Cartagena, Murcia: population, climate, prices
Murcia, Murcia · 220,704 inhabitants (1 Jan 2025)
Living in Cartagena
Cartagena is a mid-sized city of 220,704 inhabitants on the coast in Murcia, with mild winters and hot, dry summers (January nights 9.0°C, August afternoons 30.5°C). The nearest international school (Escuela Alma Montessori, international curriculum) is 9.3 km away. Winter nights are mild for Spain: 9.0°C on average in January, warmer than 88% of the towns compared. Year-round direct flights to Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Paris and the US leave from Region of Murcia International Airport (RMU), 26 km away. Against that, August is humid (dew point 21.5°C), so the heat feels sticky; 104 nights a year stay above 20 °C, which makes sleeping without air conditioning hard in summer. Around 2055, Spain's official climate scenarios put August afternoons here at about 31.3°C and the number of warm nights at 117 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 Cartagena
Cartagena is a city in the Region of Murcia in Spain. As of 2024, with a population of 219,235, it is the second most populated municipality in the Region of Murcia. The city lies in a natural harbour of the Mediterranean coastline of the southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. The wider urban or metropolitan area of Cartagena, known as Campo de Cartagena, has a population of 409,586 inhabitants.
From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Read more on Wikipedia →
Getting there
- Nearest airport
- Region of Murcia International Airport (RMU), 26 km, 949,007 passengers in 2025, 21 destinations
- Direct to Amsterdam
- Alicante airport, 84 km (year-round)
- Direct to Brussels (Zaventem or Charleroi)
- Alicante airport, 84 km (year-round)
- Direct to London
- Murcia airport, 26 km (year-round)
- Direct to Paris
- Alicante airport, 84 km (year-round)
- Direct to Frankfurt
- Alicante airport, 84 km (year-round)
- Direct to the US
- Madrid airport, 392 km (year-round); summer only from Málaga, 328 km
- Train station
- no long-distance station within 15 km
- Fastest train to Madrid
- no direct train
- Fastest train to Barcelona
- no direct train
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 Universitario Santa Lucia (in town, 708 beds)
- Nearest large public hospital (500+ beds, most specialties)
- Hospital General Universitario Santa Lucia (in town, 708 beds)
- Nearest private general hospital
- Hospital La Vega Grupo Ha (44 km away, in Murcia, 142 beds)
- General hospitals within 25 km
- 2
- Waiting time for planned surgery (Murcia)
- 103 days on average; 19.3% wait more than 6 months (Spain: 121 days)
- Waiting time for a first specialist visit
- 89 days on average; 81.9% 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 ALMA MONTESSORI (curriculum not stated), Pozo Estrecho, 9.3 km
- International schools within 25 km
- 2
- Nearest by curriculum (within 100 km)
- British 22 km · American 44 km · French 53 km · Nordic 58 km
Within 30 km (up to five):
| School | Curriculum | Levels in the register | Where | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ESCUELA ALMA MONTESSORI | curriculum not stated | infant, primary | Pozo Estrecho | 9.3 km |
| KING'S COLLEGE MURCIA | British | infant, primary, secondary | Roldán | 22 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
- +2.0% in ten years (216,301 in 2015, 220,704 in 2025)
- Age
- 17.6% aged 65 or over, 17.5% under 16 (2022; Spain: 20.0% and 14.9%)
- Local income
- 13,126 € net per person per year (2023), 87% of the Spanish average; median 17,150 € per adult-equivalent
- Foreign residents
- 11.0% of all residents; 6.4% of residents aged 65+ (2022)
- Largest nationalities
- Moroccan 5.5%, British 1.1%; all EU citizens 1.2% (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
- 6 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
- 71 out of 100: how much there is compared with the other 332 places (big cities score highest)
- 35 food shops (supermarkets, bakeries, greengrocers…)
- 21 pharmacies
- 8 doctors, clinics or hospitals
- 97 cafés, bars and restaurants
- 240 parks and gardens
- 49 bus stops
- 2 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
- 1,307 (1.04% of all homes; Spain 1.28%), 3.2 tourist beds per 100 residents (May 2026)
- Blue Flag beaches
- 10 in town; 20 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
- Segura
- Reservoirs now
- 50.1% full (week of 2026-09-29); the same week in the previous 10 years averaged 25.7%
- Worst week 2016-2025
- 13.1% full (2017-11-21)
- Weeks below 40% full, 2016-2025
- 83% 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
