SpainScore rankings · Updated July 2026
Best places in Spain for families to settle
For remote-working parents with school-age kids who want a mid-size coastal town on a sensible budget.
How we ranked this
We answered our own 17-question quiz as a family with school-age kids moving for good — remote-working parents who want a mid-size town near the coast, on a sensible budget, keeping every region in play on schooling language. Then we ran every one of Spain's 8,132 municipalities through the same scoring engine the quiz uses, and kept the top-ranked towns that have a full data profile.
- Data INE census (population, origins), AEMET climate normals, regional PISA scores, and the Health Ministry's SISLE waiting lists — each town compared against the Spanish average.
- Reproducible Feed the same persona into our engine and you get this exact order. No hand-picking, no affiliate deals.
- What we don't score We don't score school quality town-by-town (only regional PISA and distance to an international school), nor playground density or how welcoming a place is to newcomers — those need a visit.
The ranking
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4 km from the sea; a hospital in town; 75,915 people.
Honest tradeoff: Nature / hiking terrain.
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5 km from the sea; a hospital in town; 11,690 people.
Honest tradeoff: Nature / hiking terrain.
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4 km from the sea; a hospital in town; 16,768 people.
Honest tradeoff: Nature / hiking terrain.
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4 km from the sea; a hospital in town; 10,675 people.
Honest tradeoff: Nature / hiking terrain.
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4 km from the sea; 13 min to a hospital; a real food scene.
Honest tradeoff: Nature / hiking terrain.
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9 km from the sea; a hospital in town; 17,116 people.
Honest tradeoff: Nature / hiking terrain.
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5 km from the sea; 12,366 people; a real food scene.
Honest tradeoff: Nature / hiking terrain.
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27 km from the sea; a hospital in town; a real food scene.
Honest tradeoff: Nature / hiking terrain.
Compare the top 8
| # | Town | Nearest intl school | PISA maths (region) | Home price | Net income/person | Coast |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Avilés | 1 km | 495 | €1,531/m² | €15,545 | 4 km |
| 2 | Formentera | 33 km | 471 | no data | €18,860 | 5 km |
| 3 | Hondarribia | 62 km | 482 | no data | €21,641 | 4 km |
| 4 | Laredo | 32 km | 495 | no data | €14,453 | 4 km |
| 5 | Santillana del Mar | 7 km | 495 | no data | €15,247 | 4 km |
| 6 | Bermeo | 20 km | 482 | no data | €17,332 | 9 km |
| 7 | Baiona | 16 km | 486 | no data | €15,254 | 5 km |
| 8 | Oviedo | 1 km | 495 | €2,082/m² | €16,926 | 27 km |
Values from the SpainScore dataset (INE / AEMET / regional sources). "no data" = we don't have that number for this town and never guess it.
Questions
Where is the best place in Spain for a family to live?
It depends on schooling and budget, but our engine favours mid-size coastal towns with good regional education scores and an international school within reach. We keep co-official-language regions (Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia) in play and flag the schooling-language question rather than filtering them out.
Does the region's language matter for schools in Spain?
It can. In Catalonia and the Basque Country state schooling is largely in the co-official language; Galicia is roughly half Galician-medium. We don't exclude these regions — we flag it so you can decide once you have specifics.
This is a generic family with school-age kids
Get your ranking, not this one →
This list scores one representative persona. Answer a dozen honest questions and we score all 8,132 municipalities against your priorities — climate, cost, healthcare, community, getting home — with the tradeoffs shown as plainly as the wins.
Take the 3-minute quiz →Updated July 2026. Re-generated from the SpainScore dataset on each data release — the ranking is reproducible, not editorial.