Is Murcia a good place to raise a family?

Yes, and it is the best value on this list. Murcia is a warm, young inland city with more children and lower rents than anywhere else here, where a family-sized flat is about €775 a month outside the centre. It is also the simplest place to put a child in school: unlike the coast or the north, the region has no second official language, so schools teach in plain Spanish and there is only one language to learn. The one thing to plan around is the summer heat, which we come to below. Do that, and Murcia gives a family a great deal of space, warmth and daily life for very little money.

This is where Murcia is easy. State schools teach in Spanish, and because the region has no second official language, that is the only language of the classroom, with English taught alongside. There is no Valencian, Catalan or Basque to weigh, which makes the school search simpler than almost anywhere else in Spain.

There are three kinds of school. Public schools are free. Concertado schools are state-funded and free in principle, though most ask for a small monthly contribution. Private and international schools charge full fees; Murcia has a small handful of international schools, fewer than the coast, so if that route matters, start early and check each one. Plan fees with a range rather than a single figure.

Murcia is flat and walkable, with city buses and a tram line through the centre, a monthly pass at €30 and a single ride at €1.30. It is a little more spread out than a coastal city, so a car is more useful here than in Alicante or Valencia, especially for the towns around it and for the beach. The region's own airport is small; for a wider choice of flights, Alicante's airport is about an hour away.