- idealista: best places to retire (2026): listed (source)
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 | 16.7 | 17.1 | 18.8 | 20.5 | 23.6 | 27.1 | 29.9 | 30.5 | 27.6 | 24.0 | 20.1 | 17.6 |
| Average nightly low, °C | 9.0 | 9.8 | 11.5 | 13.7 | 16.8 | 20.3 | 23.1 | 23.8 | 21.1 | 17.3 | 12.9 | 10.0 |
| Rain, mm | 31 | 21 | 25 | 24 | 14 | 5 | 1 | 3 | 39 | 30 | 36 | 31 |
| Rainy days (1 mm or more) | 3.0 | 2.7 | 3.2 | 3.1 | 1.9 | 1.0 | 0.3 | 0.7 | 2.9 | 3.2 | 4.1 | 3.4 |
| Sunshine, hours per day | 6.0 | 6.7 | 7.2 | 8.4 | 9.6 | 10.9 | 11.1 | 10.2 | 8.1 | 6.9 | 6.1 | 5.5 |
| Humidity, % | 70 | 70 | 70 | 69 | 66 | 67 | 68 | 70 | 71 | 72 | 70 | 71 |
| Days reaching 30 °C / 86 °F | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.6 | 4.0 | 14.7 | 16.9 | 4.3 | 0.2 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
The year in numbers
- Köppen climate class
- BWh: Hot desert
- Summer mugginess (August average dew point)
- 21.5°C – oppressive
- Typical hottest day of the year
- 35.1°C
- Typical coldest night of the year
- 3.7°C
- Days reaching 25 °C / 77 °F
- 134 a year (estimate)
- Days reaching 30 °C / 86 °F
- 41 a year
- Days reaching 35 °C / 95 °F
- 1 a year (estimate)
- Warm nights (low of 20 °C / 68 °F or more)
- 104 a year (estimate)
- Frost nights (0 °C / 32 °F or less)
- 0 a year
- Average humidity
- 70%
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.
1991-2020 averages, AEMET station CARTAGENA (7012C), 1.2 km away; sunshine from SAN JAVIER AEROPUERTO (7031), 26 km; temperatures adjusted to the town's altitude. © AEMET.
Around 2055 (projection)
- August average high
- 31.3°C: +0.9 °C compared with today (models range from 0.2 °C to 1.7 °C)
- Warm nights (low of 20 °C / 68 °F or more)
- 117 a year, +14 (models: +6 to +22)
- Frost nights
- 0 a year (+0)
- Rainy days (1 mm or more)
- 25 a year, -4 (models: -13 to +3)
- Rain amount
- -9% over the year: summer -20%, winter -8%
- Sunlight reaching the ground
- -0.0% (models: -0.5% to +0.7%); 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 Cartagena?
Cartagena is in the province of Murcia, Spain, on the coast. The nearest airport is Region of Murcia International Airport (RMU), 26 km away.
How many people live in Cartagena?
220,704 registered residents on 1 January 2025 (INE), +2.0% in ten years.
What is the climate of Cartagena?
January afternoons average 16.7°C and nights 9.0°C; August afternoons 30.5°C. 8.1 hours of sunshine a day and 30 rainy days a year (AEMET 1991-2020).
Is Cartagena safe?
Recorded conventional crime in Cartagena was 35.9 offences per 1,000 residents in 2025, about average for Spain (national rate about 41). Home burglaries: 1.73 per 1,000.
How hot is Cartagena in summer?
August afternoons average 30.5°C (1991-2020), with 104 nights a year above 20 °C and 1 days of 35 °C or more.
How cold is Cartagena in winter?
January afternoons average 16.7°C and January nights 9.0°C, with 0 frost nights a year.
Is there a hospital in Cartagena?
Yes: Hospital General Universitario Santa Lucia, a public general hospital with 708 beds. Planned surgery in Murcia waits 103 days on average.
Can you fly direct from Cartagena to Amsterdam or London all year?
Yes. Region of Murcia International Airport (RMU) (26 km away) has year-round direct flights to Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Paris and the US.
What does it cost to rent or buy in Cartagena?
A typical apartment (94 m²) rented for 500 € a month in 2024 contracts. Homes were appraised at 1,435 €/m² on average over the last four quarters, 38.8% in five years.
Nearby and similar towns
- Nearest towns in this comparison
- Torre-Pacheco (Murcia, 16 km), San Javier (Murcia, 26 km), Mazarrón (Murcia, 29 km), San Pedro del Pinatar (Murcia, 31 km), Murcia (Murcia, 44 km)
- Most similar towns (summer heat, winter nights, rainy days, home prices, size)
- Almería (Almería), Elx/Elche (Alicante), Castelló de la Plana/Castellón de la Plana (Castellón), Roquetas de Mar (Almería), Reus (Tarragona)
Distances are straight-line between town centres. Similarity is the distance in standardised values of the five measures.
Articles that discuss Cartagena
- Best coastal towns in Spain to live in, and the cheapest
- Best places to live in Spain (2026): six shortlists
- The hidden cost of a beach summer: humidity
- International schools in Spain: which towns have one nearby
- Retiring to Spain from the UK or the US: where?
- Safest places to live in Spain: 333 towns ranked
- Same budget, different Spain: what €250,000 buys where
- Warmest places in Spain in winter, town by town
- Where to buy property in Spain: prices in 333 towns