10 Richest Cities in Spain 2026: Guide to Luxury & Investment

The richest town in Spain is Pozuelo de Alarcón, just west of Madrid. Its households take home €96,290 a year after tax on average, two and a half times the Spanish household average, according to the INE’s household income atlas for 2023, the latest year published. The tax office gives the same winner: €88,011 of gross income per tax return, the highest of any town in its statistics.

All ten of the richest towns are commuter suburbs of Madrid and Barcelona. The big cities themselves are much further down: Madrid ranks 55th and Barcelona 81st out of 770 towns with more than 10,000 residents, because a city average mixes its richest and poorest districts. Look inside the cities and the picture flips: per person, Madrid’s Chamartín district and Barcelona’s Sarrià-Sant Gervasi are richer than Pozuelo itself.

• Richest town: Pozuelo de Alarcón, €96,290 net per household, €30,524 per person (2023)
• Richest big city: Alcobendas, home of La Moraleja, €65,139 per household
• Richest city district: Sarrià-Sant Gervasi in Barcelona, €81,478 per household; Chamartín in Madrid, €32,019 per person
• Richest region: the Basque Country per person (€18,884), just ahead of the Community of Madrid (€18,153)

The Golden Visa is gone. Here is what wealthy buyers use instead

Until 2025, most high-net-worth arrivals in Marbella, Madrid and Barcelona came in through the investor route, better known as the Golden Visa. That door is shut. Ley Orgánica 1/2025 repealed articles 63 to 67 of Ley 14/2013, and the programme stopped taking applications on 3 April 2025. Applications filed before that date are still decided under the old rules. People who already hold the residence keep it for the period it was issued, and renewals are decided under the rules in force when it was first granted.

So buying a home in one of these towns no longer brings residency with it. The route most of our wealthier clients take now is the non-lucrative residence, which asks for proven passive income rather than an investment: 2,400 euros a month for the main applicant, plus an additional amount for each dependant. It is a far smaller financial commitment than the old 500,000 euro property threshold, and it does not tie your money to a single asset. More on the Golden Visa and its renewals in our separate guide.

What changes is the order of the work. Under the old programme the purchase came first and the paperwork followed. Now the residence application and the tax planning come first, and the house comes once you know where you want to be and what you will pay to be there. Our advisors handle both halves of that, and we would rather have the tax conversation with you before the move than repair it afterwards.

Top 10 richest cities in Spain: the official ranking

We rank every Spanish town with more than 10,000 residents by average net household income, the measure the INE builds from income tax returns. Next to it we put two figures nobody else lines up in one table: the average gross income per tax return from the Agencia Tributaria, and what homes actually sold for, per square metre, in notarial deeds over the last twelve months.

Just missed the list: Alella, on the coast north of Barcelona, earns €72,328 per household and would be seventh, but it had 9,889 residents in the 2023 count. Alcobendas (€65,139) is 11th and Getxo, near Bilbao, 14th (€61,310).

Per person, the order changes

Household income favours towns full of large families, and the suburbs west of Madrid are exactly that. Divide by people instead of homes and smaller households climb: Sant Just Desvern moves up to third (€25,286 per person), Getxo to sixth (€24,626) and San Sebastián enters the top ten (€22,330). If you are comparing places for a couple or a single retiree, the per-person figure is the fairer one.

Richest big cities in Spain

Among cities of more than 100,000 people, Alcobendas leads because La Moraleja sits inside its boundary. San Sebastián is the richest provincial capital by a clear margin, and it is also where homes cost the most of any big city: €6,387 per square metre in recent sales. Madrid and Barcelona come next.

Valencia (€40,058 per household) and Málaga (€36,640) sit well below Madrid and Barcelona on income, yet both are near the top of what people moving from the US and UK ask us about. For a newcomer that gap is good news: lower local incomes usually come with lower rents. Our guide to the cheapest places to live in Spain has the rent side.

