Costa Blanca and Alicante beaches by water quality: every beach's record since 1990

The Costa Blanca is the coast of Alicante province, and the bathing water register lists 125 beaches on it, with 134 sampling points in 19 municipalities. In 2025, 126 were graded excellent and the other 8 good. No point here has been graded poor in 36 seasons, since 1990, which makes it the only Spanish province with sea beaches that can say so. The grade is about bacteria in the water, not about sand, crowds or the view.

94 % of points excellent is above the national figure of 91 %. What matters more is the floor. Since 2011, when the grade «good» first appears in the Spanish series, no point on this coast has gone lower than that. Apart from Alicante, the only areas with no poor grade ever are ones with few points: Ceuta (10), Melilla (10), El Hierro (4), La Gomera (12) and La Palma (9).

Where the grade comes from

Samples are taken all through the bathing season, always at the same spots, and tested for two kinds of gut bacteria. The season's class is worked out over four seasons at once: this one and the three before it. That builds in inertia. One dirty week drowns in the total, and a point with bad samples year after year will not climb back quickly. The EU bathing water directive.

Excellent, good and sufficient all pass the standard. Poor does not, and then bathing is banned or advised against. «Good» is not an alarm; it is one step below the top. The European Environment Agency.

Where the water was not excellent in 2025

There are 8 such points in 8 municipalities, and all are good. All of them slipped recently, the earliest in 2023. Just before that, each had at least 8 excellent seasons in a row. Here is each point's full record from its first season.

• Playa de la Ampolla (Teulada): sufficient 1990–1993, excellent 1994–2022, good 2023–2025.
• Playa de la Cala (Finestrat): excellent 1990–2022, good 2023–2025.
• Playa de las Piscinas del Paseo (Torrevieja): excellent 2007, sufficient 2008, excellent 2009–2010, good 2011, excellent 2012–2022, good 2023–2025.
• Playa de Llevant (Santa Pola): excellent 1990–2022, good 2023–2025.
• Playa de l’Albufereta (Alicante): excellent 1990–2002, sufficient 2003, excellent 2004–2007, sufficient 2008, excellent 2009–2023, good 2024–2025.
• Playa del Mal Pas (Benidorm): excellent 1990–2014, good 2015, excellent 2016–2023, good 2024–2025.
• Playa de Cala Fustera (Benissa): excellent 1990–2024, good 2025.
• Playa de les Rotes (Dénia): sufficient 1990, excellent 1991–2010, good 2011, excellent 2012, good 2013–2014, excellent 2015–2024, good 2025.

The grade gives no cause. It reports what the samples found, not where it came from, and it belongs to the spot where the water is taken, not to the whole beach.

36 seasons without a poor grade: how the count moved

Count, season by season, how many points fell short of excellent, and the line is not flat. In 1990 it was 13 of 63. By 2000, none. Before 2011 the Spanish series has no step called «good»: below excellent came sufficient straight away.

2008 stands apart: 11 points at once, across 6 municipalities: Alicante, Benidorm, El Campello, Dénia, Guardamar del Segura and Torrevieja. In the next season 10 of them were excellent again. A bad year after which nearly everything came back looks like an incident, not the state of the coast.

From 2017 to 2020 every point was excellent, 4 seasons in a row. In the last three seasons 7 to 8 points a year have fallen short of excellent, against 2 in 2022. On a coast where nearly every point is excellent that is a visible shift, though none has gone below good.

• 2016: 1 below excellent of 106 points
• 2017: all of 113 points
• 2018: all of 118 points
• 2019: all of 118 points
• 2020: all of 118 points
• 2021: 2 below excellent of 119 points
• 2022: 2 below excellent of 122 points
• 2023: 7 below excellent of 122 points
• 2024: 8 below excellent of 134 points
• 2025: 8 below excellent of 134 points

All 19 municipalities with beaches

19 municipalities in the province have points. The northernmost are in Dénia, the southernmost in Pilar de la Horadada, on the border with Murcia. 11 of them had every point excellent in 2025. Our place is shown where we have one. Moraira is a town inside Teulada and Orihuela Costa is a town inside Orihuela, so they share the municipality's points.

New points from 2024

In 2023 the register had 122 points here; the next season, 134. The 12 new points are beaches that were not tested before, and 5 of them have «Cala» in the name: small coves. Each has 2 seasons so far, and all are excellent. But a bad year may simply not have come yet: a record this short says nothing about how the water behaves over time.

• Calas de Cabo Huertas — Alicante
• Playa de San Gabriel — Alicante
• Playa del Bol — Altea
• Cala de la Almadrava — Benidorm
• Cala del Tio Xixo — Benidorm
• Cala d’Enmig — El Campello
• Playa de Punta Negra — Dénia
• Calas del Cuartel — Santa Pola
• Playa de la Mata — Torrevieja
• Playa del Charco — Villajoyosa
• Playa del Raco del Conill — Villajoyosa
• Punta del Moro — Villajoyosa

Sea and winter in our places

Our 12 places sit along about 130 km in a straight line, with Dénia at the north end and Orihuela Costa at the south. The sea along it is nearly the same: in no month do the places differ by more than 0.5 °C. The water is coldest in February, at 14.3–14.7 °C, and warmest in August, at 26.8–27.1 °C. It is at 20 °C or warmer for 5 months, June to October.

Sea figures are 2015–2024 averages from NOAA satellite data, for a quarter-degree cell off the coast, not a reading at a beach. Primary source. «January» is how much of the cafés, hotels and shops trade in January against the year's peak, from social security data for 2025. It runs from 73 % in Guardamar del Segura to 95 % in Alicante. A dash means the figure exists only for the whole municipality, which is wider than the town: Moraira and Orihuela Costa.

When the coast is less crowded

The water register does not know how many people are on a beach. The nearest thing to an answer is hotel statistics: INEINESpain's National Statistics Institute. It keeps the padrón — the official register of residents of every municipality.Why it matters. The only primary source of population for the whole country. A figure 'per INE' can be checked against a table; a figure 'from the internet' cannot. counts hotel nights every month by tourist zone, and the Costa Blanca is one of them. Over the twelve months from September 2025 to August 2026, the fewest nights were in January 2026, at 0.84 million, and the most in August 2026, at 2.28 million: 2.7 times as many. Bed occupancy ran from 44 to 82 %.

September stands out. The sea in September is 25.5–25.7 °C, the same as in July (25.6–25.8 °C), yet there are 16 % fewer hotel nights than in July and 21 % fewer than in August. The share of guests who live abroad is highest in October, at 66 %, and lowest in August, at 55 %: that month 45 % of nights belong to people living in Spain.

These are hotels only. Holiday flats and private lets are counted by other surveys or not at all, so the figure shows the shape of the season, not everyone on the shore. Hotel nights, occupancy.

All 125 Costa Blanca beaches

At the top: beaches excellent in 2025 with no season below it, longest record first. 27 of them have been tested since 1990. «Seasons below excellent» counts the years in which any point on the beach was graded lower.

Further

All our places on this coast, with prices, winter and population, are on the Costa Blanca page. How the Costa Blanca looks next to the other provinces is in our piece on Spain's cleanest beaches; how many months a year people swim here compared with the north is in our swimming season guide.

How the Mediterranean here differs from the Atlantic and the Bay of Biscay is in our piece on the seas of Spain. Water at every place in our base is in our dataset, and the sea by month in the sea temperature dataset.

Read next

How the Spanish school system works: year groups by birth year, subjects, grades and five coastal regions

Spain's minimum wage and average salary in 2026, with sources — and what rent takes on the coast

Moving from the UK: four differences nobody writes about