Two ways in

A working harbour town with a castle in the middle of it, a mountain behind it and ferries to the Balearics leaving from the end of the street.

The northern gateway to the Costa Blanca, and a self-sufficient small town — a real port with a real winter, rather than a resort that empties in October. The Montgó massif sits behind the town and the ferry terminal sits in front of it.

Three separate towns wearing one name — an inland old town, a working port, and a beach strip — with coves between them.

South of Dénia around the Cap de la Nau headland, Xàbia is a strongly international town, and a spread-out one. The old town sits inland, the port a kilometre away, the Arenal beach strip further round again; which one you live in decides what your stay is like.

A whitewashed old town stacked up a hill under a blue-tiled dome, with Benidorm's skyline visible along the bay and nothing else in common with it.

A pretty town, and one often described as artistic, which is accurate and also the whole marketing department. Pebble beaches rather than sand, a steep old town, and a quieter register than its neighbours — Benidorm is ten minutes down the tram line and feels like another country.

A high-rise city on two beaches that divides opinion on sight, and which works year-round almost by accident.

The one everybody has an opinion about. Dense, vertical and unapologetic — and because it was built for volume, it has the infrastructure and the transport that the pretty towns along the bay do not. Whether that trade is worth it depends entirely on what you want from four weeks.

A provincial capital with a castle on a rock above it — a working city that happens to have a beach, and the only place on this coast with a mainline railway and a major airport.

The regional hub, and a straightforward place for a first long stay on the Costa Blanca. A city of a few hundred thousand people with its own economy, a university, an airport with routes across Europe and fast trains to Madrid — so the practical questions that dominate the smaller towns mostly do not arise here.