Santander, Cantabria: population, climate, prices
Cantabria, Cantabria · 175,425 inhabitants (1 Jan 2025)
Living in Santander
Santander is a mid-sized city of 175,425 inhabitants on the coast in Cantabria, with mild winters and mild, wet summers (January nights 8.3°C, August afternoons 23.4°C). Summers stay moderate: August afternoons average 23.4°C, cooler than 98% of the towns. Winter nights are mild for Spain: 8.3°C on average in January, warmer than 85% of the towns compared. Year-round direct flights to Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Paris and the US leave from Seve Ballesteros-Santander Airport (SDR), 5 km away. Against that, sunshine is scarce by Spanish standards (5.3 hours a day, 125 rainy days a year). Around 2055, Spain's official climate scenarios put August afternoons here at about 24.1°C and the number of warm nights at 13 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 Santander
Santander is the capital of the autonomous community of Cantabria, Spain. It has a population of 172,000 (2017). It is a port city located in the northern coast of the Iberian Peninsula, facing the Cantabrian Sea.
From Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Read more on Wikipedia →
Getting there
- Nearest airport
- Seve Ballesteros-Santander Airport (SDR), 5 km, 1,069,390 passengers in 2025, 29 destinations
- Direct to Amsterdam
- Bilbao airport, 74 km (year-round)
- Direct to Brussels (Zaventem or Charleroi)
- Santander airport, 5 km (year-round)
- Direct to London
- Santander airport, 5 km (year-round)
- Direct to Paris
- Santander airport, 5 km (year-round)
- Direct to Frankfurt
- Bilbao airport, 74 km (year-round)
- Direct to the US
- Madrid airport, 331 km (year-round); summer only from Bilbao, 74 km
- Train station
- Santander (1.3 km)
- Fastest train to Madrid
- 4 h 00
- 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 Marques de Valdecilla (in town, 923 beds)
- Nearest large public hospital (500+ beds, most specialties)
- Hospital Universitario Marques de Valdecilla (in town, 923 beds)
- Nearest private general hospital
- Hospital Mompia (9 km away, in Santa Cruz de Bezana, 105 beds)
- General hospitals within 25 km
- 3
- Waiting time for planned surgery (Cantabria)
- 137 days on average; 26.2% wait more than 6 months (Spain: 121 days)
- Waiting time for a first specialist visit
- 61 days on average; 42.7% 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
- AMERICAN SCHOOL OF BILBAO (American), Baserri-Santa Ana, 67.1 km
- International schools within 25 km
- 0
- Nearest by curriculum (within 100 km)
- British 67 km · American 67 km · French 76 km · German 76 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
- +0.8% in ten years (173,957 in 2015, 175,425 in 2025)
- Age
- 26.3% aged 65 or over, 11.9% under 16 (2022; Spain: 20.0% and 14.9%)
- Local income
- 16,389 € net per person per year (2023), 109% of the Spanish average; median 20,650 € per adult-equivalent
- Foreign residents
- 9.0% of all residents; 1.8% of residents aged 65+ (2022)
- Largest nationalities
- Romanian 1.1%, Colombian 1.0%; all EU citizens 1.9% (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
- 88 out of 100: how much there is compared with the other 332 places (big cities score highest)
- 122 food shops (supermarkets, bakeries, greengrocers…)
- 30 pharmacies
- 9 doctors, clinics or hospitals
- 211 cafés, bars and restaurants
- 47 parks and gardens
- 43 bus stops
- 19 libraries, theatres, cinemas, cultural centres
- 4 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
- 1,294 (1.39% of all homes; Spain 1.28%), 3.2 tourist beds per 100 residents (May 2026)
- Blue Flag beaches
- nearest in Arnuero, 19 km; 7 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
- Cantabrico Occidental
- Reservoirs now
- 58.6% full (week of 2026-09-29); the same week in the previous 10 years averaged 66.4%
- Worst week 2016-2025
- 51.2% full (2017-12-12)
- Weeks below 40% full, 2016-2025
- 0% 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
