relocoast
Aerial view of Mataro, near Barcelona, Spain.
Costa Barcelona · Maresme, Barcelona

Mataró

5Winter liveability / 5To the sea 500 mTo the airport 40 min · BCNPer m² 2 505

Mataró is the capital of the Maresme district, with around a hundred and three thousand residents, thirty kilometres north of Barcelona. Roman Iluro stood on this same spot, and its remains turn up in the old quarter during every major building work.

Mataró lived for a long time on textiles and knitwear, and some of those factories still run. For anyone moving the key thing is the coastal train: forty minutes to Barcelona, and plenty of people commute that way daily because housing here costs far less than in the capital. The town works all year, with its own hospital, schools and harbour. The beach is inside the town but cut off from it by the railway — the common complaint along the whole Maresme.

Worth a trip nearby
  • Barcelona · 30 kmthe country's second city, forty minutes by train
  • Badalona · 20 kmCatalonia's third city and the metro
  • Calella · 25 kmthe resort town further up the coast
Resalesource
2 505€/m²
+8% price growth yoy
appraised value, Ministerio de Vivienda
New build
3 637€/m²
Rent, 2 bed
1000€/mo
Populationsource
131 370
Foreign residents 17.3%
Winter humidity
69%
Sunshine hours per year
2 500h
Rent, 1 bed
750€/mo
International schools
1
Internet
500Mbps

Mataró sits in Maresme, Barcelona, right on the water. The square metre is 46% below the Costa Barcelona median: €2 505 against €4 675. 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. Fast internet at a median of 500 Mbps: remote work is not a problem here.

Hospital, terrain, getting around

Nearest hospitalsource
14min by car
Hospital de Mataró
Mataró · 8.8 km · public
Terrainsource
rolling
Centre at 16 m, 43 m of elevation change
25–80 m of change — the climb from the sea to the centre is noticeable on foot
Car-freeour rating
4/5
comfortable without a car
Stations: Mataró · bus stops within 1.5 km: 90

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
14
J
13
F
14
M
15
A
18
M
22
J
25
J
26
A
25
S
21
O
18
N
16
D

Tourist load

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

On the map

What tenants actually pay

sourced
Median
669€/mo
75th percentile
794€/mo
Flat size
75

This is the median rent on active leases — tax records for 2024, a sample of 8 383 leases. It includes long-standing contracts at unchanged rents, so it sits below what is asked today: our estimate of asking rent is 1 000 € 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: Mataró

Rent by number of bedrooms

asking price, estimate
1 bedroom750/mo
2 bedrooms1 000/mo
3 bedrooms1 300/mo
Median of active leases, 2024669/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

from registries

Checked against registries and school sites: 2026-09-17. Fees are on each school's site: nobody publishes them centrally.

2

Renting without a Spanish contract

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

  • Prices rising 8% 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
17.3%
22,778 of 131,370
  • Morocco8 501
  • China2 260
  • Senegal1 280
  • Colombia1 143
  • Italy909
  • GM812
  • Honduras677
  • Argentina608
Communities and services in their language
  • arArabic~5 000

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 BCN

January 2026/2740 min to the airport
  • other countries76
  • Italy16
  • United Kingdom14
  • France11
  • Germany9
  • Poland6
  • Netherlands3
  • Switzerland3
  • Portugal3
  • Ireland2
  • Belgium2
  • Denmark2
  • Austria2
  • Sweden1
  • Norway1
  • Finland1
  • Czechia1

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

Paperwork and practicalities

Appointment for the TIE· Barcelonafrom reports
1
The worst province in the country alongside Madrid. In June 2026 the Barcelona bar association described people spending three months looking for a fingerprint appointment. The newspaper El País reported slots being bought for 50 to 200 euros. The police themselves admitted they were short-staffed. Automatic booking has run since January 2026 in L'Hospitalet only. Free slots vanish within minutes, and people on forums look for fixers and bots.
1 — no slots for weeks, 5 — freely available. Checked 2026-09-17
Coworking within 3 km
Coworking Xammar
Dog beaches within 8 km
not on the map
Vets within 5 km
5

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».

Where to look next

Nearby on the same coast
Cheaper with the same sea
Similar price, other coasts
Compare with El Puerto de Santa María
Verified: 2026-09-14 · where the data comes from