Spainability rankings · Updated July 2026
Best places in Spain for British retirees
For a retiring UK couple who want sun, the coast, good hospitals, easy flights to London — and some fellow Brits around.
Ranked among towns with a full published Spainability profile where we hold UK-national Padrón data (19 provinces). Working-age Brits and towns outside that coverage are not in this table.
Related: Best places for British remote workers , Where British people actually live (census map) and Top towns by UK-national count (census sort) .
The ranking
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A hospital in town; 129 UK nationals per 1,000; a health centre close by.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on higher crime (province-level · Spain is low-crime by EU norms).
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A hospital in town; 136.5 UK nationals per 1,000; a health centre close by.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on mild summers.
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A hospital in town; a health centre close by; only 31 rainy days a year.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on affordable cost of living (registered rent €/m²·mo).
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A hospital in town; a health centre close by; only 30 rainy days a year.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on low historical wildfire exposure.
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A hospital in town; a health centre close by; only 18 rainy days a year.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on affordable cost of living (registered rent €/m²·mo).
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30 min to a hospital; only 25 rainy days a year; 14.1°C average winters.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on brits nearby.
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34 min to a hospital; a health centre close by; only 37 rainy days a year.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on low historical wildfire exposure.
- 8
Castelló de la Plana/Castellón de la Plana the Valencia region
British-retiree Spainability Score 97A hospital in town; a health centre close by; direct flights to london.
Honest tradeoff: ranks low on brits nearby.
How we ranked this
We answered our own 17-question quiz as a British couple moving to Spain — they want sun and warmth, the coast nearby, good hospital access, easy flights back to London, and some fellow UK nationals in the community. 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 (close to a hospital, brits nearby and few rainy days a year) — we don't let a data-sparse town float to the top on the factors it happens to have. 134 otherwise-eligible towns were excluded here for missing that data.
- Spainability Score Each town's British-retiree 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 don't score Brexit-era visa paperwork, NHS top-up rules, or how English-friendly local shops are — only climate, coast, hospital drive-time, direct-flight reach to London and UK-national counts on the municipal register. This list is for retirees, not working-age remote workers.
Compare the top 8
| # | Town | Winter avg | Summer high | UK nationals /1,000 | Drive to hospital | Coast |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Orihuela | 13.1°C | 30.8°C | 128.97 | 0 min | 20 km |
| 2 | Mazarrón | 11.7°C | 34.9°C | 136.53 | 0 min | 16 km |
| 3 | Torrevieja | 13.1°C | 30.8°C | 56.52 | 0 min | 5 km |
| 4 | Cartagena | 14°C | 30.1°C | 10.88 | 0 min | 4 km |
| 5 | Arrecife | 18.8°C | 29°C | 4.17 | 0 min | 2 km |
| 6 | Níjar | 14.1°C | 30.9°C | 3.14 | 30 min | 10 km |
| 7 | Calasparra | 12.3°C | 34.6°C | 28.24 | 34 min | 86 km |
| 8 | Castelló de la Plana/Castellón de la Plana | 12.3°C | 30.6°C | 1.11 | 0 min | 3 km |
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 do most British people live in Spain?
UK nationals cluster on the Costa Blanca (Alicante) and Costa del Sol (Málaga) — towns like Orihuela, Torrevieja and Mijas lead on raw counts. This list ranks audited towns that best fit a retiring British couple's priorities; see our census map for the full geographic picture.
Is healthcare good for British residents in Spain?
Spain's public system is strong, though waits vary by region (we rank those separately). Many British residents use private insurance or the convenio especial. We score hospital proximity, not whether a GP speaks English.
Is this list for working-age Brits too?
No — the persona is a retiring couple. For working-age remote earners, see our British remote workers ranking; the census map shows where UK nationals already cluster regardless of age.
This is a generic British retiring couple
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.