Cenozoic sediments ill the Malaga area range from the loner Miocene or uppermost Oligocene to the Quaternary. Tortonian (late Miocene) - Quaternary sediments correspond to the fill of the Malaga Basin. Older sediments were laid down before the basin had acquired its present-day structure. A number of important stratigraphic discontinuities are present within the Cenozoic succession. In the late Oligocene-early Miocene, sandy sediments and conglomerates assigned to the Alozaina Formation, derived from the basement Malaguide Complex, were deposited in shallow-marine conditions contemporaneously with deformation in the Internal Zones of the Betic Cordillera. The overlying transgressive Vinuela Formation (late Aquitanian-early Burdigalian) was deposited in deep-marine conditions which extended over a somewhat wider area than that occupied by the Malaga Basin. Sedimentation was dominated by classical turbidity currents and high-density mass flows. Sediments of middle Miocene age are absent. Marine sedimentation resumed in the Tortonian as a consequence of a eustatic sea-level rise. There was clear tectonic control on the depositional system as indicated both by the occurrence of coarse-grained detritic sediments, which impeded the development of a bioclastic (carbonate) shelf, and also by the formation of a prominent unconformity. NW-SE and NE-SW trending faults, defining subsiding areas and highs, controlled the pattern of sedimentation. Strike-slip activity on these faults (right- and left-lateral, respectively) was relatively minor compared to dip-slip activity; normal faults with throws of up to 1 km are known, and result from approximately east-west extension. The Tortonian succession is overlain unconformably by Pliocene marine deposits which were deposited during all abrupt transgression. Post-Pliocene sedimentation has been largely continental.