relocoast
Capture the beauty of the full moon rising over Montgó Mountain in Dénia, Spain.
Costa Blanca · Alicante

Dénia

4Winter liveability / 5To the sea 300 mTo the airport 90 min · ALCPer m² 2 826

In summer Dénia grows fivefold — from forty-seven thousand people to two hundred thousand. By the finance ministry's figures, among Spanish towns under fifty thousand residents it takes in more holidaymakers than any other in the country. In winter all of that collapses back and an ordinary town with a port is left. It is an old place. Under the Romans it was called Dianium and kept a war fleet. In the eleventh century it was the capital of a small Arab state that ruled the Balearic Islands as well. From those years the castle still stands on its hill in the middle of town.

The handsome early-twentieth-century houses below it came from a different fortune: Dénia lived on selling raisins until disease killed the vines. Its twenty kilometres of coast divide neatly in two: wide sand to the north, rocky coves to the south. About a third of residents are foreign, Germans and Britons in equal measure. Getting about is easier here than in the towns nearby: a narrow-gauge tram runs to Benidorm and Alicante, ferries leave the port for Ibiza, Palma and Formentera, and the hospital is ten minutes away. Alicante airport is an hour and a half — the one real inconvenience, and a permanent one.

Worth a trip nearby
  • Jávea · 10 kmthe bay under Montgó and the Arenal beach
  • Calpe · 35 kmthe Ifach rock and sandy beaches
  • Valencia · 95 kmairport, station, hospitals
Resalesource
2 826€/m²
+9% price growth yoy
appraised value, Ministerio de Vivienda
New build
3 600€/m²
Rent, 2 bed
1080€/mo
Populationsource
47 568
Foreign residents 29.1%
Winter humidity
68%
Sunshine hours per year
2 800h
Rent, 1 bed
820€/mo
International schools
2
Internet
420Mbps

Dénia sits in Costa Blanca, Alicante, right on the water. You can live here without a car: our rating is 4 out of 5, rare on the Spanish coast, and the town has its own train station. 29.1% of residents are foreign nationals per the census: Spanish is not the only language you will hear on the street. The airport is 90 minutes away: meeting visitors and flying out both cost you half a day.

Hospital, terrain, getting around

Nearest hospitalsource
20min by car
Hospital de Denia
Dénia · 6 km · public
Terrainsource
flat
Centre at 11 m, 10 m of elevation change
under 25 m of elevation change within 700 m — pram, bicycle, bad knees all fine
Car-freeour rating
4/5
comfortable without a car
No rail station within 3 km · bus stops within 1.5 km: 27

Where from: the Ministry of Health hospital catalogue, road time · elevations from the Copernicus terrain model · OpenStreetMap · ratings for car-free and hospital minutes are ours.

Sea temperature

5 months above 20 °C
15
J
14
F
15
M
16
A
19
M
22
J
26
J
27
A
26
S
23
O
19
N
17
D

Tourist load

1
J
1
F
2
M
2
A
3
M
4
J
5
J
5
A
4
S
3
O
2
N
2
D

On the map

What tenants actually pay

sourced
Median
561€/mo
75th percentile
700€/mo
Flat size
90

This is the median rent on active leases — tax records for 2024, a sample of 2 673 leases. It includes long-standing contracts at unchanged rents, so it sits below what is asked today: our estimate of asking rent is 1 080 € for a two-bedroom.

The point of the 75th percentile: it is closer to what is being signed now than the median. The gap between them shows how much a new tenant overpays relative to long-standing ones.

Where from: SERPAVI, Ministerio de Vivienda · municipality: Dénia

Rent by number of bedrooms

asking price, estimate
1 bedroom820/mo
2 bedrooms1 080/mo
3 bedrooms1 400/mo
Median of active leases, 2024561/mo

Asking prices are what long lets are advertised at today; the registry is what tenants pay on signed leases, including old ones. The gap between them is your negotiating argument.

Schools nearby

estimate

International schools counted in the base: 2. Names and curricula for this place are not verified yet — the school registry covers the thirty most-requested places so far.

4

Renting without a Spanish contract

How realistic a long lease is without a nómina — on foreign income, savings or prepayment.

  • 29.1% foreign residents — income from abroad is routine for landlords here
  • A community with its own services: agencies have dealt with foreigners before
  • Prices rising 9% a year — the landlord picks, and the first filter is a nómina

This is our model, not a measurement: demanding a nómina is an individual landlord's practice and nobody publishes it. The rating is derived from the share of foreign residents, the presence of a community with services, price growth, seasonality of the stock and the size of the town.

Who lives here

INE 2025
Foreign residents on the padrón
29.1%
13,844 of 47,568
  • Colombia2 347
  • United Kingdom1 258
  • Germany1 113
  • Ukraine896
  • Russia843
  • Romania718
  • Italy591
  • France574
Communities and services in their language
  • deGerman~3 000school, doctors or lawyers in the language
  • enEnglish~3 500school, doctors or lawyers in the language

Where from: INE, Censo Anual de Población · the register-based census counts padrón registrations by citizenship on 1 January, not everyone living here: seasonal owners and the unregistered are outside it, and naturalised residents count as Spanish.

Winter direct flights from ALC

January 2026/2790 min to the airport
  • United Kingdom21
  • other countries17
  • Germany12
  • Poland10
  • Norway7
  • Italy6
  • Sweden5
  • France5
  • Belgium4
  • Netherlands3
  • Switzerland3
  • Ireland2
  • Denmark2
  • Czechia2
  • Finland1
  • Austria1

Destinations served at least weekly in January; checked 2026-09-17.

Paperwork and practicalities

Appointment for the TIE· Alicantefrom reports
2
You can book in six places: Alicante, Benidorm, Dénia, Elche, Orihuela and Torrevieja. There are more free slots here than in Valencia, 131 counted over summer 2026, yet the wait is four to eight weeks and getting in is very hard. In June 2026 a police union called the six-officer documentation unit in Torrevieja a collapse, and some cases were moved to Elche and Orihuela. Slots appear in the morning and vanish within minutes.
1 — no slots for weeks, 5 — freely available. Checked 2026-09-17
Coworking within 3 km
KNOWHERE
Dog beaches within 8 km
not on the map
Vets within 5 km
7

From OpenStreetMap — an open map filled in by volunteers. Something missing there may still exist: read this as «we found this many», not «there are no more».

A heron gliding gracefully across the blue ocean waters of Denia, capturing the beauty of wildlife.
Víctor C. · Pexels
Historic building with a blue tiled dome in Denia, Spain under a partly cloudy sky.
Víctor C. · Pexels
Denia Port with castle hill and marina boats in Alicante province Spain
lunamarina · Depositphotos

Where to look next

Nearby on the same coast
Cheaper with the same sea
Similar price, other coasts
Compare with Maó / Mahón
Verified: 2026-09-14 · where the data comes from