Abdominal Pain Diagnosis in Alicante

Healthcare in Alicante: what visitors and residents should know

How local care works in Alicante and across Costa Blanca, Spain — and where an online doctor fits alongside it.

Public healthcare in Alicante is delivered by the Conselleria de Sanitat of the Generalitat Valenciana, the Valencian Community's own health department, through a network of centros de salud and hospital urgencias departments. Both Spanish and Valencian are co-official here, and signage in health facilities is often bilingual, though English is widely spoken in the coastal resort belt in a way it is not inland. State healthcare is run at regional level, so the rules you meet depend on where you are rather than on Spain as a whole. EU, EEA and Swiss visitors holding an EHIC (or a UK GHIC) can use public primary care and emergency departments on the same terms as residents, though you will normally be asked for the card plus photo ID at reception. Outside surgery hours, pharmacies operate a rota — the farmacia de guardia — and the duty pharmacy is posted in the window of every closed chemist. Alicante's health demand is shaped by its permanent population of British and Northern European retirees living along the Costa Blanca between Torrevieja and Dénia — a group that tends to need repeat prescriptions and management of ongoing conditions rather than one-off holiday care. Summer brings the region's seasonal pattern of heat exhaustion, severe sunburn and jellyfish stings along the beaches, and the local pharmacy rota is under heaviest load in July and August.

• Large expat community from UK & Northern Europe
• Popular retirement destination
• Major tourist area with beaches

Areas we cover around Alicante and Costa Blanca

An online consultation is not a substitute for emergency care. If you are in Alicante and your symptoms are severe or life-threatening, call 112 or go to the nearest emergency department.