Page "Hispania Baetica" Paragraph 3

Before Romanization, the mountainous area that was to become Baetica was occupied by several settled Iberian tribal groups.

Celtic influence was not as strong as it was in the Celtiberian north.

According to the geographer Claudius Ptolemy, the indigenes were the powerful Turdetani, in the valley of the Guadalquivir in the west, bordering on Lusitania, and the partly Hellenized Turduli with their city Baelon, in the hinterland behind the coastal Phoenician trading colonies, whose Punic inhabitants Ptolemy termed the " Bastuli ".

Phoenician Gadira ( Cadiz ) was on an island against the coast of Hispania Baetica.

Other important Iberians were the Bastetani, who occupied the Almería and mountainous Granada regions.

Towards the southeast, Punic influence spread from the Carthaginian cities on the coast: New Carthage ( Roman Cartago Nova, modern Cartagena ), Abdera and Malaca ( Málaga ).