Finland in Fuengirola

Fuengirola has long been known as ‘Little Finland’ with over 5,000 registered residents, mostly in Los Pacos, where there is even Spain’s only Finnish school.

Many of these, the largest Finnish expat community in the World, will no doubt be tuning in to see the latest series of the Scandinoir thriller series ‘Paratiisi’ (‘Paradise’) which was filmed in Fuengirola. In the series, popular Spanish actor, Fran Perea plays a police detective trying to resolve the murders of Finnish citizens on the Costa del Sol along with Finnish star Riitta Havukainen as an astute and complex Finnish detective who comes to the Costa del Sol to contribute her investigative skills to the investigations.

After impressive audience figures, especially in Finland, the thriller is returning for its third season, this time has a more Spanish/Finnish coproduction. Although filming on this the 3rd series of Paratiisi, Finns are still eagerly awaiting the release date of the popular Scandinoir series.

The Finnish element was also celebrated recently with Tarja Turunen considered the Queen of symphonic metal who played one of the closing concerts of Marenostrum in Fuengirola. She was followed the next night by Käärijä at Marenostrum Fuengirola, who made history at the 2023 Eurovision when he received more audience votes than any other Eurovision artist in the history of the singing competition with his humour-filled entry Cha Cha Cha.