
• The care unit should read U.71, Atención Sanitaria a Drogodependientes. That is the unit that authorises addiction care. U.900.1 Psicología is an outpatient psychology consultation, which is a genuine registration for something else.

Both together, held by the clinic, is what you are looking for. Start with us. Sierra is N.I.C.A. 67331, care unit U.71, held by Sierra Recovery Services S.L. at Cortijo Ferradores, Humilladero. Check us first, then check everyone else you are considering.

Every authorised addiction rehab centre in Marbella

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 for the whole province.

Now look at what is in Marbella. Eight entries carry a Marbella or San Pedro de Alcántara address:

• a private general hospital, HC Marbella International Hospital
• a public primary care out-of-hours point, San Pedro de Alcántara SUAP
• three outpatient addiction centres, run by the town council and by Proyecto Hombre
• two small private practices registered as consultations
• one supervised treatment residence, run by an association

Read that list again against what you have been shown online. Not one of the internationally marketed luxury villa programmes in Marbella appears on it at all. Not under a trading name, not under a holding company. The authorised addiction provision in Marbella is a hospital, the council, a charity and a couple of individual practitioners.

We are not going to tell you what any particular business is doing, because we do not know and it is not our place to say. We are telling you what the health authority's own record contains, and inviting you to run the search yourself and compare it against the quote in your inbox. If the centre asking you for €40,000 is not on this list, the question to put to them is why.

For what it is worth, the residential authorisations in this province, the C.3.7.1 entries, belong to associations, to Instituto Galeno, and to us at Humilladero. That is the whole of it.

The rest of the check:

1. Ask in writing for the N.I.C.A. number and the exact registered company name. Email it, so you have the reply. A centre that holds one sends it straight back, because it is public information. Evasion, or an answer about accreditations instead, is itself the answer.
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, physically where they are, and at what hours, then what happens at three in the morning if somebody has a seizure. A serious centre answers immediately, because it has had to plan for it.

If a centre will not answer the first question in writing, you have learned what you needed to know and it has cost you nothing.

The clinical stakes are highest at the start. Withdrawal from alcohol or benzodiazepines can produce seizures and, at worst, delirium tremens, which is a medical emergency with a real mortality rate. It belongs in a hospital with medical staff on site. A detox offered inside an unauthorised private house is the most dangerous thing sold in this market.

Sierra Recovery, Málaga, Spain

We should be plain about our own position on a page like this. We are not in Marbella.

The centre is inland in Málaga province, at Cortijo Ferradores in Humilladero near Antequera, a little over an hour by road from the Marbella seafront and about forty five minutes from Málaga airport. It is forty hectares of working farmland and the nearest thing to nightlife is a village bar.

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 health centre with a supervised treatment residence. That is expressly not a hospital and not a detox unit, which is why detox, where it is clinically needed, happens in a hospital before admission and is billed separately. You can check all of that on the register before you speak to us, and we would rather you did.

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. 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.

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. If you want the working behind the number, we publish a teardown of what a month of treatment costs to run.

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. For a great many people the public network plus meetings is enough on its own, and it costs nothing.

Use the meetings regardless. Whatever else you do, the AA network on this coast is free, it is in English, and it is what will still be there in month six.

Consider private residential if outpatient support has already been tried and has not held, if you need to be removed from your environment, or if you cannot wait. Then apply the licensing check above before you pay anyone anything.

Look at treatment away from the coast if the environment itself is part of the problem. Marbella is built around drinking, and a residential month spent negotiating with that is a harder month.

If you are physically dependent, the order changes: medical advice first, detox in a hospital, then a programme. Not the other way round.