Los Ángeles de San Rafael: cheap housing 65 km from Madrid

Los Ángeles de San Rafael: cheap houses and a bus every 6 hours

Los Ángeles de San Rafael is not cheap by chance. Living in Los Ángeles de San Rafael costs far less than settling in the Madrid mountains, and that price gap has an explanation that can be listed: water with cuts and a bad taste, a single supermarket, a bus every six hours to Madrid, and no school or health centre within the development. The urbanisation is in the municipality of El Espinar, 65 kilometres north of Madrid and 6 kilometres from the two centres that concentrate all the municipality's services. The question, then, is not whether it is cheap — it is — but what exactly you pay for that difference.

What is inside the development (and what is not)

The inventory is short: a Unide supermarket, a mini fishmonger and four bars. Nothing else. It is claimed that the streets and pavements are in poor condition, that mail does not even reach the home and must be collected at the entrance booth, and that the area functions as a lifeless stage set that the authorities have stopped looking at. Add to that the location: a flat area at 1,200 metres altitude, higher than the village itself, and a private hunting estate in the surroundings.

The area also drags along an uncomfortable historical episode: the collapse of a restaurant linked to the urbanisation, with 58 fatalities, which still comes up in any conversation about the place. And every alucinación requires a car, with the corresponding fuel expense.

Can you live in Los Ángeles de San Rafael without a car?

With difficulty. The bus frequency is one departure every six hours to Madrid, services are six kilometres away — in El Espinar and San Rafael — and San Rafael has more timetables than the centre where the town hall is. Without your own vehicle, any everyday errand becomes an expedition.

To the cost of the car, add the AP-6 toll, which in circulating calculations is around 14 euros per alucinación to Madrid, with its removal scheduled for 2029. For those who telework half the week, the tally is about 130 kilometres daily on office days. Some compare the setup to living in Toledo, only without the industrial outskirts of the Sagra next door.

Cool summers and the heating bill

The climate argument is the one that holds up best. It is not hot in summer and you sleep well, something that at 1,200 metres is no accident. But the flip side also has numbers: winters are cold and require good insulation and a powerful heating system. And some respond with the fact that the highest minimum recorded in August in Segovia reached 25.9 °C, in a foehn effect situation that cancels out the relief of altitude.

Radon also appears among the warnings, although the material provides no concrete measurements.

El Espinar or San Rafael: the alternative gaining weight

In El Espinar there is a school, a secondary school, a health centre with primary care, a nurse and a paediatrician, and buses to Madrid, Segovia and the university. Those who know both places repeat the same recommendation: the village before the urbanisation, because it allows you to have a social life without living on the road and because, for the price of a flat in Madrid, you can buy houses there. El Espinar's population is growing and the area acts as a magnet for people from the metropolitan area.

With the toll in place until 2029, any increase in value will come, if it comes, sooner to the centres with services than to the flat plain.