Where the data comes from
Short version: we do not invent figures. Each one on a page is marked either «source» or «estimate», and here is what sits behind those marks.
«Source» means the number comes from a checkable publication and was verified against it. «Estimate» means there is no data for that town and we worked it out ourselves — from neighbours, from area, from a rule. We never pass an estimate off as a measurement: a wrong figure is worse than no figure.
How many people live there
Population comes from the padrón — the official register of residents kept by the national statistics institute, INE. Not from articles or listings sites: they copy each other and differ by tens of thousands. The whole database is checked against INE tables by a script.
What housing costs
Price per square metre comes from the Ministry of Housing bulletin — an appraisal value computed from real transactions. It is systematically lower than the asking price. Where the ministry does not publish a town (under 25,000 residents) we use asking prices from portals and say so next to the figure: mixing the two bases in a comparison makes an expensive town look cheap.
Weather and sea
Sunshine hours, winter temperatures and humidity come from observations by the state meteorological agency, AEMET, not from resort marketing. The gap between the two can be several degrees.
Hospitals, schools, things on the map
Hospitals come from the Ministry of Health's national catalogue; travel time is computed along roads. Schools come from programme registries and the schools' own sites. Coworking spaces, dog beaches and the like come from the open OpenStreetMap: where something is not mapped, we say so rather than guess.
Visas, taxes, deadlines
Primary sources only: the law itself in the official gazette, the BOE, and the sites of the agencies that accept the paperwork. Regulatory figures never come from search results. Proven the hard way: every review said the visa runs 36 months, while the agency's own answer is 12 from abroad.
If you found a mistake
Write to us and we will check it against the primary source. A wrong figure costs us more than it costs you: the whole point of the directory rests on this.