Alcázar de San Juan, Ciudad Real: population and climate
Ciudad Real, Castilla-La Mancha · 31,914 inhabitants (1 Jan 2025)
Living in Alcázar de San Juan
Alcázar de San Juan is a small town of 31,914 inhabitants inland in Ciudad Real (Castilla-La Mancha), with cold winters and very hot summers (January nights 0.2°C, August afternoons 34.5°C). Homes are cheap for Spain: appraised at 944 €/m², lower than 94% of the towns; a typical apartment rents for 425 € a month. Recorded crime is low: 22.7 offences per 1,000 residents in 2025 (Spain about 41). Year-round direct flights to Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Paris and the US leave from Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD), 127 km away. Against that, winter nights are cold (0.2°C in January, 48 frost nights a year); summers are hot (34.5°C on an average August afternoon, 39 days of 35 °C or more a year); the centre is thin on everyday shops and services (3 of 6 essentials within a 10-minute walk). Around 2055, Spain's official climate scenarios put August afternoons here at about 35.6°C and the number of warm nights at 33 a year.
Each sentence is chosen by where the town ranks among the 333 places compared on that measure (top or bottom 20%); the numbers are the ones in the sections below, from the sources named there.
About Alcázar de San Juan
Alcázar de San Juan is a city and municipality of Spain located in the province of Ciudad Real, autonomous community of Castilla–La Mancha. It lies on the plain of La Mancha. From the 13th to the 19th century the history of Alcázar is strongly linked to the Grand Priory of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem. The city became a railway hub in the 19th century.
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Getting there
- Nearest airport
- Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD), 127 km, 68,179,054 passengers in 2025, 242 destinations
- Direct to Amsterdam
- Madrid airport, 127 km (year-round)
- Direct to Brussels (Zaventem or Charleroi)
- Madrid airport, 127 km (year-round)
- Direct to London
- Madrid airport, 127 km (year-round)
- Direct to Paris
- Madrid airport, 127 km (year-round)
- Direct to Frankfurt
- Madrid airport, 127 km (year-round)
- Direct to the US
- Madrid airport, 127 km (year-round)
- Train station
- Alcázar de San Juan (0.7 km)
- Fastest train to Madrid
- 1 h 18
- Fastest train to Barcelona
- 7 h 09
Distances are straight-line. Flights as listed in airport route tables on 4 Oct 2026; train times from Renfe's timetable (Iryo and Ouigo not included).
Healthcare
- Nearest public general hospital
- Hospital General La Mancha Centro (in town, 362 beds)
- Nearest large public hospital (500+ beds, most specialties)
- Hospital General Universitario de Ciudad Real (76 km away, in Ciudad Real, 564 beds)
- Nearest private general hospital
- Hospital Quironsalud Ciudad Real (76 km away, in Ciudad Real, 55 beds)
- General hospitals within 25 km
- 1
- Waiting time for planned surgery (Castile-La Mancha)
- 92 days on average; 16.5% wait more than 6 months (Spain: 121 days)
- Waiting time for a first specialist visit
- 64 days on average; 65.6% wait more than 60 days (Spain: 102 days)
Ministry of Health, National Hospital Catalogue 2025 (situation on 31 Dec 2024); general hospitals only. Distances are straight-line to the hospital's municipality. Residents registered in Spain use public hospitals; non-EU applicants for some visas must have private health insurance. Waiting times are for the whole region (public health service, 31 Dec 2025), as reported by each region to the Ministry of Health (SISLE-SNS); private insurance usually avoids most of the wait.
International schools
- Nearest international school
- Escuela Internacional Waldorf Madreselva (curriculum not stated), Ciudad Real, 76.7 km
- International schools within 25 km
- 0
- Nearest by curriculum (within 100 km)
- American 80 km
Ministry of Education, register of non-university schools (RCD), October 2026: every school authorised to teach a foreign curriculum in Spain, without the business, arts and hairdressing schools in the same list and without schools for one nationality (Japanese, Libyan, Iraqi, Russian, Panamanian). Curriculum as labelled in the register or clear from the school's name; levels as listed in the register, which leaves them out for some schools. Straight-line distance from the town centre. We do not rate schools: visit, and ask about accreditation and fees.
