The Costa de la Luz lies in the soutwestern corner of Spain running from the Portugal - Spain border down to near Gibraltar with our focus being on the southern end running from Sanlucar de Barrameda to Tarifa. Served by numerous flights to Jerez, Gibraltar and Seville the southern Costa de la Luz is ideally placed for tourism or residential tourism.
The weather, as you would expect for southern Spain is usually sunny! The Costa de la Luz is actually holds the sunshine record for Spain, and with over 3,200 hours of sun each year there won't be too many rainy days.
Winters are mild - you can sunbathe on Christmas day if the sun is shining, although a heated pool is advisable if you plan a dip! Spring and autumn are perfect, and although the middle of summer can be pretty hot, the Atlantic breezes take the edge off the extremes of temperatures found in other parts of Spain.
If you are into windsurfing, kite surfing or similar, the southern end of the Costa de la Luz, around Tarifa, is ideal as there is usually a wind from one direction or the other (they wouldn't have built all those windmills on the Tarifa hills if there wasn't!). However as you come 15 miles up the coast you will usually find that the wind reduces to no more than a gentle breeze by the time you reach Chiclana, Cadiz or Sanlucar.
The Costa de la Luz has some of the best beaches in Spain. As this is the Atlantic coast of Spain, the sea quality is much better than the largely land-locked Mediterranean and the tides are much higher so the beaches are kept cleaner.
All the way up the coast from the southern tip at Tarifa right up to the edge of the Doñana National Park at Sanlucar de Barrameda the area is blessed with mile upon mile of wide, largely deserted sandy beaches.
Even the beaches which are actually in the towns such as Conil and Chipiona rarely get really crowded, and if you are prepared to drive a few miles you are almost guaranteed a beach virtually to yourself at most times of the year.
Even the cities have beaches - Cadiz has three and you can walk from the city centre to the beach in minutes!
Major towns include Chiclana, the economic and touristic hub of the area with over a dozen four star hotels, five 18-hole golf courses and a superb beach. Also, it is where our offices are situated! So in between sunbathing, golfing and sailing come in and see our range of properties. Fancy a villa in Chiclana? A townhouse in Sanlucar? A village house in Paterna? The chances are we can find the right property for you.
A short drive north takes you to Jerez, the home of Sherry and many bodegas where you can enjoy a guided tour and sample the product! Like many other towns and cities Jerez has big festivals (known as ferias), especially the May horse fair.
A few miles to the south of Chiclana lies the charming old fishing village of Conil, with its huge sandy beach stretching for miles either side of the town. This ideal family beach shelves gently to the Atlantic ocean, suprisingly calm considering the distance to the next landfall.
A few miles on from Conil lies Vejer de la Frontera, a classic, Moorish white town dramatically perched on a hillside overlooking the bay of Trafalgar. Inland there are beautiful white villages like Arcos, Medina Sidonia, Alcala de los Gazules, etc. where you can combine village life with beautiful landscapes. The area offers a combination of great views, good walking country, relatively cheap property and plenty of opportunities for horse riding, canoing, hang-gliding, etc.
As well as the new air links giving easy access to the Costa de la Luz, you will also find it surprisingly easy to get around once you are here. The road system has been upgraded over recent years with a new dual carriageway linking Chiclana, Conil and Vejer; another one linking Jerez, Medina, Alcalá and Los Barrios (meaning you can drive all the way from Sanlucar or Jerez to Malaga or Gibraltar on dual carriageway); another major improvement is the new Jerez western bypass (opened January 2007) and the Jerez to Arcos dual carriageway is already partly open. They are even building a new bridge into Cadiz to ease congestion on the existing access points but don't hold your breath as it will take about ten years to complete! As well as road improvements, the new generation Talgo trains (officially known as Altaria) now speed you from Cadiz to Madrid in five hours with further improvements planned and work is already underway to link Chiclana to the rail system with a light railway link to San Fernando. There is even a network of three catamarans now running frequent trips across the Bay of Cadiz linking Cadiz, Rota and Puerto de Santa María and if you want to go further afield there are regular high-speed sea links from Tarifa to Morocco.
