When you budget a rental, the rent is the figure you already know. The bills that arrive afterwards are the ones that catch people out, and they behave very differently in a city flat and in a Maresme villa with a pool. Here is what each supply actually costs in 2026, and who is supposed to pay for it.
Most Spanish households sit on the regulated PVPC tariff or on a fixed market deal. On PVPC the average price of electricity in 2026 has been running around €0.13 to €0.14 per kWh, though the price changes hour by hour. A typical household on the regulated tariff with monthly consumption of roughly 290 kWh has been paying between €66 and €80 a month across the summer of 2026, depending on the month.
Two things push that number up. The first is air conditioning, which in a Barcelona summer is not optional for most people. The second is a pool. A heated pool or one with a pump running through the day will add meaningfully to the bill, and if the house is all electric, with no gas connection, the winter heating load lands on the same supply.
If you are on a standard 2.0TD contract you pay different rates for peak and off-peak hours. Moving the washing machine, the dishwasher and the pool pump to the cheap window is worth doing, and it is one of the few habits that reliably shows up on the bill.
Water is cheaper than electricity, unless there is a garden. In Catalonia the average domestic price comes out at roughly €2.46 per cubic metre including VAT for a household using 12 m³ a month. Around Barcelona the tariff is tiered: the first block starts near €0.80 per m³ and the price climbs through the bands, reaching around €4.15 to €4.27 per m³ at high consumption. The message in that structure is simple. The more you use, the more each extra cubic metre costs.
For a reference point, Catalan household water bills run at roughly €149 a year for one person, €297 for two, and about €520 for three or four, based on an assumed annual use of 175 m³. A villa with automatic irrigation and a pool will sit above those figures, sometimes well above in a dry summer. Some towns in Catalonia have also applied drought surcharges in recent years, so it is worth asking the landlord what the water bill has actually been.
Fibre is cheap in Spain by international standards, and in most Maresme towns the 1 Gb lines are already laid. Basic 1 Gb home packages in 2026 sit between €25 and €35 a month. As examples from the current market, Vodafone is around €25 for the first twelve months and then about €35, Movistar around €29.90 rising to €45 after a year, and DIGI around €31 for fibre without a landline. Mobile plans are usually bundled and cost very little on top.
The catch with the cheaper deals is the promotional period. The first year is not the price, so read the second-year number before you sign. If the previous tenant left a contract in place, you may be able to take it over rather than start a new one.
The rule in Spain is that supplies consumed by the tenant are the tenant's to pay, while costs tied to ownership of the property fall on the landlord. In practice, for a long-term rental this usually means:
None of this is guesswork on your part. Our guide to what a villa in Maresme costs to run goes through the ownership-side bills line by line, and what a Spanish rental contract must include explains where these obligations should appear in the document you sign.
Ranges, not promises, because it depends on the house. For a family of four in a detached Maresme villa with a pool, a reasonable working assumption for the three supplies is:
That is roughly €200 to €400 a month on top of rent, and it is the range we quote to tenants so nobody gets a surprise in August. A city apartment can come in at half of that, which is one of the real, unglamorous differences between the two.
If you are moving in, the order of operations matters and a Spanish bank account makes it much smoother, though it is not strictly required. We have written a step-by-step guide to setting up utilities in Spain, and a separate one on renting without a Spanish bank account if that is your situation.
Tell us the property you are considering. We will give you an honest all-in monthly picture before you commit.
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