The Darkness into Light walk, which celebrates its tenth edition on the Costa del Sol in 2025, is a solidarity 5-kilometre walk along the Coastal Path of La Cala de Mijas, held at dawn (to symbolise the journey from darkness to light). The event will take place on Saturday, May 10th, at 6:00 a.m., starting from the La Cala Boulevard (at Biddy Mulligan Pub).

This campaign, which began in Dublin 16 years ago, was promoted by the Pieta House foundation and saw more than 200,000 people from all over the world participate in 2024. Registration is now open online via the website: www.darknessintolight.ie and at the Afesol Salud Mental offices in Benalmádena and Estepona. All proceeds from registration fees will go towards suicide awareness programmes, as well as to support individuals who have experienced the loss of a loved one to suicide.

The event was presented on Tuesday 29th at the Torreón de La Cala by the president of Afesol Mental Health Costa del Sol, Cristian González, and the councillor for Social Inclusion at the Mijas Town Hall, Mari Francis Alarcón (PP). 

Every year, Afesol develops awareness campaigns to put an end to the myths and misconceptions, the taboo, the stigma and the blaming of suicidal behaviour, with the aim of making it easier for people with suicidal ideations to ask for help. In recent years, the campaigns developed by the organisation have focused on the elderly and young people. 

González pointed out that “we have been doing this walk for many years now to raise awareness of the fact that the leading cause of unnatural death in the world is suicide. Last year in Spain 4,166 people committed suicide, so we have to start working on suicide prevention and the public system needs to provide more resources”.

The president thanked the work of Mijas Comunicación for giving visibility to the event and the Mijas Town Hall for continuing to work on mental health, especially the Social Inclusion area, for the implementation of the suicide prevention board in which the Local Police and the mental health area also participate. The councillor responsible for this area stressed that “the Town Hall is always here to support them, because this is a very reasonable cause for the Town Hall to be involved; we must raise awareness of this illness, because I consider it to be an illness, so I encourage everyone to come, participate in this walk and support them”.

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