Xàbia has more than 9,200 swimming pools, the highest number in the Comunidad Valenciana
The ongoing drought situation has forced some municipalities to issue a ban on filling swimming pools.
According to data provided by Spanish Land Registry, the Marina Alta region accounts for 15% of all swimming pools in the Comunidad Valenciana. The latest figures for 2024 show that there are almost 38,000 pools registered in the region, a ratio of 20 for every hundred registered residents, and that Xàbia accounts for 9,235 of them, a ratio of 31 for every 100 residents.
The data shows that 40% of all private and public swimming pools registered in the Comunidad Valenciana are located in just three regions in the autonomous community, two of them in the Province of Alicante (La Marina Alta and La Vega Baja) and one in the Province of Valencia (Camp de Turía).
The high number of swimming pools in these regions has been attributed to the high number of houses grouped into estates as well as other single-family buildings that tend to each have a pool. Consequently, the municipalities with the most pools per registered resident in the Marina Alta are Benissa (34.1 per 100 residents) and Xàbia (31.0 per 100 residents), both of which have a high number of urbanisations. In fact, Xàbia is in the top 100 list of municipalities with the most swimming pools in Spain.
By autonomous community, only Andalusia (311,535) has more registered swimming pools than the Comunidad Valenciana (250,735) whilst, when considering the number of pools per registered residents, the Valencia region is third (4.8) behind the Baleares (6.5) and Castilla-La Mancha (6,2).
The subject of swimming pools has become a major issue in the past few months as the Marina Alta continues to deal with an ongoing drought situation, especially during the summer season when the populations of many popular tourist towns increase substantially. The desalination plant in Xàbia has meant that the town has been able to face the high demand for water with some confidence whilst also assisting neighbouring municipalities. However, other towns in the region such as Parcent, Xaló, Alcalalí and Llíber have already started to apply restrictions on non-essential use, including the ban on the filling of swimming pools.
