Cádiz · Andalucía
Tarifa
Europe's southernmost town, once known for its high suicide rate blamed on unremitting winds — now a prosperous windsurfing and kitesurfing capital.
What Tarifa is like
Portrait drawn from Lonely Planet, the Michelin Green Guide & The Rough Guide.
Spreading out beyond its Moorish walls at the extreme south of Spain, facing the Strait of Gibraltar.
Worth the trip
- The fifteenth-century, Baroque-fronted church of San Mateo, with a beautiful late Gothic interior
- Crumbling Moorish ramparts to wander
A little history
Until the mid-1980s Tarifa was a quiet village known, if at all, for its abnormally high suicide rate, blamed on the unremitting winds.
Who it suits: Windsurfers and kitesurfers
The numbers
The decision data — each figure against the Spanish average. Regional overlays and estimates are labelled, and where there's no local reading we say so plainly.
Climate
- Winter average temp
- 13.9°C 6.1°C above the Spanish average (7.8°C)
- Summer high (Jul–Aug)
- 25.1°C 5.1°C below the Spanish average (30.2°C)
- Rainy days a year
- 57 days 16% less than the Spanish average (69 days)
- Sunshine
- no local data
- Summer water stress (WEI+) regional estimate
- 9 47 below the Spanish average (56)
Cost & economy
- Home price
- no local data
- Net income per person
- €13,049 10% less than the Spanish average (€14,495)
- Income growth ’18–’23
- 36.3%
Schools
- Schools in town
- 9
- Nearest international school
- 22 km
- PISA maths (region) regional estimate
- 457 24 below the Spanish average (481)
Healthcare
- Drive to a hospital
- 36 min
- Nearest health centre
- 14.3 km
- Surgical wait (region) regional estimate
- 173 days 60% more than the Spanish average (108 days)
Getting around
- Drive to nearest airport
- 85 min
- Fibre-to-home coverage
- 95% 16% above the Spanish average (79%)
- 100 Mbps+ coverage
- 99% 16% above the Spanish average (83%)
Who lives here
- Population
- 18,627
- Born in Spain
- 87.3% 1.5% below the Spanish average (88.8%)
- Born elsewhere in EU/UK
- 7.3% 3.5% above the Spanish average (3.8%)
- U.S.-born residents
- 1.93 per 1,000
Numbers: SettleSpain town dataset, derived from INE, AEMET, Mitma, Ministerio del Interior and the Catastro. National average = the unweighted mean across all 8,132 Spanish municipalities with data. A blank means no municipal-level figure is published — not a zero.
How does Tarifa fit you?
These are the town's numbers. Whether it's your town depends on what you're optimising for — winter sun or mild summers, a city or a village, short medical waits, an easy flight home. The 3-minute quiz scores Tarifa against every one of Spain's 8,132 municipalities on your priorities. It sits about 43 min from Algeciras, if that's your anchor.
Take the quiz — rank Tarifa for you →Nearby towns
Other places we profile within easy reach.