The richest neighbourhoods in Madrid and Barcelona

The city averages hide the real money. The INE also publishes income for every district, and the richest ones beat any suburb on income per person. Chamartín, the Madrid district that includes El Viso and Hispanoamérica, reaches €32,019 per person, more than Pozuelo’s €30,524. In Barcelona, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, which takes in Sarrià, Sant Gervasi, Tres Torres and Bonanova, has the highest household income of any district in either city: €81,478.

Madrid districts by income

Salamanca, the address most lists call the richest in Madrid, is third by household and second per person. The gap across the city is wide: a household in Chamartín earns about 2.4 times one in Puente de Vallecas.

Barcelona districts by income

Les Corts, which includes Pedralbes, is second. Eixample, where many of our Barcelona clients first rent, is third with €51,637 per household, close to the city average.

Richest regions in Spain

By income per person the Basque Country is the richest region, just ahead of the Community of Madrid, with Catalonia and Navarre next. Measured by economic output per head, Madrid usually comes first; measured by what households actually take home after tax, the Basque Country does. Extremadura, Murcia and Andalusia are at the bottom. The Spanish figure is €15,036 per person.

The Agencia Tributaria’s own figures point the same way: the Community of Madrid has the highest gross income per tax return in the country, €40,801 in 2023, against €31,333 for Spain as a whole. The Basque Country and Navarre are missing from that series because they collect their own income tax.

The wealthy coast and islands: where money is spent, not earned

Marbella, Ibiza and Mallorca are what most people picture when they think of rich Spain, and none of them is near the top of the income ranking. The reason is simple: the income atlas counts the people who live and file taxes there, while many of the buyers are non-residents or recent arrivals. Prices tell the other half of the story.

Benahavís, in the hills behind Marbella, is the clearest case. Its residents earn a modest €37,268 per household, yet the average home sold there went for about €1,007,034, the kind of gap you only see where the buyers are not the locals. Calvià, which includes Portals Nous, Bendinat and Santa Ponsa, and Santa Eulària on Ibiza have the highest prices per square metre in this table.

Where our clients actually look

We checked the cities named in the enquiries people have sent us since 2021. The order is nothing like the income ranking. Barcelona comes first by a long way, then Madrid, then Ibiza, Marbella, Palma, San Sebastián, Bilbao and Sitges. Pozuelo, Boadilla and Majadahonda, the three richest towns in Spain, almost never come up, and La Moraleja only rarely.

That matches what we see in consultations. People with money who move to Spain choose the city first and the neighbourhood later, often after a year of renting. So the first decision is the residence route, and the right route depends on where the income comes from:

• Passive income, pensions or investments: the non-lucrative visa, from 2,400 euros a month for the main applicant. You cannot work in Spain on it.
• Remote work for a foreign employer or clients: the digital nomad visa, from €2,850 a month gross.
• Starting or moving a business: the entrepreneur visa or the self-employed visa.
• Families moving with university-age children: the student visa for the child, with the parents on their own route.

Tax usually matters more than the visa for this group. Employees who move for a Spanish job or to work remotely, including on the digital nomad visa, may qualify for the Beckham Law if they have not been tax resident in Spain in the previous five years. It taxes employment income at a flat 24% up to 600,000 euros a year and 47% above that, for the year you arrive and the next five. Anyone with significant assets should run the numbers on wealth tax, which depends on the region, and on inheritance, before choosing between Madrid, Catalonia or the Balearics. If you are buying, our guide to buying a house in Spain covers the legal checks.

Not sure which town fits your budget? Our free “where should I live in Spain” quiz matches you to towns by budget, climate and services. If you want a personal answer on the visa and tax side, our immigration lawyers, led by Lucia Lagunas Reyes, can look at your case.

How we built this ranking

Income comes from the INE Household Income Distribution Atlas (2023, published October 2025; the 2024 edition is due in the autumn of 2026) and from the Agencia Tributaria’s income tax statistics by municipality (2023). House prices come from the Portal Estadístico del Notariado. We update the tables when each source publishes a new edition.

Frequently asked questions about the richest places in Spain

Still weighing climate, services and cost against prestige? Our guide to the best places to live in Spain compares the main cities with real rents, and our list of the most visited cities in Spain shows where the tourist pressure is highest.