The Truth About Almería: Why We'd Think Twice Before Moving or Visiting
- Jul 4
- 4 min read
I love Spain. That needs to be said before anything else in this post, because what follows is not going to sound like it.
Before we moved to Spain, we seriously considered Roquetas de Mar, in Almería province. We found a flat right in front of the marina, beautiful, and at a price that felt almost too good. We didn't take it. Once we were already living in Spain and driving from Comunidad Valenciana to Granada, we decided to stop and see Roquetas de Mar for ourselves, partly out of curiosity and partly to find out if we'd made the right call by passing on it.
We had.
The Greenhouses (And Why They're Actually a Good Thing)
You cannot talk about Almería without talking about the greenhouses, so let's start there, because they're not simply bad. Almería's plastic greenhouse belt, the Mar de Plástico, feeds a huge percentage of Europe's produce. This is land that, without the greenhouses, would mostly be dry, marginal, and not doing much of anything. In real estate terms, it's what's called the "highest and best use" of that land: it's not scenic, but it's productive, and it matters far beyond Almería's borders.
Here's the problem: the greenhouses are also endless, and over time, sun and wind rip the plastic apart. What's left is a landscape where torn plastic and trash drift and collect at the edges of the fields. It is not pretty, and it doesn't pretend to be.
If you think I'm exaggerating how much of the province this covers, do this: open Google Maps, search Almería or the specific town you're considering, switch to satellite view, and zoom in. That enormous white expanse is not sand and it's not snow. It's plastic.
What We Actually Found
Our first stop was the marina area in Roquetas de Mar, the exact spot we'd almost rented. It's genuinely beautiful, with lovely homes and a real prettiness to it. But the roads getting there are tight and squeezed together, the shopping areas near it are unremarkable, and it became clear pretty quickly that living there would mean living your whole life inside one small, cute, five-minute radius. Every place has its charm and its own things worth discovering, but Spain has an almost endless supply of beautiful towns. There's no need to force yourself into liking somewhere just because the price and the photos look right.
Driving back out, we took a different road than the one we came in on, one that cut straight through the greenhouse belt. It was the roughest-looking area we've seen in Spain, worse than the stretch of Barcelona visible from the train that everyone warns you about, worse than the wrong part of Madrid we accidentally booked an Airbnb in once. The area is heavily populated by migrant agricultural workers, and the housing conditions looked genuinely poor. As a woman, if I'd been driving through there alone, I would have wanted to get out as quickly as possible. It didn't feel like a place to stop, park, or wander.
I know that's not the review anyone wants to hear about a place in a country I love as much as Spain. But this is exactly the kind of thing you want to know before you book a flight or, worse, before you buy property, not after.
The Buying Warning
This is the part that matters most if you're actually house-hunting. Almería has some of the best real estate prices in Spain, and if that's caught your eye, it's worth asking why. Visiting is visiting, and you can absorb a rough stretch of road on a day trip. Buying is different. Don't buy property in Almería without visiting the exact area in person first, on the ground, not from listing photos or a drone video.
The One Caveat
Heading south on the A-7 past the city of Almería, the landscape and feel seemed to shift, almost like a different microclimate takes over. There may be a genuinely charming corner of this province we haven't properly explored yet. That's the honest caveat: check for yourself before writing off the whole province based on one drive-through, the same way I'd ask you not to write off any part of Spain based on someone else's one bad experience, including this one. For the fuller, more balanced picture of what the province actually offers, see our full Almería province guide.
The Bottom Line
Spain has so many beautiful, easy, welcoming places to visit or live that there's rarely a reason to push through a place that doesn't feel right when it doesn't have to earn that effort. Almería's greenhouses feed Europe, and that's a real and worthwhile thing. But for travel or relocation, in nearly every case, somewhere else in Spain is going to be the better choice. If you want southern Spain without this trade-off, Málaga Province, Granada Province, and Ronda are all easier starting points. Go see Almería for yourself if you're curious. Just go with your eyes open.
Written by Sherri: an American who spent years traveling solo, including time living in Peru, before settling into a full-time digital nomad life with her husband and young kids for over four years. She's now been in Europe for 3.5 years, most of it in the Valencia area of Spain. Everything on Travel-Casa is written from firsthand experience or knowledge picked up along the way.
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