Cabrils is the town people move to when they have had enough of the coast road and still want the beach within ten minutes. It is small, around 7,700 residents, and it sits up in the hills behind Vilassar de Mar. Nobody comes here for the nightlife. They come for space, quiet and a house with a garden that does not cost Sant Andreu de Llavaneres money.
The town is inland from the coast, tucked into the lower slopes of the Serralada Litoral. That position explains most of what makes it work. You get the green, the views and the cooler evenings of a hillside village, but the N-II and the C-32 are close enough that you are never stuck. Vilassar de Mar, with its beach, its station and its supermarket run, is a short drive downhill.
It is not a resort town and it does not pretend to be. There is a main street with the everyday shops, a couple of decent restaurants, and that is roughly the extent of the commercial centre. For anything bigger you drive to Vilassar, Mataró or Premià.
Cabrils has no train station of its own. The nearest one is Vilassar de Mar, about 3.5 km away, and from there the R1 line runs into Barcelona in roughly 35 minutes. Plenty of residents drive down, park at the station and take the train from there, which is the standard Maresme compromise. If you want the full picture of train versus car versus driving times along the coast, our guide to commuting from Maresme to Barcelona breaks it down town by town.
By car the route is the C-32 motorway, which is fast when it is moving and less so at eight in the morning. Budget forty to fifty minutes to the centre of Barcelona in rush hour, and closer to thirty outside it.
The rental stock is a mix of older village houses in the centre and larger detached villas on the hillside, many with a pool and a proper garden. Houses in the Alella, Cabrils and Teià group tend to ask around €12 to €13 per square metre, which puts a family house with a pool somewhere in the €3,000 to €4,500 a month band. Design houses with a pool often land near €4,000. At the very top of the market, large plots with sea views climb well past that.
For a sense of the whole coast and how Cabrils compares with its neighbours, see Maresme rental prices by town. If you specifically want a villa here, our Cabrils luxury rentals page covers what we currently handle.
For a town this size, Cabrils has a reasonable local offer: Escola L'Olivera and Escola Mas Maria for primary, and Institut Cabrils for secondary. Families who want an international curriculum usually look at the schools in the wider Maresme and Barcelona area and drive or take the train. The trade-off is real. You gain the village and lose the doorstep international school, and that single point decides Cabrils for a lot of families one way or the other.
Cabrils rewards people who have already decided that Maresme, not Barcelona, is where they want to live. If you are still weighing the two, our comparison of villa versus apartment is the better place to start.
The practical work starts before the keys change hands. You will want the utilities in your name on day one, and a clear picture of what the monthly bills look like, because Cabrils houses with pools and gardens use noticeably more electricity and water than a city flat. We have written both guides: setting up utilities in Spain and what utilities actually cost.
Tell us your dates, budget and bedroom count. We will send you what is available before it hits the portals.
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