Spainability rankings · Updated July 2026
Best Spanish towns for winter sun
Not a retiree list — anyone who wants a genuinely warm, dry, sunny winter on the coast, ranked from AEMET climate normals.
Ranked among the 278 towns with an indexed Spainability page — 268 full published profiles plus 10 data profiles for the revealed-preference hubs foreigners actually move to — not all 8,132 municipalities.
The ranking
- 1
San Fulgencio data profile the Valencia region
Winter-sun Spainability Score 100 top 1% of 8,131 towns8 km from the sea; only 31 rainy days a year; a settled international community.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on local prosperity.
- 2
Pilar de la Horadada data profile the Valencia region
Winter-sun Spainability Score 100 top 1% of 8,131 towns5 km from the sea; only 30 rainy days a year; a settled international community.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on local prosperity.
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8 km from the sea; only 31 rainy days a year; a settled international community.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on local prosperity.
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11 km from the sea; only 33 rainy days a year; a settled international community.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on local prosperity.
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Only 25 rainy days a year; 10 km from the sea; 14.1°C average winters.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on local prosperity.
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2 km from the sea; only 25 rainy days a year; 14.1°C average winters.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on affordable cost of living (registered rent €/m²·mo).
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2 km from the sea; only 18 rainy days a year; 18.8°C average winters.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on affordable cost of living (registered rent €/m²·mo).
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1 km from the sea; a settled international community; 13.1°C average winters.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on affordable cost of living (registered rent €/m²·mo).
How we ranked this
We answered our own 17-question quiz as a couple (not necessarily retired) who told the quiz winter sun is the priority — a warm, dry, sunny winter, a summer that's fine if warm (not scorching), and life on the coast. Then we ran every one of Spain's 8,132 municipalities through the same scoring engine the quiz uses, and kept the top-ranked towns with a full published Spainability profile.
- Data INE census (population, origins), AEMET climate normals, regional PISA scores, and the Health Ministry's SISLE waiting lists — each town compared against the Spanish average.
- Reproducible Feed the same persona into our engine and you get this exact order. No hand-picking, no affiliate deals.
- Data completeness A town is excluded from this ranking if it's missing data for any of its key factors (on/near the sea, few rainy days a year and mild winters) — we don't let a data-sparse town float to the top on the factors it happens to have. 1 otherwise-eligible town was excluded here for missing that data.
- Spainability Score Each town's Winter-sun Spainability Score is its percentile among the 8,131 municipalities we could score for this profile — a score of 88 means it fits better than 88% of them. It's the same per-persona percentile shown on that town's own page. How Spainability works →
- What we don't score We use winter temperature and winter rainfall (mm) as the closest available proxies for 'winter sun' — we don't have a day-by-day winter rainy-days count or hours-of-actual-sunshine at every town, so we say rainfall and temperature, not 'guaranteed sunshine'.
Compare the top 8
| # | Town | Winter avg | Winter rainfall | Summer high | Coast | Registered rent |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | San Fulgencio | 13.1°C | 104 mm | 30.8°C | 8 km | €4.01/m²·mo |
| 2 | Pilar de la Horadada | 12.5°C | 146 mm | 29.5°C | 5 km | €5.34/m²·mo |
| 3 | Rojales | 13.1°C | 104 mm | 30.8°C | 8 km | €5.89/m²·mo |
| 4 | Elx/Elche | 13°C | 98 mm | 30.5°C | 11 km | €5.45/m²·mo |
| 5 | Níjar | 14.1°C | 101 mm | 30.9°C | 10 km | €4.14/m²·mo |
| 6 | Almería | 14.1°C | 101 mm | 30.9°C | 2 km | €6.77/m²·mo |
| 7 | Arrecife | 18.8°C | 69 mm | 29°C | 2 km | €7.1/m²·mo |
| 8 | Formentera | 13.1°C | 182 mm | 30.1°C | 1 km | €13.57/m²·mo |
Values from the Spainability dataset (INE / AEMET / regional sources). "no data" = we don't have that number for this town and never guess it.
Questions
Where in Spain has the best winter weather?
Our engine favours the Canary Islands and the southern Mediterranean coast (Costa del Sol, Costa Blanca, Costa de Almería) for winter sun — warm, dry and sunny while the Atlantic north sees its wettest months. See the ranked list and data above.
Is this a retiree list?
No — it's scored for a working-age couple who simply prioritise winter warmth, not retirement-specific needs like hospital proximity. See our separate best-places-to-retire-in-spain ranking for that persona.
This is a generic winter-sun-seeking couple, not necessarily retired
Get your ranking, not this one →
This list scores one representative persona. Answer a dozen honest questions and we score all 8,132 municipalities against your priorities — climate, cost, healthcare, community, getting home — with the tradeoffs shown as plainly as the wins.
Take the 3-minute quiz →Last updated: July 2026 · Next update: on INE's next census release (expected 2027).
Re-generated from the Spainability dataset on each data release — the ranking is reproducible, not editorial.