San Sebastián / Donostia
San Sebastián, Donostia in Basque, is the capital of Gipuzkoa province: one hundred and ninety thousand people and twenty kilometres from the French border. The city wraps around the bay of La Concha. It is almost closed off and therefore calm, and that made it a resort back in the nineteenth century, when the royal court started coming.
Today it lives on trade, tourism and food: the city is known for the density of its restaurants and its pintxos bars. It works all year, but the resort peak falls in summer and prices rise with it. The square metre here is among the dearest in our base — only neighbouring Zarautz is higher. The climate is Atlantic. It rains in every month, the winter is mild, the summer cool, the sea cold. Anyone coming for warm water should look elsewhere; anyone coming for a city should look here.
- Bilbao · 100 km — the Guggenheim and a bigger airport
- Zarautz · 22 km — the long sandy beach and the surf
- Hondarribia · 20 km — the walled town on the French border
San Sebastián / Donostia sits in Basque Country, Gipuzkoa, right on the water. The square metre is 26% above the Basque Coast median: €5 186 against €4 125. You can live here without a car: our rating is 5 out of 5, rare on the Spanish coast, and the town has its own train station. Winters are damp at 78% humidity, so ask about mould before you sign.
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.
San Sebastián sea temperature by month
3 months above 20 °CsourceAverage sea surface temperature, °C, for 2015–2024 — NOAA OISST satellite series, grid cell 10.7 km from the centre.
Tourist load
San Sebastián beaches and water quality
sourceSan Sebastián has 3 beaches tested under EU bathing water rules, at 8 sampling points. In the 2025 season, all 3 were graded excellent. The last “poor” grade here was in 1993: Playa de Gros/La Zurriola.
The grade is bacteria in water samples over the last four seasons — not sand, views or crowds. “Poor” means bathing there is advised against.
| Beach | From the centre | Grade 2025 | “Excellent” in a row | Last “poor” |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Playa de la Concha | 0.5 km | excellent | 31 seasons | none since 1990 |
| Playa de Gros/La Zurriola | 1.1 km | excellent | 17 seasons | 1993 |
| Playa de Ondarreta | 1.6 km | excellent | 27 seasons | 1992 |
Where from: European Environment Agency, bathing water register, seasons 1990–2025, licence CC BY 4.0. Distance is from the centre in a straight line. Every place in one table
On the map
What tenants actually pay
sourcedThis is the median rent on active leases — tax records for 2024, a sample of 12 727 leases. It includes long-standing contracts at unchanged rents, so it sits below what is asked today: our estimate of asking rent is 1 750 € 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: Donostia/San Sebastián
Rent by number of bedrooms
asking price, estimate| 1 bedroom | 1 300 €/mo | |
| 2 bedrooms | 1 750 €/mo | |
| 3 bedrooms | ≈ 2 280 €/mo | model: two-bed × 1.3, no measurement yet |
| Median of active leases, 2024 | 967 €/mo | SERPAVI · 71 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- Deutsche Schule San SebastiánSan Sebastián / DonostiaGermanGerman, Spanish, EU · 2–18 · privateFounded 1921, a cooperative school backed by the German Foreign Office; teaches Basque alongside German and Spanish
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 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- Honduras2 417
- Colombia1 934
- Nicaragua1 812
- Morocco1 479
- Italy1 046
- Ukraine717
- Venezuela550
- France546
- frFrench~1 500French border 20 km away; Bayonne/Biarritz are routine shopping and commuting destinations
- enEnglish~800
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 EAS
January 2026/2720 min to the airport- United Kingdom1
- Italy1
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».
Month by month
Air, sea, how busy it gets and what stays open — for each month on its own.
Articles that include this place
- Renting long-term on the Spanish coast: what the law says and what tenants payThe five-year renewal and the seasonal lease, article by article. And what tenants on each coast pay under live leases: from tax records, not listings.
- Where property is cheapest on the Spanish coast, on a single price basisThe housing ministry's appraised value, ranked by coast and by town, with the price of a 70 m² flat and local incomes alongside. Asking prices get a list of their own: the two bases never share a ranking.
- Price per m² lies unless you ask what it measuresAppraised value and asking price differ systematically. On one pair of cities the difference in sources flips the comparison entirely.
- What a month on the Spanish coast costs, town by townOne identical scenario costed across all 132 places. The spread between towns is wider than between countries, and nearly as wide within a single coast.
- Retiring to coastal Spain: who already lives there, how far the hospital is, and whether the town stays open in winterThe share of residents over 65 and over 80 in every place we cover, from the INE census, the drive to the nearest public hospital, and the measured winter score. No ranking: only what the numbers show.
Where to look next
- Getxo4 125 €/m²
- Benalmádena3 779 €/m²
- Adeje / Costa Adeje3 774 €/m²
- Ibiza (Eivissa)5 435 €/m²
- Sitges4 924 €/m²
- Sant Josep de sa Talaia5 600 €/m²