El Puerto de Santa María, Cádiz: population, climate, prices
Cádiz, Andalusia · 89,983 inhabitants (1 Jan 2025)
Living in El Puerto de Santa María
El Puerto de Santa María is a town of 89,983 inhabitants on the coast in Cádiz (Andalusia), with cool winters and hot summers (January nights 6.5°C, August afternoons 30.7°C). It is one of the sunniest places in Spain: 8.5 hours of sunshine a day on average. The nearest international school (The English Centre, British curriculum) is 0.4 km away. Year-round direct flights to Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Paris and the US leave from Jerez Airport (XRY), 22 km away. Against that, public waiting lists in Andalusia are long (173 days on average for planned surgery); 2.1% of all homes are holiday lets (Spain 1.3%), so summers are busy and rents are under pressure. Around 2055, Spain's official climate scenarios put August afternoons here at about 31.7°C and the number of warm nights at 45 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 El Puerto de Santa María
El Puerto de Santa María, locally known as El Puerto and historically in English as Port Saint Mary, is a municipality of Spain located on the banks of the Guadalete River in the province of Cádiz, Andalusia. As of 2016, the city has a population of c. 88,184, of which some 50,000 live in the urban center, and the remainder in the surrounding areas.
From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Read more on Wikipedia →
Getting there
- Nearest airport
- Jerez Airport (XRY), 22 km, 884,539 passengers in 2025, 25 destinations
- Direct to Amsterdam
- Seville airport, 96 km (year-round)
- Direct to Brussels (Zaventem or Charleroi)
- Seville airport, 96 km (year-round); summer only from Jerez, 22 km
- Direct to London
- Gibraltar airport, 94 km (year-round); summer only from Jerez, 22 km
- Direct to Paris
- Seville airport, 96 km (year-round)
- Direct to Frankfurt
- Seville airport, 96 km (year-round); summer only from Jerez, 22 km
- Direct to the US
- Lisbon airport, 352 km (year-round); summer only from Málaga, 155 km
- Train station
- Puerto de Santa María (1.8 km)
- Fastest train to Madrid
- 4 h 06
- 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 Universitario de Puerto Real (9 km away, in Puerto Real, 343 beds)
- Nearest large public hospital (500+ beds, most specialties)
- Hospital Universitario Puerta del Mar (9 km away, in Cádiz, 740 beds)
- Nearest private general hospital
- Hospital General Santa Maria del Puerto (in town, 238 beds)
- General hospitals within 25 km
- 13
- Waiting time for planned surgery (Andalusia)
- 173 days on average; 32.2% wait more than 6 months (Spain: 121 days)
- Waiting time for a first specialist visit
- 136 days on average; 57.1% 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
- The English Centre (British), El Puerto de Santa María, 0.4 km
- International schools within 25 km
- 5
- Nearest by curriculum (within 100 km)
- British 0.4 km · American 13 km · French 91 km · Nordic 97 km
Within 30 km (up to five):
| School | Curriculum | Levels in the register | Where | Distance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The English Centre | British | infant | El Puerto de Santa María | 0.4 km |
| Bahía Montessori School | curriculum not stated | infant, primary | El Puerto de Santa María | 0.9 km |
| Sage College- The British School of Jerez | British | not listed | Jerez de la Frontera | 9.7 km |
| David Glasgow Farragut Elementary and High Schools | American | infant, primary | Rota | 13 km |
| El Altillo International School | curriculum not stated | not listed | Jerez de la Frontera | 15 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
- +1.9% in ten years (88,335 in 2015, 89,983 in 2025)
- Age
- 17.1% aged 65 or over, 16.4% under 16 (2022; Spain: 20.0% and 14.9%)
- Local income
- 13,277 € net per person per year (2023), 88% of the Spanish average; median 17,150 € per adult-equivalent
- Foreign residents
- 3.8% of all residents; 2.1% of residents aged 65+ (2022)
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
- 5 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
- 38 out of 100: how much there is compared with the other 332 places (big cities score highest)
- 9 food shops (supermarkets, bakeries, greengrocers…)
- 3 pharmacies
- 4 doctors, clinics or hospitals
- 38 cafés, bars and restaurants
- 5 parks and gardens
- 23 bus stops
- 4 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
- 1,013 (2.06% of all homes; Spain 1.28%), 6.2 tourist beds per 100 residents (May 2026)
