
Mataró
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.
- Barcelona · 30 km — the country's second city, forty minutes by train
- Badalona · 20 km — Catalonia's third city and the metro
- Calella · 25 km — the resort town further up the coast
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
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 °CTourist load
On the map
What tenants actually pay
sourcedThis 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 bedroom | 750 €/mo | |
| 2 bedrooms | 1 000 €/mo | |
| 3 bedrooms | ≈ 1 300 €/mo | model: two-bed × 1.3, no measurement yet |
| Median of active leases, 2024 | 669 €/mo | SERPAVI · 75 m² |
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- BSB Maresme (British School of Barcelona)Cabrera de MarBritishEnglish · 3–11 · privateNew BSB campus, opened September 2026, primary only for now; secondary from 2027
Checked against registries and school sites: 2026-09-17. Fees are on each school's site: nobody publishes them centrally.
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- Morocco8 501
- China2 260
- Senegal1 280
- Colombia1 143
- Italy909
- GM812
- Honduras677
- Argentina608
- 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
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
- Badalona2 861 €/m²
- Barcelona4 675 €/m²
- Castelldefels4 297 €/m²
- Santa Cruz de Tenerife2 100 €/m²
- Blanes2 068 €/m²
- Torrox2 000 €/m²
- El Puerto de Santa María2 502 €/m²
- Seville2 488 €/m²
- San Roque2 523 €/m²