Orihuela Costa
A stretch of coast without a town hall of its own. Orihuela Costa belongs to the municipality of Orihuela, whose main town lies inland. The key figures at the top of the page are for the coast alone, as the INE records it.
Source: INE, Censo Anual de Población 2025 · accessed 2 November 2026
Orihuela Costa is not a municipality of its own. The stretch of coast between Torrevieja and Pilar de la Horadada belongs to Orihuela, whose main town lies inland. Listings often give the name of an urbanisation, such as La Zenia, Cabo Roig or Campoamor. The town hall in charge is Orihuela’s, whether for building permits, property tax or registering as a resident.
A unit of its own in the statistics
The gazetteer (Nomenclátor) of the INE, Spain’s statistics office, lists the coast as a separate unit, “Orihuela Costa”. On 1 January 2025 it had 26,842 inhabitants, 20,981 of them without Spanish nationality: 78 per cent, almost four in five. Since 2024 the gazetteer has been based on the annual census, the same basis as the municipal figures.
For the municipality of Orihuela as a whole, the census counts 84,279 inhabitants, 30,946 of them foreign nationals, around 37 per cent. The coast is home to just under a third of the municipality’s inhabitants, but to around two thirds of its foreign residents. A figure for Orihuela therefore does not describe Orihuela Costa.
Where the residents come from
The census table by country of nationality covers the municipality as a whole. The largest group is British (8,780), followed by Moroccans (2,845), Ukrainians (2,040), Russians (1,771) and Belgians (1,657). How these groups divide between the coast and the main town cannot be read from it.
The census counts residents, not owners. Anyone who owns a flat or a house here but is registered elsewhere does not appear in these figures. They describe the place, not the market.
The market behind the figures
For the municipality of Orihuela, the notarial statistics of Spain’s housing ministry (MIVAU) show 4,983 home purchases in 2025. They do not separate the coast from the main town. Across the province of Alicante, the land registries recorded 53,385 home purchases in the same year; 43.29 per cent were made by foreigners, the highest share of any Spanish province. Notarial and land-registry figures are different counts and cannot be set against each other.
Before you buy
Whether a property offered under the name of an urbanisation actually lies in the municipality of Orihuela is shown by the nota simple, not by the listing. Torrevieja to the north and Pilar de la Horadada to the south border it directly. Which side of the boundary a property is on decides which town hall you deal with for as long as you own it.
Current properties in Orihuela Costa
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.
Guide to holiday lettingSee new properties first
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Population figures are official, from the INE. Market observations are our own and are not statistics.