How the Costa Blanca divides up

The Costa Blanca is not one coast. Administratively it is the whole seaboard of Alicante province, roughly 244 kilometres from Dénia in the north to Pilar de la Horadada in the south, and it splits into eight comarques — the Valencian county unit. Five of them touch the sea; three are inland. Knowing which one you are looking at explains more about a place than the name of the coast does.

The other split that matters is north versus south, and it is geological rather than administrative. North of Alicante the Bétic ranges come down to the water and the coast is rock, cove and headland: Cap de la Nau, the Montgó massif, the Peñón de Ifach. South of the city the land flattens into the Vega Baja plain and the coast becomes long sand, dunes and salt lagoons. A map showing both makes that obvious in a way a list of towns never does.

The eight comarques, mapped

On the coast:

• Marina Alta — the rocky north: Dénia, Jávea, Moraira, Calpe and the Montgó
• Marina Baixa — Benidorm, Altea and Villajoyosa, with the Puig Campana behind
• L’Alacantí — Alicante city, its castle and the beaches either side
• Baix Vinalopó — Elche’s palm grove, Santa Pola and the El Hondo wetlands
• Vega Baja — Torrevieja’s pink lake, Guardamar’s dunes and the southern sand

Inland:

• L’Alcoià — the mountain towns behind the coast, around Alcoy
• L’Alt Vinalopó — the high valleys and castle towns toward Villena
• Vinalopó Mitjà — Elda, Novelda and Spain’s footwear country

Which map to use

The map at the top of this page shows every destination CostaMap covers and can be filtered by type — beaches, coves, viewpoints, castles, museums, natural parks. Use the filters rather than the zoom: there are close to two hundred pins, and the type filter is what makes them useful.

The comarca pages linked above carry the same map, scoped to that one county — open the Marina Alta map and you get the twelve destinations in the Marina Alta, not the whole coast. Use this page to see everything at once and the comarca pages once you know roughly where you are staying.

If you want the coast in words rather than pins, the full Costa Blanca guide covers the same ground with 40 town guides, and the Costa Blanca region page lists the destinations by area.

Frequently asked questions

Maps for the other Spanish coasts

• Costa Dorada map
• Costa Calida map
• Costa Tropical map
• Costa De Almeria map
• Costa De La Luz map
• Costa Del Azahar map
• Costa Valenciana map
• Costa Brava map
• Costa Del Sol map
• Costa Barcelona map

What the Spanish coasts are called elsewhere

Search traffic for these coasts arrives in about ten languages, and the names shift enough to be worth writing down. The Spanish costa stays put almost everywhere; it is the word for map that changes. In Norwegian it is kart, Swedish and Polish karta, Finnish kartta, Danish and Dutch kaart, German Karte, Hungarian térkép, Romanian hartă, Italian cartina or mappa, Spanish and Portuguese mapa, French carte.

A few coast names also differ. Finnish speakers call the Costa del Sol Aurinkorannikko, literally the sun coast. Portuguese renders the Costa Blanca as Costa Branca. The Costa Tropical is sometimes called the Costa Granadina after its province, and the Costa de la Luz is the only one of the twelve on the Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean, which is why it is sometimes grouped separately.