Property for sale in San Javier

Buying a house in San Javier means buying in a municipality with three faces. The village lies inland on flat ground, with shops, pharmacy and schools close by. On the lagoon lies Santiago de la Ribera, built up since the late nineteenth century, with a promenade along calm water. And the middle and north of La Manga, the narrow strip between lagoon and open sea, also belong to San Javier. So buying here means first choosing between village, promenade and sand spit, because the differences are large.

Santiago de la Ribera has a row of town beaches on the lagoon, with the promenade behind them; its southern end borders the grounds of the air force academy. Inland lies Roda, a residential area around a golf course, on the boundary with Los Alcázares. The San Javier part of La Manga holds the Tomás Maestre marina and Veneziola. The southern part of La Manga belongs to Cartagena, and the spit is a dead end: from the north you drive round via Cabo de Palos for everything.

In Santiago de la Ribera, on the promenade, it is mostly flats. Around the Roda golf course there are linked houses and villas. On La Manga you mainly buy flats and penthouses, sometimes with water views on two sides. With a home on the promenade or the beach, the coastal law may apply, and the Mar Menor has its own protection rules; have an adviser check what that means for the plot. What is being built now is on the new-build page for San Javier.

San Javier suits people who want to live by calm water, with the hospital in their own municipality and a village that runs all year. It suits those who want quiet skies less well: the air force academy still flies here, the display team practises over the Mar Menor, and one weekend a year an air festival draws big crowds to the beaches. Mind the water too: San Javier is one of the municipalities where the Spanish state funded the adaptation of buildings to flooding, and heavy rain has hit it hard in recent years. Have the flood map checked per address.

The airfield next to the village is military; civilian flights now go via Corvera, about half an hour by car, so an airport five minutes away in an advert belongs to an old situation. The public hospital of the Mar Menor area is in the municipality itself, inland at Pozo Aledo. The AP-7 runs through the municipality, and for the train you drive to Balsicas. You play golf at Roda or just across the boundary. To the north lies San Pedro del Pinatar; read more about the lagoon on the page about the Costa Cálida.