Are there any quiet areas?

My advice would be to get out of the towns / urbanisations and into the countryside. Either in a village or buy a house in the campo where there is noone near you!

We live in a small Spanish village on the Soutern Costa Blanca - 10 km inland. Yes there are dogs, yes they occasionally bark but not constantly and never to excess, yes they are owned by Spanish who let them poo where they like.

Unfortunately the thing that drives me mad is the teenagers on little buzzy motorbikes - the nose echoes round the village as there are no gardens to soak up the noise and it just reverberates off all the walls.

So wherever you go I'm sure you will find something that disturbs the peace. And remember we notice it more here in Spain as we live a lot of our life outdoors

I suspect the same problem exists now in the UK - we just wouldn't notice it so much living indoors and with gardens etc to absorb some of the noise.

I thought the main problem was barking dogs.  Personally I would have thjought going into the countryside (unless you are miles from anyone else) would have meant a better chance of noisy dogs.

I still think that if it noisy dogs that are the problem then find a community which doesn't allow dogs.

The original poster asked about quite areas in Costa Del Sol - (unfortunately I don't know that area very well.  A bit further down the road in Costa Almeria there is a small village called Palomares - there is a complex there called Hacienda De Marquis 1.  The community there passes a resolution saying that there were to be no new pets allowed on the community.  There are a few cats that were there before the new rule was enforced but they are not noisy.  This community (about 70 units mailny 2cbed town houses but a few 3 bed house and 1bed appartments) is very quite for most of the year.  In July and August it can be a bit noicey when the young children are in the pool but it allways seams quite by night time.  I would have thought this was what the original poster wanted but in slightly the wrong area.

I lived in Benalmadena for 6 months every morning at 8 am the guy with the leaf blower would blow the leaves up the hill MMMMMMMM MMMMMMM then at 11am he would blow them down the hill MMMMMMM MMMMMMM.

The dust cart every morning would find the pot holes and thump into them BOOM BOOM.

The garage next door would play over the tanoy the same music every day WAA WA WAAA WA

At dusk the dogs would go off on one for hours and in the early hours of the morning around 3am you would hear COCK A DOODLE DOOOOOOO

EVERY day was the same.I stayed over a friends house just down the road and oposite their villa lived dogs no people just dogs they barked ALL day and in the morning the chickens would cluck away.

I asked them if it annoyed them and they said they never hear them as they lived there so long they were used to them..

I am going to live in Spain again but finding a place dog and chicken free is a tough one.They just love to be noisy.Bienvenido  a Espania............

i never had a problem with noise in 10 years in spain,

i dont move near roads and spanish people so no barking dogs or anything.

Sounds perfect can you enlighten me as to where these areas are......

We are in the process of buying in a small typically Spanish town called Villanueva, which is between Malaga and Granada ish!  About 40 minutes inland.  We've been there many times and stayed in different locations and I've never heard a dog, apart from my friends one that was a stray!  I think Urbanisations will be the worst unless they have a no pet policy.  In some towns you may get lots of strays running around so that wouldn't be good.  A difficult one, unless you have time to visit places at different times of the day and sit in different places to see if you can hear anything!

When I lived in the countryside we could hear barking dogs every night for miles around.  I think you could live quite a few miles from a place, but still hear the barking at night.  I got used to it though and had actually forgotten about it, until I just saw this thread.  It is very common in Spain for people to leave dogs in residence in the countryside when the owners are in the town, just popping up to feed the poor blighters every couple of days.  Sometimes they seem to be there just to protect a pile of stones/ruin.

Buying a house in the middle of the country with no dogs might invite unwanted thieves. We once stayed for a week to try out  a small holiday place in an urbanisation built by" Polaris World" . And every time we walked past one particular house (which was part of a row of property) in a terrace Jardin. a huge Alsation dog came out and barked its head off and you could hear it over 600 yards away and further . The owners clearly didnt give a toss and then I realised lots of property in the row was also up for sale.  The Estate agent  appologised a sthey did to everyone but the damage was done.  We purchased last September and have a couple of "barkers about" but at least we know when someones about and walking the street. 

If your urbanisation settles down at night as is not "a clubbers hot spot"  the chances are it will be OK. Personally, i like to have a few "well behaved" dog owners about ... ( You cant blame the dog ! ).  Be careful  about visiting lovely coastal resorts in the winter as they change dramatically in the  summer with Spanish people loving dogs as they do many little four legged friends will be on holiday too. !