- Blue Flag beaches
- 4 in town; 22 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
- Guadalete Y Barbate
- Reservoirs now
- 75.9% full (week of 2026-09-29); the same week in the previous 10 years averaged 37.5%
- Worst week 2016-2025
- 14.4% full (2024-01-09)
- Weeks below 40% full, 2016-2025
- 45% 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 | 16.2 | 17.4 | 19.7 | 21.5 | 24.7 | 27.8 | 30.4 | 30.7 | 28.0 | 24.7 | 19.9 | 17.0 |
| Average nightly low, °C | 6.5 | 7.3 | 9.6 | 11.5 | 14.3 | 17.5 | 19.4 | 19.8 | 17.8 | 14.7 | 10.3 | 7.8 |
| Rain, mm | 67 | 51 | 58 | 46 | 31 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 26 | 81 | 88 | 81 |
| Rainy days (1 mm or more) | 6.2 | 5.6 | 6.4 | 5.7 | 3.2 | 0.7 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 2.3 | 6.1 | 6.9 | 7.1 |
| Sunshine, hours per day | 5.7 | 6.8 | 7.7 | 8.9 | 10.5 | 11.7 | 12.1 | 11.1 | 9.1 | 7.4 | 6.0 | 5.2 |
| Humidity, % | 78 | 74 | 70 | 67 | 63 | 61 | 62 | 64 | 69 | 73 | 76 | 79 |
| Days reaching 30 °C / 86 °F | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.2 | 3.6 | 9.3 | 15.8 | 16.1 | 8.6 | 2.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
The year in numbers
- Köppen climate class
- Csa: Hot-summer Mediterranean
- Summer mugginess (August average dew point)
- 18.2°C – oppressive
- Typical hottest day of the year
- 38.2°C
- Typical coldest night of the year
- 0.1°C
- Days reaching 25 °C / 77 °F
- 142 a year (estimate)
- Days reaching 30 °C / 86 °F
- 56 a year
- Days reaching 35 °C / 95 °F
- 5 a year (estimate)
- Warm nights (low of 20 °C / 68 °F or more)
- 27 a year (estimate)
- Frost nights (0 °C / 32 °F or less)
- 1 a year
- Overcast days
- 56 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 ROTA, BASE NAVAL (5910), 10.5 km away; temperatures adjusted to the town's altitude. © AEMET.
Around 2055 (projection)
- August average high
- 31.7°C: +0.9 °C compared with today (models range from 0.4 °C to 1.7 °C)
- Warm nights (low of 20 °C / 68 °F or more)
- 45 a year, +15 (models: +4 to +36)
- Frost nights
- 1 a year (+0)
- Rainy days (1 mm or more)
- 43 a year, -8 (models: -14 to -3)
- Rain amount
- -10% over the year: summer -43%, winter -5%
- Sunlight reaching the ground
- +0.7% (models: -0.9% to +2.4%); 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 El Puerto de Santa María?
El Puerto de Santa María is in the province of Cádiz (Andalusia), Spain, on the coast. The nearest airport is Jerez Airport (XRY), 22 km away.
How many people live in El Puerto de Santa María?
89,983 registered residents on 1 January 2025 (INE), +1.9% in ten years.
What is the climate of El Puerto de Santa María?
January afternoons average 16.2°C and nights 6.5°C; August afternoons 30.7°C. 8.5 hours of sunshine a day and 51 rainy days a year (AEMET 1991-2020).
Is El Puerto de Santa María safe?
Recorded conventional crime in El Puerto de Santa María was 44.8 offences per 1,000 residents in 2025, about average for Spain (national rate about 41). Home burglaries: 1.00 per 1,000.
How hot is El Puerto de Santa María in summer?
August afternoons average 30.7°C (1991-2020), with 27 nights a year above 20 °C and 5 days of 35 °C or more.
How cold is El Puerto de Santa María in winter?
January afternoons average 16.2°C and January nights 6.5°C, with 1 frost nights a year.
Is there a hospital in El Puerto de Santa María?
The nearest public general hospital is Hospital Universitario de Puerto Real in Puerto Real, 9 km away. Planned surgery in Andalusia waits 173 days on average.
Can you fly direct from El Puerto de Santa María to Amsterdam or London all year?
Yes. Jerez Airport (XRY) (22 km away) has year-round direct flights to Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Paris and the US.
What does it cost to rent or buy in El Puerto de Santa María?
A typical apartment (77 m²) rented for 550 € a month in 2024 contracts. Homes were appraised at 2,399 €/m² on average over the last four quarters, 59.5% in five years.
Nearby and similar towns
- Nearest towns in this comparison
- Puerto Real (Cádiz, 9 km), Cádiz (Cádiz, 9 km), Rota (Cádiz, 11 km), San Fernando (Cádiz, 15 km), Jerez de la Frontera (Cádiz, 15 km)
- Most similar towns (summer heat, winter nights, rainy days, home prices, size)
- Rubí (Barcelona), Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz), Vilanova i la Geltrú (Barcelona), Granollers (Barcelona), Paterna (Valencia)
Distances are straight-line between town centres. Similarity is the distance in standardised values of the five measures.