When the Spanish chef José Pizarro, now with several restaurants dotted across London and a regular fixture on TV cookery shows, was searching for a holiday home on the southern Spanish coast with his partner, Peter Meades, he found the answer in Zahara de los Atunes, a tiny, laid-back town that sits upon one of the most spectacular beaches in Europe.
“The house itself is completely gorgeous,” Pizarro says of Iris Zahara, the modern beachfront villa that the couple open up to paying guests at weekends and, a few times a year, drop in and offer the full José culinary experience. “The best in Spain,” he says. “But also, this part of the coastline, the Cabo de Plata, so called because the sea looks like silver under a full moon or sun, is breathtaking and unspoilt. A few foreigners live there and Spaniards from Seville, Cordoba and Madrid come and go. But considering how beautiful the beaches are, it’s really quite a hidden gem.”
It may become a little less so, of course, now that Pizarro has sprinkled some culinary stardust on it. The Marbella Club too — the glamorous hotel that put Marbella on the map for the jet-set when it opened in the 1950s — has opened its first outpost, Villa Punta Paloma, in the windsurfers’ mecca of Tarifa on the Costa de la Luz. A sign, indeed, that this highly protected windswept coast, whose architecture and bohemian spirit pay more than a passing nod to Morocco just across the Gibraltar Strait, is going upmarket.
Cadiz’s Plaza de la Catedral
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The high-end co-ownership company Vivla — whose buyers are mainly Spanish, but include a growing number of other Europeans and Brits — has also zoomed in on this coast, offering one-eighth shares in Villa Sherry, a 660 sq m house with a swimming pool, cinema and wine cellar, in the sherry-producing town of El Puerto de Santa Maria for €237,500 (£202,000). “Until now we had prioritised markets with a higher share of international demand, such as Sotogrande, but the Costa de la Luz has seen an uptick in popularity recently,” says Vivla’s chief executive, Carlos Gomez. “It retains its traditional Spanish character and hasn’t been heavily influenced by mass tourism or over-development, so it appeals to buyers looking for a more authentic experience.”
Everyone who comes to the Costa de la Luz emphasises that while you can pay high prices for its boutique hotels (you can rent out the five-bedroom Villa Punta Paloma from €7,000 a night) and high-end properties (beachfront villas in Atlanterra, part of Zahara de los Atunes, can cost several million euros), this is not the place to be flash. “It’s not a gin and golf set. Everyone who moves here is creative,” says Sarah Heseltine, 54, who moved to Vejer de la Frontera from Somerset with her husband two years ago. She now runs Breathe Andalucia retreat holidays from her four-bedroom beachfront villa in nearby Los Caños de Meca.
Los Caños de Meca beach
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“The coast used to be hippy and now people are willing to pay a high price for luxury here — they’ll pay £50 for a guided walk, which they never would have done when we first opened,” says Lee Thornley, the founder of the artisan tile company Bert & May, who built the boutique hotel Casa la Siesta (casalasiesta.com) deep in the countryside near Vejer de la Frontera in 2008.
Many of his hotel’s guests leave wanting their own home with the Casa la Siesta look, so Thornley has set up Authentica, a design company that helps them source the plot, then design and build the house. “They want the reclamation look with a slightly eccentric finish,” Thornley says. “It has to have a high-end design finish but feel like it’s part of the tradition and heritage of the area, which is known for its very Moorish, beautiful old towns.”
Among them, Vejer is one of the most popular — and it continues to attract as many British buyers as it did pre-Brexit, says Kaly Hill, co-founder of De la Luz Properties. She says UK-based buyers account for a third of her business. “Some want holiday homes, but many are coming for a change of lifestyle — travelling back for work meetings once a month, or setting up tourism-related businesses from here.”
San Antonio Church seen from Torre Tavira in Cadiz
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Most popular are Vejer’s traditional patio houses in its old town, or casco antiguo. These are either large buildings that have been divided up into smaller houses, with a communal patio, costing from about €225,000 in well-renovated condition, or you can find the odd, large house of up to 300 sq m with a private patio for about €700,000. “There has also been a surge in turning ruins — which cost around €100,000 — into boutique guesthouses. It’s a culturally and historically protected town, so it can take a good couple of years to get permission,” Hill adds.
