Villas and urbanisations
Locked out behind the summer barrier at Granadella or Portitxol
Two of Xàbia’s best-known coves, la Granadella and el Portitxol, sit at the end of roads that cannot take the summer traffic. For several years the council has controlled access to them in the high season.
In 2025 the barriers came down on 14 June, and from late June a contractor managed paid parking at both coves, €9 a day, for 103 days of the year, with a shuttle running to Granadella. In an earlier pilot, private cars were kept out of the Granadella road between 10:00 and 19:00, with a barrier at the top of the CV-7420 and around 400 passes handed to residents and to people working in the cove’s restaurants.
The details change from summer to summer. What does not change is that, in July and August, a house down one of those roads is not a house any vehicle can simply drive to.
Who this affects
The villas of La Granadella and Costa Nova in the pines above the cove, and the houses towards Portitxol, la Barraca and Balcón al Mar. Owners usually know the routine. Guests in a holiday let, or friends borrowing the house for a week, often do not, until the door shuts behind them.
Four things to say from behind the barrier
- That you are beyond a barrier, and which one: Granadella or Portitxol.
- The street and the house name, or a WhatsApp location pin sent from the gate.
- Whether you have a resident’s pass or a parking ticket, or know who in the house does.
- What has happened: keys inside, keys lost, a key snapped in the lock.
None of this stops a call-out. It changes the route and the time, and you are told honestly how long the drive will be before anyone sets off. That estimate is the whole point of mentioning the barrier: a locksmith who did not know about it would give you a time that the barrier then breaks.
If you are a host
Put two lines in the house notes: how the barrier works this summer, and a number for a lockout. Guests who know both are back inside sooner. Owners who would rather avoid key handovers altogether sometimes fit keypad locks; read what to check before fitting one first.
Waiting on a hot cove road
Stay in the shade, keep your phone charged in the car if there is one, and do not try to force a window or a slider: a door opened the right way leaves the house secure for the night, and a forced one does not. It is also why a door should be locked with the key rather than pulled shut, as 84 burglaries in Xàbia showed.
The rest of the municipality, urbanisation by urbanisation, is on the urbanisations and towns page.