Calpe
A limestone rock rising out of the sea, and a municipality where more than half the residents do not hold a Spanish passport. Its official name, since 2009, is Calp.
Source: INE, Censo Anual de Población 2025 · accessed 2 November 2026
Calp is the municipality beneath the Peñón de Ifach, the limestone rock that rises straight out of the sea and serves as the town’s landmark. The harbour sits at its foot. The rock itself is protected as the Parc Natural del Penyal d’Ifac, a natural park of the Generalitat Valenciana.
Calp or Calpe
Since 2009 the municipality’s only official name has been Calp. A decree of the Consell, the Valencian regional government, replaced the former dual form Calpe/Calp with the Valencian name. On tourism sites, in listings and in everyday English and Spanish, the name Calpe has stuck.
For a purchase, the name on the listing matters less than the municipality on the Nota Simple. Older documents may still read Calpe or Calpe/Calp; under the decree, official references to the old name are to be read as references to the new one. Calp, Calpe and Calpe/Calp are the same municipality.
What the figures say
The census of the INE, Spain’s statistics office, counted 27,440 inhabitants in Calp on 1 January 2025, of whom 14,857 did not hold Spanish nationality. That is 54 per cent, more than half the municipality.
What stands out is how widely that is spread. The seven largest groups are Colombians (1,591), Britons (1,494), Ukrainians (1,400), Belgians (1,388), Romanians (1,219), Russians (1,129) and Germans (1,046). No single nationality accounts for more than six per cent of residents; Belgians alone come to around five per cent, roughly one inhabitant in twenty.
The census counts registered residents. Anyone who holds a Spanish passport alongside another counts as Spanish, and owners who are not registered here do not appear at all. The figures describe the municipality, not the market.
The market across the province
For the province of Alicante, the land registry statistics of the Registradores recorded 53,385 home purchases in 2025. 43.29 per cent of them were made by foreign buyers, the highest share of any Spanish province. The statistics publish no figures for Calp; municipal figures appear only for provincial capitals.
On holiday letting
In the Valencian Community this is decided by the individual property, not by the town alone: it needs a favourable report from the municipality on its compatibility with planning rules and an entry in the Registro de Turismo de la Comunitat Valenciana. Since April 2025, where there is an owners’ community, a new holiday let also needs that community’s express approval. We check this for the specific property before anything is signed. A listing that says letting is “possible” is not a registration.
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Population figures are official, from the INE. Market observations are our own and are not statistics.