Automatic pool covers in Moraira (Teulada)

Teulada-Moraira has 4,887 pools on the Catastro register

According to the Catastro there are 4,887 open-air pools on record in the municipality of Teulada, 162 more than in 2022, growth of 3.4 % in four years. The province of Alicante as a whole has 132,495 pools spread across 141 municipalities and has gained 6,360 since 2022, 5.0 % more, which makes it the second province in Spain by registered pools. The provincial average works out at some 940 pools per municipality: Teulada has more than five times that, in an area of only 32.24 km².

The figure is worth comparing before it is used. The provincial ranking is headed by Jávea / Xàbia — Teulada's neighbour — which with 9,317 pools has more than any other municipality in Alicante; behind it come Orihuela (7,375), Dénia (5,175) and Torrevieja (4,931). And practically level with Torrevieja comes Teulada, with 4,887: more than the city of Alicante (4,866) and more than Calpe (4,744). Look outside the province and Teulada-Moraira has more pools on record than Estepona (4,430) or Benalmádena (4,057), two Costa del Sol municipalities with far larger populations and far better known for their residential tourism.

That so small a municipality should hold so many pools is no accident, and the explanation is a planning one. Moraira grew from the nineteen-seventies without towers and without high-rise blocks on the seafront, under a plan that has protected low density, green space and the detached house spread across the pine-covered hills. The result, fifty years on, is a municipality of villas and houses on their own plots where a private pool is not the exception but the rule: at El Portet, at Pla del Mar, in Benimeit, in Tabaira, in La Sabatera, in Moravit or in La Cometa the plot ends up with a pool. On top of that the stock is a mature one, pools built decades ago to dimensions that rarely match a catalogue, which is exactly the job we are asked for most: covering a pool that already exists.

A necessary warning about these numbers, so that nobody reads more into them than is there. The Catastro register under-records: it is a floor, not a ceiling. Some pools were never declared, others are entered late and small ones never make it onto the register at all, so the real figure is higher than the published one. The Catastro does not separate the private pool from the communal one, from a hotel's or from a club's either: the 4,887 in Teulada are all the registered bodies of water in the municipality, not 4,887 houses with a pool. And the figure does not go below municipality level: there is no official breakdown by centre or by urbanisation, so it cannot be said how many are in Moraira and how many in the old town of Teulada, nor how many at El Portet or in Benimeit. When we divide the area up by district we do it by geography and by our own work, never by attributing figures to a neighbourhood.

In practice, that profile of a family pool on its own plot is the one that gets most out of a cover, and the argument here is not an aesthetic one. A closed slatted cover cuts evaporation by between 70 % and 80 %: in an 8 × 4 metre pool that is between 15,000 and 25,000 litres a year you do not have to replace, and in an area where it does not rain for most of the year and water is paid for, that is no small detail. If there is a heat pump, the system's consumption falls by between 50 % and 60 %, and with solar polycarbonate slats the water gains 6 or 7 °C during the day at no running cost. The other reason people call us is safety: closed, the slats form a continuous surface that keeps anyone out of the water and holds 100 kg as required by NF P90-308, which is a French standard, not a European one. It is worth saying plainly: that does not make it walkable or trafficable, and nobody should get on top of it. You can see the whole province on our page for pool covers in Alicante.

Salt, autumn cloudbursts and three hundred days of sun: what Moraira asks of a cover

Moraira's climate is its best selling point and, at the same time, what asks most of a cover. It is a very steady Mediterranean one, with around 300 days of sun a year, mild winters and a sea that acts as a thermostat: the Mediterranean gets close to 25 °C at the height of summer and is slow to cool down in autumn. That is not brochure copy: it is the same reason that inland, on the terraces of Teulada, muscatel grapes were grown for generations for raisins and for mistela.

For a pool that means the swimming season is genuinely long and that a cover earns its keep over more months of the year than almost anywhere else in Spain. But it also means a great many hours of radiation on the slats. A badly chosen slat fades and turns brittle within a few summers, above all on the south-facing terraces of El Portet, Pla del Mar or the hillsides of Benimeit. We work with profiles stabilised against ultraviolet light and we study the real orientation of each pool before recommending a finish and a colour.

The second thing is salt. Moraira has eight kilometres of shoreline and the housing looks out over it from everywhere: the Cap d'Or and its watchtower close off El Portet, and between the beaches open rocky coves such as Cala l'Andragó and Cala Cap Blanc. That salt breeze is the reason the whole structure, the shaft, the supports and every bolt are AISI 316L stainless steel and not some other material, and the reason we never use aluminium. The upkeep, on the other hand, is next to nothing: rinse the slats, the shaft and the supports with fresh water, above all after several days of sea wind. There are no rails or guides to clean or grease, because the slats float on the water.

The third thing is autumn. In the Marina Alta it rains little and badly: the sky is clear for most of the year, and then September and October deliver the rainfall all at once in gota fría episodes that can drop in a few hours what has not fallen in months. That water washes soil, grit and everything else off the hillside and into the pool. For the rest of the year it is the pine woods that do the dirtying: needles and cones end up in the water every time the wind blows off the land. With the cover closed that dirt stays on top and comes off with a hose, the bottom of the pool stays clean and the filtration plant works less. It counts for a great deal in a municipality where many owners leave the house shut up for half the season.

And safety counts, which is the other real reason people call us: closed, the cover is a sheet of rigid slats floating on the water and covering the whole pool — a physical barrier against a fall, not simply a saving on cleaning. With one warning we always repeat, mind: the cover carries no alarm and no obstacle sensors. It detects nothing and it does not stop by itself. Whoever operates it has to watch the water, and pulling the slats by hand or moving them with something on top damages the mechanism without warning.

With all that, choosing a slat in Moraira is not a matter of taste. PVC works well in the more sheltered pools of the town centre and the inland districts; solar polycarbonate puts those clear days to work, gaining temperature and stretching the season at the hillside villas; the clear slat looks best in pools with a sea view, of which there are many here. We explain all of it, with sections and weights, on our slat types page, and the shaft systems on cover models. What we do not do, so there is no misunderstanding, is walk-on covers, telescopic covers, pool enclosures, domes, winter tarpaulins or thermal blankets: only automatic slatted covers, and since 2005.