Canet de Mar has a habit of surprising people who only know it from the train window. There is a castle on the hill, a sea of Modernist houses built by Domènech i Montaner's circle, a beach that runs the length of the town and a small centre that keeps working all year. What it does not have is a fast train — around fifty minutes to Barcelona — and that single fact decides who ends up living here.
The R1 takes roughly fifty minutes to Barcelona, with trains every fifteen minutes or so at peak and every half hour off it. Compare that with Vilassar or El Masnou thirty minutes further down the line and you can see the trade in one line: more town for your money, more minutes on the train.
By car the C-32 is the fast option and the N-II the free one, and in summer the coast road is exactly as slow as you would expect. Canet is also served by some regional trains, which matters if you travel further than Barcelona rather than into it.
The centre is small and genuinely handsome: the Casa Museu Domènech i Montaner, the parish church, narrow streets, little squares, the ajuntament, a market. Modernism here is not a museum piece, it is simply the local architecture — you will rent a flat inside it without thinking twice about the year it went up.
Above the town sits the Castell de Santa Florentina, a medieval castle that keeps turning up in films and series, and the wooded hills behind it. Between the castle and the sea the town fits into a strip a couple of kilometres wide, which is why Canet feels compact — and why the hillside is the expensive part.
The main beach, Platja de Canet, runs below the promenade and the railway, with the usual chiringuitos and a sailing club, and it is long enough to find a quiet patch even in August. The water is clean, the sand is the Maresme's usual coarse mix, and past the far end of town the coast turns rockier and quieter.
Published figures for Canet vary more than in the fancier towns, with sources quoting anywhere from about 13 to 16 €/m² depending on the month and the street. In practice a family flat of 90 to 110 m² tends to land somewhere in the 1,000 to 1,400 € range, and a house with a garden and a pool pushes well past that once you climb into the hills.
The value proposition is easy to state: for roughly the rent of a decent two-bedroom flat in Barcelona you can have a whole house here with a garden and, if you are lucky, a pool. What you pay instead is fifty minutes each way, twice a day, for as long as you live here.
Canet suits families who want a house, a garden and a beach town that stays real in winter, and who can make peace with the train. Anyone who values a short commute over a bigger house will do better thirty minutes further south. That is the whole decision, and it is worth riding the R1 once at 07:40 in the morning before you make it.