Property in Orihuela Costa — a coastal strip that is not its own municipality

The shoreline is not one long stretch of sand but a dozen-odd small coves (calas) separated by low rocky headlands. In 2025 Orihuela's coast held ten Blue Flags, the best score in the province — among them Cala Bosque at La Zenia, Cala Capitán at Cabo Roig and La Glea at Campoamor. The climate is semi-arid: around 260 mm of rain a year, and a sea running from about 16 °C in winter to 26 °C in summer.

One road, the N-332, runs the length of the strip and every area branches off it; the AP-7 toll motorway is reached at exit 763. There is no railway on the coast. The shared centre such as it is opened in 2012: La Zenia Boulevard, an open-air mall of more than 150 shops, the largest in the province, with IKEA, Primark and Zara inside. Shop and restaurant signs in La Zenia and Cabo Roig are as often in English as in Spanish.

North to south. Punta Prima (1969) begins right on the Torrevieja boundary, is quieter and greener than the commercial core, and its beach has a wheelchair lift down to the sand. Playa Flamenca is one of the largest, split into I and II: dense apartment blocks, its own secondary school IES Playa Flamenca, a Saturday street market — and in August the busiest end of the strip. La Zenia, with the Boulevard and two Blue Flag coves, is the closest thing to a shared centre. Cabo Roig sits on the clifftop above Cala Capitán and La Caleta, with a restaurant-and-bar strip and a small Club Náutico.

Villamartín grew from 1972 around its golf course, is itself made up of smaller names — Las Filipinas, El Presidente, Blue Lagoon — and is predominantly Northern European. Next to it is Los Dolses with its primary school, CEIP Los Dolses. Dehesa de Campoamor is the most expensive end of the coast: a 19th-century estate that belonged to the poet and politician Ramón de Campoamor and took his name after his death in 1901, now built around Real Club de Golf Campoamor (1988) and the yacht club. Aguamarina is small and deliberately low-key, beside a protected flora microreserve and a fossil beach whose marine remains are dated to roughly 125,000 years old.

All of these are inside the municipality of Orihuela. The exception is Mil Palmeras at the far south: most of the built-up area falls under Pilar de la Horadada, even though its beach counts towards Orihuela's Blue Flag tally. Check which municipality a plot there is in before you buy.

On 1 January 2024 the register counted 26,122 residents; for the same year local reporting has also given 27,929 — the disagreement is not about the direction of travel but about where exactly the coast's boundary runs. The real number is higher: winter water consumption has been used to suggest around 45,000, and local estimates put the August peak at 60,000–80,000.

Across the whole municipality of Orihuela (85,674 people in 2024), 32% of residents held foreign nationality, from 121 countries, with Britons the largest group (9,681), followed by Morocco and Ukraine. Because inland Orihuela city is almost entirely Spanish, essentially all of that population lives on the coast; local sources put several areas above half foreign-born, but no official figure measuring the coast alone has been published.

Idealista's price index put the area at €3,042/m² in June 2026, 6.8% up on a year earlier; the readings in between — about €2,852/m² in August 2025 and €2,933/m² in November — point to a steady climb rather than a jump. What is mostly for sale is two- and three-bedroom apartments and semi-detached bungalows in gated developments (Playa Flamenca, La Zenia), plus townhouses and villas on the golf resorts (Villamartín, Campoamor). New-build activity is heavy in several still-developing pockets.

Short-term letting requires a VUT registration: Orihuela town hall first issues an urban-compatibility certificate tied to the property's cadastral reference, and only then does the Generalitat issue a five-year tourism-registry number. The stricter Decreto-ley 9/2024 has applied since 8 August 2024; from 2025 a let in a residential building also needs the owners' community's approval, and letting through a portal needs a national NRU number.

Orihuela Costa is the coastal part of the municipality of Orihuela: some 16 kilometres of coast whose administrative centre sits in Orihuela city, 30 kilometres inland. The coast itself has no mayor or council of its own — planning, infrastructure and budget decisions are taken in Orihuela, which is also where the old town, the cathedral and the nearest railway station are.

For a buyer that has a few practical consequences. Property taxes go to the municipality of Orihuela and paperwork goes through its town hall: the compatibility certificate for a short-term let, for instance, is issued by Orihuela before the Generalitat grants the tourism-registry number. It is worth checking which municipality a plot falls in before you buy — at the southern end, in Mil Palmeras, most of the built-up area already belongs to Pilar de la Horadada.