Who lives here
- Population trend
- +2.1% in ten years (31,269 in 2015, 31,914 in 2025)
- Age
- 18.1% aged 65 or over, 15.7% under 16 (2022; Spain: 20.0% and 14.9%)
- Local income
- 13,708 € net per person per year (2023), 91% of the Spanish average; median 18,550 € per adult-equivalent
- Foreign residents
- 7.6% of all residents; 1.6% of residents aged 65+ (2022)
- Largest nationalities
- Romanian 3.0%, Moroccan 1.1%, Colombian 0.6%; all EU citizens 3.4% (share of all residents, 1 Jan 2022; the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and the Nordic countries are not published per town)
INE: population register (Padrón) and household income atlas. Local income is a rough guide to local prices and affluence; Spain publishes no official cost-of-living index for towns.
Within a 10-minute walk of the centre
- Everyday essentials on foot
- 3 of 6 ✗ 15+ food shops ✓ 3+ pharmacies ✗ 25+ cafés, bars or restaurants ✓ 2+ parks ✗ 3+ bus stops ✓ 2+ libraries, theatres, cinemas or cultural centres
- Lively centre
- 33 out of 100: how much there is compared with the other 332 places (big cities score highest)
- 14 food shops (supermarkets, bakeries, greengrocers…)
- 10 pharmacies
- 2 doctors, clinics or hospitals
- 7 cafés, bars and restaurants
- 18 parks and gardens
- 2 bus stops
- 3 libraries, theatres, cinemas, cultural centres
- 1 market places
Counted in OpenStreetMap within 800 m of the town centre, taken as the point OpenStreetMap marks as the town's centre, moved at most 500 m to the busiest nearby spot (for a few spread-out municipalities without such a point: the busiest spot near the official coordinate). OpenStreetMap is kept by volunteers: very complete in most Spanish towns, thinner in some. “Everyday essentials” only asks whether the basics are there, so a small town can score 6 of 6; “lively centre” ranks each count among all 333 places and averages them, so it mostly reflects size. Large municipalities with several centres (Lorca, Oleiros, Ames…) can score low because their official centre is a small village.
Holiday lets and beaches
- Tourist apartments
- 17 (0.10% of all homes; Spain 1.28%), 0.3 tourist beds per 100 residents (May 2026)
- Blue Flag beaches
- nearest in San Martín de Valdeiglesias, 149 km; 0 within 30 km
Tourist apartments: INE count of homes listed on Airbnb, Booking and Vrbo. A high share means busy summers and pressure on rents. Blue Flag 2026 (ADEAC): beaches meeting water-quality, safety and service standards; this includes some lake and river beaches. Distances are straight-line between town centres.
Water
- River basin
- Guadiana
- Reservoirs now
- 72.1% full (week of 2026-09-29); the same week in the previous 10 years averaged 40.1%
- Worst week 2016-2025
- 22.9% full (2022-12-06)
- Weeks below 40% full, 2016-2025
- 38% of all weeks
Ministry for the Ecological Transition, weekly hydrological bulletin: all reservoirs over 5 hm³ in the basin. Low reservoirs are what led to drought restrictions in Catalonia (2023-24) and Andalusia (2022-24). Some basins (Segura) also rely on transfers and desalination, so their reservoir level alone overstates the risk of taps running dry.
What the rankings say
Not named in the rankings we track.
Climate
● average daily high ● average nightly low ■ rainy days (1 mm or more). These are 1991-2020 averages, not record temperatures: a hot spell will be warmer and a cold night colder than these values.
| Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average daily high, °C | 10.6 | 12.7 | 16.7 | 19.8 | 24.3 | 30.8 | 35.2 | 34.5 | 28.7 | 21.9 | 14.6 | 11.1 |
| Average nightly low, °C | 0.2 | 0.8 | 3.5 | 6.0 | 9.9 | 14.6 | 17.7 | 17.5 | 13.3 | 8.9 | 4.3 | 0.9 |
| Rain, mm | 20 | 24 | 31 | 34 | 39 | 21 | 5 | 10 | 25 | 30 | 31 | 32 |
| Rainy days (1 mm or more) | 4.6 | 4.9 | 5.1 | 5.3 | 5.3 | 3.4 | 0.8 | 1.2 | 3.5 | 4.9 | 5.6 | 4.5 |
| Humidity, % | 81 | 72 | 65 | 62 | 53 | 45 | 39 | 43 | 53 | 65 | 78 | 83 |
| Days reaching 30 °C / 86 °F |
The year in numbers
- Köppen climate class
- BSk: Cold semi-arid
- Summer mugginess (August average dew point)
- 13.5°C – noticeable (humidity from a nearby station)
- Days reaching 25 °C / 77 °F
- 138 a year (estimate)
- Days reaching 30 °C / 86 °F
- 92 a year
- Days reaching 35 °C / 95 °F
- 39 a year (estimate)
- Warm nights (low of 20 °C / 68 °F or more)
- 11 a year (estimate)
- Frost nights (0 °C / 32 °F or less)
- 48 a year
- Average humidity
- 62%
Dew point measures how sticky the air feels: under 13 °C (55 °F) feels dry, 16-18 °C (61-64 °F) muggy, over 18 °C oppressive. For comparison, Davis, California (also Köppen Csa) has a summer dew point of about 11 °C. "Typical hottest day" is the 1991-2020 average of each year's single hottest day. Estimates are counted from daily satellite data adjusted to this place's averages; checked against AEMET's own 30 °C counts they are usually within 4 days a year.
Around 2055 (projection)
- August average high
- 35.6°C: +1.3 °C compared with today (models range from 0.4 °C to 2.7 °C)
- Warm nights (low of 20 °C / 68 °F or more)
- 33 a year, +17 (models: +2 to +30)
- Frost nights
- – a year (-6)
- Rainy days (1 mm or more)
- 68 a year, -5 (models: -11 to +1)
- Rain amount
- -5% over the year: summer -22%, winter +3%
- Sunlight reaching the ground
- +0.7% (models: -0.5% to +1.9%); no official sunshine-hours projection exists
Spain's official climate scenarios (Escenarios-PNACC 2024, AEMET regionalisation of 11 global climate models, ~5 km grid), middle emissions scenario SSP2-4.5: average change from 2011-2040 to 2041-2070, added to today's 1991-2020 values above. The range shows the lowest and highest of the 11 models. Rain: the same models regionalised by CSIC (DeepESD). Sunlight: EURO-CORDEX regional models (RCP4.5). A projection, not a forecast. Read: Spain around 2055, region by region →
Questions people ask
Where is Alcázar de San Juan?
Alcázar de San Juan is in the province of Ciudad Real (Castilla-La Mancha), Spain, inland. The nearest airport is Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD), 127 km away.
How many people live in Alcázar de San Juan?
31,914 registered residents on 1 January 2025 (INE), +2.1% in ten years.
What is the climate of Alcázar de San Juan?
January afternoons average 10.6°C and nights 0.2°C; August afternoons 34.5°C.
Is Alcázar de San Juan safe?
Recorded conventional crime in Alcázar de San Juan was 22.7 offences per 1,000 residents in 2025, low for Spain (national rate about 41). Home burglaries: 0.60 per 1,000.
How hot is Alcázar de San Juan in summer?
August afternoons average 34.5°C (1991-2020), with 11 nights a year above 20 °C and 39 days of 35 °C or more.
How cold is Alcázar de San Juan in winter?
January afternoons average 10.6°C and January nights 0.2°C, with 48 frost nights a year.
Is there a hospital in Alcázar de San Juan?
Yes: Hospital General La Mancha Centro, a public general hospital with 362 beds. Planned surgery in Castile-La Mancha waits 92 days on average.
Can you fly direct from Alcázar de San Juan to Amsterdam or London all year?
Yes. Adolfo Suárez Madrid–Barajas Airport (MAD) (127 km away) has year-round direct flights to Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Paris and the US.
What does it cost to rent or buy in Alcázar de San Juan?
A typical apartment (90 m²) rented for 425 € a month in 2024 contracts. Homes were appraised at 944 €/m² on average over the last four quarters, 31.7% in five years.
Nearby and similar towns
- Nearest towns in this comparison
- Tomelloso (Ciudad Real, 31 km), Villarrobledo (Albacete, 54 km), Valdepeñas (Ciudad Real, 71 km), Ciudad Real (Ciudad Real, 76 km), Aranjuez (Madrid, 79 km)
- Most similar towns (summer heat, winter nights, rainy days, home prices, size)
- Armilla (Granada), Mejorada del Campo (Madrid), Paracuellos de Jarama (Madrid), Seseña (Toledo), Hellín (Albacete)
Distances are straight-line between town centres. Similarity is the distance in standardised values of the five measures.