- ViveDonde quality-of-life ranking 2026: 7 (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 | 13.4 | 13.3 | 14.9 | 16.0 | 17.9 | 20.4 | 22.4 | 23.4 | 22.1 | 20.2 | 16.2 | 14.3 |
| Average nightly low, °C | 8.3 | 7.8 | 9.0 | 10.2 | 12.4 | 15.2 | 17.2 | 17.8 | 16.3 | 14.1 | 10.7 | 9.0 |
| Rain, mm | 110 | 88 | 83 | 82 | 67 | 56 | 48 | 55 | 79 | 108 | 161 | 121 |
| Rainy days (1 mm or more) | 13.2 | 11.2 | 10.0 | 11.4 | 9.8 | 7.9 | 8.0 | 8.3 | 8.0 | 10.2 | 14.5 | 12.5 |
| Sunshine, hours per day | 2.9 | 3.9 | 5.2 | 6.0 | 6.5 | 6.7 | 7.2 | 7.0 | 6.7 | 5.0 | 3.3 | 3.1 |
| Humidity, % | 75 | 76 | 77 | 78 | 81 | 82 | 81 | 80 | 80 | 76 | 76 | 74 |
| Days reaching 30 °C / 86 °F | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.1 | 0.3 | 0.3 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 0.0 | 0.0 |
The year in numbers
- Köppen climate class
- Cfb: Oceanic
- Summer mugginess (August average dew point)
- 17.2°C – muggy
- Typical hottest day of the year
- 31.9°C
- Typical coldest night of the year
- 1.8°C
- Days reaching 25 °C / 77 °F
- 25 a year (estimate)
- Days reaching 30 °C / 86 °F
- 2 a year
- Days reaching 35 °C / 95 °F
- 0 a year (estimate)
- Warm nights (low of 20 °C / 68 °F or more)
- 5 a year (estimate)
- Frost nights (0 °C / 32 °F or less)
- 0 a year
- Overcast days
- 136 a year
- Average humidity
- 78%
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 SANTANDER (1111), 3.2 km away; temperatures adjusted to the town's altitude. © AEMET.
Around 2055 (projection)
- August average high
- 24.1°C: +0.7 °C compared with today (models range from -0.1 °C to 1.6 °C)
- Warm nights (low of 20 °C / 68 °F or more)
- 13 a year, +8 (models: +2 to +24)
- Frost nights
- 0 a year (+0)
- Rainy days (1 mm or more)
- 115 a year, -10 (models: -21 to +2)
- Rain amount
- -7% over the year: summer -23%, winter +0%
- Sunlight reaching the ground
- +0.1% (models: -2.1% 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 Santander?
Santander is in the province of Cantabria, Spain, on the coast. The nearest airport is Seve Ballesteros-Santander Airport (SDR), 5 km away.
How many people live in Santander?
175,425 registered residents on 1 January 2025 (INE), +0.8% in ten years.
What is the climate of Santander?
January afternoons average 13.4°C and nights 8.3°C; August afternoons 23.4°C. 5.3 hours of sunshine a day and 125 rainy days a year (AEMET 1991-2020).
Is Santander safe?
Recorded conventional crime in Santander was 35.6 offences per 1,000 residents in 2025, about average for Spain (national rate about 41). Home burglaries: 1.24 per 1,000.
How hot is Santander in summer?
August afternoons average 23.4°C (1991-2020), with 5 nights a year above 20 °C and 0 days of 35 °C or more.
How cold is Santander in winter?
January afternoons average 13.4°C and January nights 8.3°C, with 0 frost nights a year.
Is there a hospital in Santander?
Yes: Hospital Universitario Marques de Valdecilla, a public general hospital with 923 beds. Planned surgery in Cantabria waits 137 days on average.
Can you fly direct from Santander to Amsterdam or London all year?
Yes. Seve Ballesteros-Santander Airport (SDR) (5 km away) has year-round direct flights to Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Paris and the US.
What does it cost to rent or buy in Santander?
A typical apartment (72 m²) rented for 595 € a month in 2024 contracts. Homes were appraised at 2,553 €/m² on average over the last four quarters, 49.3% in five years.
Nearby and similar towns
- Nearest towns in this comparison
- Camargo (Cantabria, 6 km), Piélagos (Cantabria, 18 km), Torrelavega (Cantabria, 24 km), Castro-Urdiales (Cantabria, 48 km), Santurtzi (Bizkaia, 64 km)
- Most similar towns (summer heat, winter nights, rainy days, home prices, size)
- A Coruña (A Coruña), Gijón (Asturias), Oviedo (Asturias), Santiago de Compostela (A Coruña), Vigo (Pontevedra)
Distances are straight-line between town centres. Similarity is the distance in standardised values of the five measures.