Zone guide · Jávea (Xàbia)
Buying Property on the Montgó
The best views in Jávea sit on the flank of a protected mountain, and one question decides everything here: which side of the Parc Natural boundary the plot falls on. Outside it, you are buying a villa. Inside it, you are buying a villa where almost nothing can ever legally change.
4.9 from 104 Google reviews · Juan Bertomeu, abogado ICALI 4643 · Daniel Bertomeu, tax adviser (AEDAF 06838) · Legal position last reviewed July 2026
So, the Montgó. The mountain that gives Jávea its skyline also gives it the most complicated postcode in town. The villas on its slopes, La Guardia among them, look out over the whole bay, and that view is exactly why German, Dutch and British buyers keep climbing this hillside.
Here is the part the listing never mentions. Part of the hillside sits inside the Parc Natural del Montgó, protected since 1987, and inside that boundary the planning rules from the 2002 PORN and the 2007 PRUG restrict building and extensions severely. Two villas with the same view, a few hundred metres apart, can live under completely different law. One can add a pool house. The other may never legally change again.
None of this makes the Montgó a bad place to buy. Some of the happiest owners we act for are up here. It simply makes it a zone where the legal check earns its fee before the arras is signed. Jávea sits right between our two offices, Moraira on one side and Dénia on the other, and we are in town every week, at the notary, the town hall and the property, with well over 100 completed purchases here over the years.
Who buys in El Montgó
View seekers, mostly. German buyers are strongly represented on these slopes, alongside British, Dutch and Nordic owners, which fits the town: the British are Jávea's largest foreign community, around 6,000 people, the biggest British colony in the Comunitat Valenciana, with solid German, Dutch, Belgian and Nordic groups behind them. The typical Montgó buyer has already toured the flat coastal options and decided the bay view is worth the hillside drive. Most are second-home and retirement buyers rather than landlords, and the ones who do plan to let usually own single-family villas, which keep the clearer licensing route under the new caps, still at initial approval.
What we actually check in El Montgó
The park boundary decides everything
Part of the hillside sits inside the Parc Natural del Montgó, and inside the boundary the park's planning instruments, the PORN of 2002 and the PRUG of 2007, restrict new building and extensions severely. There is a harder edge too: on protected land, the administration's power to order restoration never expires. An illegal extension from decades ago can, in law, still be ordered undone. So the first thing we establish on any Montgó purchase is which side of the line the plot sits, from the official plans, not from the agent's memory.
The lower slopes and the AFO question
Where the slopes soften into campo, some dwellings stand on rustic land, and the route to regularising an old rustic house is the AFO, open only to dwellings that existed before 20 August 2014. Before you commit, we check the nota simple, the occupation licence and the aerial photography against that date, because a house that fails the test may have no legal route at all.
The paper that controls the water
A house that is not legal on rustic land cannot get the second-occupation licence, and without that paper you cannot contract or transfer water and electricity. In the Valencia region the licence runs as a declaración responsable under Decreto 12/2021, valid ten years and renewed when the property changes hands or a new utility contract is signed. Which means a purchase is precisely the moment an old problem chooses to surface.
Big plots, tight numbers
Even where building is allowed, the arithmetic up here is unusually strict. In the Montgó 3 and 4 sectors the plan parcial sets a minimum plot of 10,000 square metres, and inside the park ancillary buildings are capped at half a per cent of the plot, to a maximum of 100 square metres. If your plans for the house go beyond painting it, tell us before the arras, not after.
Holiday lets after 28 May 2026
Holiday lets on the Montgó under the new caps
On 28 May 2026 the town hall gave initial approval to per-zone caps on tourist licences, and the Montgó zone was set at 20 per cent, well below El Tosalet's 25 and far above the old town's 6. Now, that approval is initial only: final approval and publication in the province's official bulletin are still pending, so the detail can move. Two things are already worth knowing. New apartment licences are suspended town-wide for a year, and single-family homes, which is most of what stands on this hillside, keep the clearer route, subject to the caps. Regionally, a tourist let means the whole dwelling for ten days or fewer to the same guest, letting by the room is prohibited, and every licence needs the town hall's urban compatibility report, which for a Montgó property is exactly where the park boundary and any AFO history re-enter the conversation. If rental income matters to your numbers, we check the live position for the exact address before you rely on it.
Tourist rental licences in Jávea: the current rules and our fixed feeOwning in El Montgó, the tax side
Own here and your local bills go to Xàbia Tributa, the town's own tax office, because Jávea is one of the very few Alicante-province municipalities that does not use SUMA. IBI runs at 0.85 per cent of the valor catastral under the 2023 ordinance. A small cut was approved for 2025, with a councillor citing 0.83, though that figure is indicative until the ordinance confirms it. A separate waste charge has been billed from the same office since August 2025. Then there is the national side: as a non-resident you file a Modelo 210 every year even if the villa only ever holds your own family, usually on 2 per cent of the valor catastral because Jávea's general revision is an old one. Daniel Bertomeu, the tax adviser of the firm, confirms the band against your receipt rather than assume.
Modelo 210 in Jávea: what non-resident owners file, and our feeEl Montgó: questions buyers actually ask
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