Malaga is lovely. Went there for a day trip when I went to Fuengirola/Mijas.
In fact a lot of that southern Spain region is so nice to be in. Been to Torremolinos, Marbella, Puerto Banus in addition to the 2 above. Love visiting there.
Also never been to Italy - we were thinking of going somewhere in June for ages so started looking at flights. Looked around loads of places in Europe - Florence, Rome, Paris, Lisbon, Barcelona, Bilbao, Nice, Porto, Prague, Dubrovnik but all flights were coming out very expensive. Then searched Milan and flights were only £80pp return!! Couldn't believe it was so cheap considering how popular it is.
My brother and his family were lucky - they flew out to Lanzarote and thankfully I don't think the ash affected them as the wind was blowing the ash the other way. Same for the return flight, don't think it reached that island but it was heading towards Spain apparently at some point...