Equally time-consuming is the visa application process, so Hill advises British buyers to start it (most are now considering the digital nomad visa, she says) when they begin the buying process. “Unlike the Costa del Sol, there are relatively few bilingual conveyancing lawyers here and they are less used to dealing with foreign visa applications, so there can be lengthy delays,” she says.
Vejer’s foreign population is also bringing new culinary influences to the town that, Thornley says, “is becoming the San Sebastian of the south”, thanks to its burgeoning foodie scene. There’s a Scottish flavour in particular, thanks to incomers such as Annie Manson, the “sixtysomething” owner of Annie B’s Spanish Kitchen, who was adopted by the town in 2013 “in recognition of the attention I have brought to the gastronomy of Vejer”, she says. She lives and runs her business from Casa Alegre, which she bought for €300,000, and says the town is still “very Andaluz”. What you may not be prepared for, she warns, are the cold winters. “These old houses were built to keep out the heat. I have to open the windows to let the heat in and stand in the sun to thaw,” she says.
Annie Manson lives in Vejer, where she runs her food tourism business
And then there’s Ellie Cormié, 53, a restaurateur and designer from Ayrshire who owns the Corredera 55 restaurant, whose menu includes haggis made from local morcilla (black pudding). “People thought it would never work, but everything we use is local and as long as locals recognise the ingredients, they’re happy,” she says.
Cormié’s kitesurf-loving Scottish husband, James Stuart, 60 — whom she met in Vejer — runs the Califa Group collection of hotels, restaurants and holiday rentals in the old town, including the Casa de Califa hotel, which, he says “kicked off the Moorish design influence in Vejer. Before that, Morocco was just something to look at while out for a walk. It wasn’t in any way an influence on design, architecture or culture. That has changed a lot now.”
The couple now live in the hamlet of Santa Lucia, 2½ miles from Vejer, in a traditional cortijo (farmhouse). But the joys of Vejer, they say, is that you can enter its old town without ever seeing the new town — as they sit on separate hills — “and that’s where all the great hotels and restaurants are”, Stuart says. “Since the pandemic, we’ve seen a trend for digital nomads in the area, some with kids. It’s very easy to put children in a local school even for a term or two.”
What’s clear is that even as new luxury names open up on the Costa de la Luz, they will need to tailor their offering to a coast that is all about remaining low-key, authentic and natural. “So many people find this part of Spain by accident,” Heseltine says. “They stumble across it and think ‘wow’ and don’t want to leave. It’s still a bit wild and bohemian down here.”
Costa de la Luz casas
Casa Tres Balcones comes with existing tourism rental registration and solar panels
▲ Casa Tres Balcones is in the casco antiguo of Vejer de la Frontera. The four-bedroom patio house is in a modern Moroccan style, and comes with a roof terrace and an additional duplex apartment — perfect for a holiday let. €595,000, vejerproperties.comhttps://vejerproperties.com/property/casa-tres-balcones-stunning-patio-house-with-apartment-and-private-roof-terrace/
The five-bedroom villa has seven balconies
▲ This 18th-century house is in the medieval centre of Vejer, and is wrapped around a traditional Andalusian courtyard with arches. Renovated in 2008, it has a ceramic studio, a separate flat and an enormous attic, all with holiday let potential. €1.28 million, engelvoelkers.com
Apartamento Corvina used to be part of a larger traditional townhouse
▲ This bijou apartment is in the centre of Conil de la Frontera, a coastal town ten miles from Vejer. The property has two bedrooms, a communal terrace and is within walking distance of the beach. €120,000, kyero.com
This property is laid out on one floor
▲ This four-bedroom villa is in Chiclana de la Frontera, just outside Cadiz. It has four bedrooms, a rear terrace and a large garden with private parking. €359,990 kyero.com
A computer generated image of Terrazas de Lubrican
▲ Further up the Costa de la Luz, in the sherry town of Sanlucar de Barrameda, is the new development of Terrazas de Lubrican, just metres from Las Piletas beach. The block has a communal pool and each flat comes with its own parking space. From €184,663 for a two-bedroom apartment, idealista.com