Spain is a swimming-pool paradise: One for every 37 people

OVER 1.27 million swimming pools – private and communal – mean Spain has one for every 37 inhabitants, and some towns have as many as one pool for every three, according to land registry data.

The figures do not include municipal pools – outdoor ones at bars, restaurants or run as a lido for summer heat relief inland, nor council-owned leisure centres, or those at hotels – but cover purely those at private homes.

They are either individual pools at residential properties, or communal ones on an apartment or villa complex which all residents, and summer visitors renting properties on the estate, can use.

Although the average is one pool per 37 people, numbers vary widely according to areas of the country and types of municipality, with out-of-town urbanisations more likely to have them, and regions with warmer climates seeing more of them.

The Balearic Islands, with one per 17 people, and the Comunidad Valenciana, with one for every 21 residents – and towns such as Jávea with up to one pool per three residents – comfortably exceed the national average.

Only 1% of pools are indoor, and the ratio is lower in the north of Spain where summers are less humid and shorter, meaning those who do not have a beach on the doorstep are not so likely to need them.

'Need' may sound a strange notion, but cooling down by jumping into a large body of water is a health necessity in summer – to such an extent that a high number of towns and villages a long way from the coast have set up river beaches or lidos for their residents.

Regions with the most pools

Despite being thought of as a southern or Mediterranean phenomenon – and it usually is – the region with the third-highest number of private or communal residential pools per inhabitant is the centre-northern Castilla y León, a huge inland high plain which habitually has some of the country's coldest and harshest winters. 

In much of Castilla y León, average winter temperatures hover around 6ºC in the daytime and -2ºC at night, with snow at street level being common and often very deep.

But it still has a pool for every 25 residents.

That said, heated pools are also a great asset in winter – relaxing in very warm water while the air temperature is in single figures is a ritual in much of northern Scandinavia.

Andalucía comes below Castilla y León, even though its three land-locked provinces – Sevilla, Córdoba and Jaén – are colloquially referred to as 'the frying-pan of Spain', but is still well above average with a pool for every 28 people.

Murcia, on the south-east coast and one of the regions with the warmest winters, has a pool for every 30 inhabitants, and the land-locked western region of Extremadura – where the province of Badajoz has a long string of blue-flagged inland beaches – has a swimming pool for every 34 residents.

Towns with the most pools are in Madrid, Andalucía and the Comunidad Valenciana

Towns, villages and cities with the highest outright number of pools, irrespective of inhabitant numbers, are Madrid (13,842), Córdoba (11,538), and Marbella, with 10,662, or one for every 14 people.

Also in the top 10, with between 9,000 and 10,000 pools, are – in descending order – Murcia, Chiclana de la Frontera (Cádiz province), and Jávea (Alicante province), whilst Elche (Alicante province) and Mijas (Málaga province) have over 8,000.

Orihuela (Alicante province) has 7,092 private pools, and Pozuelo de Alarcón (Greater Madrid region) has 6,649.

One third of the top 100 towns for the most pools are in the Comunidad Valenciana, and one in five is in Andalucía, whilst Catalunya, Madrid and the Balearic Islands each have around 10% of the most 'watery' towns.

Of the top 100, the province of Alicante is home to 16, that of Valencia to 15, Madrid to 12, the Balearics to 10, and Málaga to nine.

Regions with the fewest

Catalunya and Madrid are below average, with a pool for every 40 and 49 residents respectively – their lower number partly being because they are home to Spain's biggest two cities, Madrid and Barcelona, where it is less practical to have a private pool.

Castilla-La Mancha, Spain's central plains, has a pool for every 50 residents, whilst the inland northern regions of La Rioja and Aragón have a pool for every 61 and 71 inhabitants respectively.

Galicia, in the far north-west with three of its four provinces on the coast, has a swimming pool for every 67 people, whilst in the Canary Islands, where a beach is never a very long trek away, the figure drops to one for every 86.

The lowest ratio of pools to humans on the mainland is seen in Asturias, on the north coast, with one for every 258 people, followed by Cantabria, with one for every 140.

But the fewest private pools in Spain as a whole are seen in the city-provinces on the northern Moroccan coast – Melilla, directly due south of the province of Almería, has a pool for every 356 inhabitants, and Ceuta, immediately across the Strait of Gibraltar, only has a swimming pool for every 585 residents. 

The northern regions of Navarra and the Basque Country are not included in the figures, since their land registry data are held via a different authority to that of the rest of the nation.

Changing trends mean pools use 'far less water' nowadays

Private pools have come under the spotlight recently due to the ongoing drought across Europe, given the huge amount of water they need to fill them up from scratch.

As water is metered everywhere in Spain, households in general are unlikely to waste it, meaning prohibitions – like the UK hosepipe ban – are rare, although in extreme cases every few years a town council might cut off the supply for a set number of hours per day for a short stretch, always with a warning to residents first so they can plan by buying drinking water and taking their showers when the taps are on.

Some local councils ban residents from refilling their pools when rainfall is low and reservoirs are dropping, or perhaps only allow them to top their pools up when the levels go down through evaporation.

Anecdotal evidence shows that expatriate residents and holiday-home owners tend to keep the same water in their pools year-round and simply maintain them using chlorine solutions and cleaning nets, or pay someone to do so regularly, whilst Spanish homeowners are more likely to fill theirs up completely at the start of summer after emptying last year's green water, saving maintenance costs for the nine months of the year when the pool is not in use.

But this practice is beginning to decline through greater awareness of the need to save natural resources, according to the traders' association for pool building, maintenance and cleaning companies, ASOFAP.

A spokesperson explains that private pools in Spain are tending to consume far less water nowadays, due to a greater use of chlorine treatment solutions enabling owners to keep the pool full and clean all year.

How much water fills a pool 

Spain's National Statistics Institute (INE) says an average home swimming pool, of four metres wide by eight metres long (13 feet by 26 feet), with a shallow end and a deep end, takes about 48,000 litres of water.

To fill all of Spain's private swimming pools from scratch would require the use of 60.77 cubic hectometres of water, or the equivalent of 0.1% of the entire capacity of the country's reservoirs.

This figure equates to 2.6% of the whole country's domestic water consumption.

The INE says this is typically around 133 litres per person per year, given that the practice of drinking tap water is still rare – even though it is perfectly possible and the mains supply is completely suitable for human and animal consumption.

Otherwise, just in drinking water, each person would consume approximately 730 litres of water per year, without taking into account washing, cooking, cleaning, and showers.

How long will the drought last?

Water use is becoming critical across the whole of Europe at present, with 47% of the EU's territory in 'a worrying situation' and 17% on 'red alert', and 64% of the entire continent affected in some way by drought, according to the European Commission's Joint Research Centre (JRC).

Storms are on the horizon in Spain, with the more humid parts of the country expected to start September with heavy rain, thunder and lightning, but overall, the coming month is expected to see average temperatures around 1ºC to 1.5ºC higher than average.

Whilst no longer considered 'summer', September can often be the hottest month of Spain's year, especially in the southern half, and October in these parts is usually springlike and sunny.

October will bring temperatures averaging 0.5ºC to 1ºC higher than average.

Spain's Met office says both months will be warmer and drier than usual, meaning the drought is likely to continue for a few more weeks, with November seeing a return to more 'normal' autumn temperatures and rainfall.