Santander is a small but bustling city on Spain‘s northern Atlantic Coast with a magnificent view over the Bay of Santander. Situated on a series of hills overlooking the Bay of Biscay, Santander is also a friendly, livable and authentically Spanish place to call home.
Santander was rebuilt in 1941 after a devastating fire. Almost all of the old town was destroyed in the blaze. What emerged from the disaster is a handsome city along an accessible and beautiful seafront that is surprisingly modern. Moving sidewalks climb among the residential areas that stretch along Santander’s sharply ascending slopes.
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In its glory days, this was the haunt of Spanish royalty, and much of the architecture reflects that glamour. With the Royal Palace and courtier homes all along the seafront, a ritzy casino and well-manicured parks and beaches, the overall feel at the heart of the city is royal chic.
Thanks to its mild, damp climate, this is Spain’s green coast. Even in February, temperatures can be mild, meaning you can enjoy the city year-round, finishing each day by joining the locals for relaxed, convivial chatter over a glass of beer or wine.
This is a welcoming city that you can afford to get to know well. It’s normal for locals to eat and drink out regularly, and the prices reflect that, unlike in tourist towns and cities elsewhere in Spain where restaurant and café prices can be inflated for the tourist trade.
Though it’s a port city, Santander is surprisingly clean, elegant and well cared for. The city is punctuated by formal gardens and parks of every description, including sunbathing parks, sculpture parks and dog play parks.
There are many monuments and museums, from the Museum of Fine Arts and the Cantabrian Maritime Museum to the Prehistory Museum and the Old Quays of Santander Interpretation Centre. There are also exhibitions at the Palacio de Festivales cultural center and the Exhibition and Sports Center at Llamas Park.
This city of history and culture also boasts a series of beautiful beaches. Santander’s beaches are a bit wild, with inlets, rock pools and inland greenery reaching all the way down to the golden sand.
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While Santander is definitely a city to see, retirees also need to decide if they would be happy living here. If you’re shopping for an old world lifestyle that delivers the beach life in the bargain and wouldn’t mind the rain required to keep the landscapes around you so brilliantly green, Santander could be ideal.
The city is divided into a number of residential areas. The high-end residential neighborhoods lie along Paseo Pareda and Avenida Reina Victoria. Imagine standing with your back to the Bay of Santander, looking north at the tall buildings across a two-way road running along the seafront.
Reina Victoria (Queen Victoria) was Queen of Spain from 1906 to 1969. The eponymous street overlooks playa Magdalena, with beautiful properties rising up from the avenue to include those owned by the Botín family. Traveling along Avenida Reina Victoria — walking is the best way — you come to the El Sardinero district, perhaps the most famous and expensive area in Santander. While the King of Spain, Alonso XIII, and his queen, Victoria, stayed at the Palacio de la Magdalena on the spur of land projecting out into the Bay of Santander, his court built mini palaces in El Sardinero, most of which are in a good state of repair today.
Typical rents in the area start at about 700 euros per month for an 85-square-meter, three-bedroom apartment, two rows back from the beach. If you want to be overlooking the El Sardinero beaches, budget at least 1,600 euros per month for rent.
Slightly north of El Sardinero is the Valdenoja district, a popular residential area that has developed over the last 20 years along the Las Llamas valley, stretching back from the Sardinero Beach. Here you find neat and tidy red-brick apartment blocks. It’s not as posh as El Sardinero, but it’s a comfortable and safe area. Paths lead down to the Llamas Park and the sea.
Apartment blocks here are built in mini communities, sharing facilities like pools and tennis courts. The main downside is that there aren’t any stores and services in the immediate area, so you have to rely on public transportation for big shopping trips (which is reliable and cheap) or invest in keeping a car.
Typical rents in the Valdenoja area are 800 euros per month. The Los Castros district, on the opposite side of the Las Llamas valley to Valdejoja, is popular with university students. Housing here is even more affordable, but the apartments are very small.
Between Los Castros and El Sardinero is the La Gandara area. Properties are cheaper here than in most other areas. La Gandara is not as architecturally attractive as other parts of the city, but there are services, bars, local restaurants, gyms and shops, so you don’t need to get in your car for everything, yet it’s still an easy walk to the beach and paseo.
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Outside of town, to the north and west of the center, are satellite residential areas that benefit from being part of Santander city. Two of the most popular of these are La Albericia and El Alisal. La Albericia has single-family homes and small gated communities with their own pools and communal areas. El Alisal is a new residential area with shops, schools and some of the bigger stores, such as Decathlon and Carrefour. Typical rents in both areas are about 600 euros per month.
There are also opportunities to buy a place of your own rather than renting. The Spanish property boom of the early 2000s came to a dramatic halt in 2007. In the wake of the bust, property prices across the country fell. Cantabria, where Santander is located, was not part of the great building boom that took place on Spain’s southern costas. However, the national recession that followed the 2007 property bust did hit households in Santander, resulting in a good number of distressed property opportunities. Because Cantabria is not a major tourist hot spot, the recovery that has been playing out on some of the country’s southern coasts hasn’t been seen here. This is a buyer’s market. Prices are undervalued and soft.
Kathleen Peddicord is the founder of the Live and Invest Overseas publishing group.
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Affordable Old World Living on Spain’s Santander Coast originally appeared on usnews.com
