Living in Cadaqués: school, doctor, bus, fibre broadband and what it costs to rent

Living in Cadaqués all year is possible: there is a school from nursery to ESO, the CAP health centre opens every day from 8:00 to 20:00, there is a bus to Figueres and fibre reaches 97.8 % of households. Renting is the expensive part: in 2025 the average rent across the 17 registered contracts was €920.54 a month, against €580.73 in Figueres.

Spending a winter in Cadaqués, or settling there, is nothing like coming in August. There is a school up to ESO (compulsory secondary), a health centre, a bus to Figueres and fibre in almost every home. The hard part is something else: finding somewhere to live, and paying for it. Here are the official figures, one by one.

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A town of 2,906 residents

Cadaqués had 2,906 registered residents on 1 January 2025, according to Idescat, and in summer the number of people actually in town almost triples; the figures are in how many people live in Cadaqués. For anyone staying on, the other side is what matters: between January and March it is a small town where people know each other.

What that winter is like, what closes and which festival splits it in two, we cover in Cadaqués in winter. Here we stick to the practical side.

School: from nursery to ESO

The town’s state school is the Institut Escola Caritat Serinyana - Cap de Creus. As an institut escola it brings infant, primary and secondary education together in a single school, and that is how its website, hosted in the schools area of the Departament d'Educació, sets out its courses. Enrolment, the hours of each stage and the calendar are on the same website, in the office and school sections.

The website gives a sense of life inside: projects on water sports, radio, one with the town’s older residents and another called Projecte tramuntana. And one detail says a lot about Cadaqués: the news items from the youngest classes are written in salat, with the articles es and sa typical of the local speech: ‘es nens i ses nenes’. We explain it in parlar salat.

Doctor and pharmacy

CAP Cadaqués, the health centre, sees patients every day from 8:00 to 20:00 and, outside those hours, the Generalitat refers people to CAP Roses or to 061. The hospital, the duty pharmacy and which health card to bring are in the Cadaqués health centre. For anyone staying for months, that last point is the key one: for a temporary stay the card from your own Spanish region is valid; if you move here to live, you need to apply for the Catalan one.

The winter bus

Without a car, the route is Moventis line 12, linking Cadaqués with Roses and Figueres. On the timetable running from 1 September to 31 December 2026, the first bus leaves Cadaqués bus station at 6:45 and reaches Figueres station, where the trains are, at 7:55: an hour and ten minutes. There are more departures mid-morning and mid-afternoon, and the last one shown on the timetable leaves at 18:00.

The timetable uses colours to separate daily, weekday and weekend services, and some run only on school days; before planning your week, check which ones suit you. For Barcelona there is a direct coach, explained in how to get to Cadaqués.

Fibre and mobile coverage for remote work

The official source is the broadband coverage report from the Ministry for Digital Transformation, with figures by municipality as of 30 June 2025. In Cadaqués, fibre to the home reaches 97.8 % of its 1,154 households, the same share that has 1 Gbps download coverage under peak-demand conditions. 4G and 5G cover 100 %, and 5G in the 3.5 GHz band, 95 %.

What stands out is how quickly it arrived. In June 2021 the Ministry’s series showed 0 % of homes in Cadaqués with fibre; a year later, 97.7 %. That said, coverage is not a contract: before signing a lease, ask which provider serves that particular house.

Is it expensive to live in Cadaqués?

For the area, yes. The official figure comes from the rental deposits lodged with Incasòl, which the Generalitat publishes by municipality. In 2025, 17 residential rental contracts were registered in Cadaqués, with an average rent of €920.54 a month. In Roses there were 308 contracts, averaging €631.62, and in Figueres 815, averaging €580.73.

The most telling number is the small one: 17 contracts in a whole year, against 43 in 2024, when the average was €905.37. With so few, the average jumps from one quarter to the next and works as an order of magnitude, not as a price. It also explains why homes are hard to find: according to the 2021 census quoted in our population guide, only 32.1 % of homes in the town are someone’s main residence.

The rental rules, why Cadaqués is a stressed housing market area and the difference between a temporary and a main-home contract are in renting in Cadaqués by the month.

Registering and everyday life

Anyone living here on a regular basis has to register on the padrón, the municipal register, as the rental guide explains. Once registered, the registration certificate can be requested from the Ajuntament’s online office, without going to the counter.

And for weekly life, the shopping: which supermarkets there are, when they open and when it is worth going down to Roses is in food shopping in Cadaqués.

Checked

Checked in October 2026. School: website of the Institut Escola Caritat Serinyana - Cap de Creus (agora.xtec.cat, Departament d'Educació). Bus: Moventis line 12 timetable from 1 September to 31 December 2026. Fibre and mobile coverage: the Ministry for Digital Transformation’s 2021-2025 municipal broadband coverage file, figures as of June each year. Rent: ‘Preu mitjà del lloguer d'habitatges per municipi’, Generalitat open data based on the Incasòl deposit register. Registration certificate: Ajuntament de Cadaqués online office. Population, housing and health centre: Idescat and the Generalitat, via our population and health centre guides.