Not a resort but the working city of the island's east — with a hospital, a railway line and a property market priced as a city, not as a coastline. The sea still lies twelve kilometres away.
Source: INE, Padrón Continuo · 2026-08-22
Manacor is Mallorca’s second-largest city after Palma — and the place buyers overlook most consistently, because it appears on no beach map. That is exactly where its market lies: here you buy a city, not a season.
Manacor has what otherwise only Palma has: everyday life at city scale. The city is the traditional centre of Mallorcan furniture making and home of the artificial pearl industry, whose best-known brand carried the city’s name around the world. The Monday market is one of the island’s big ones, and with the Rafa Nadal Academy the city carries the name of its most famous son.
For daily life, two other things count for more: the Manacor hospital, which serves the whole east of the island, and the railway line to Palma — infrastructure no coastal resort in the area offers.
The city sits twelve kilometres behind its own coastline. The municipality includes Porto Cristo — the historic harbour town with the Drach caves — plus the holiday areas of Cales de Mallorca, Cala Anguila, Cala Mendia and S’Illot on the border with the neighbouring municipality. For the coastline further north, see our page on Cala Millor.
The division of labour is clear: you live in the city and swim on the coast. If you want both in one place, Manacor is not it — if you want both within fifteen minutes, it very much is.
The stock in the city is townhouses and apartments — priced as housing, not as holiday product, and therefore noticeably below coastal locations of the same size. For people moving to the island to live and work year-round, this is the most rational equation in the east: city infrastructure, railway, hospital — and the sea as a neighbour rather than an address.
The surrounding countryside is one of the island’s great finca landscapes, with considerably more supply than in the small neighbouring municipalities.
Manacor had 45,352 registered residents in 2022, against 40,873 in 2011 — plus eleven percent, the strongest growth of all municipalities we have examined for these pages.
The second series also runs against the coastal trend: the registered foreign population did fall after 2011 (8,777) — to 7,135 in 2017 — but today, at 9,683, sits above its pre-crisis level. Among the municipalities we examined, only Pollença and Artà have managed that, and none as clearly.
The figures come from the Padrón Continuo of the Spanish statistics office and count registered residents — second homes do not appear in them. In Manacor, however, they describe the market better than elsewhere: this city is mostly lived in, not visited.
Manacor is the antithesis of the resorts on these pages: demand is mostly Spanish, the market is a housing market, and the city is growing. If you want a property carried by real year-round demand, this is the most solid footing in the island’s east — and if you are buying from abroad, you are competing with buyers who know this market very well. A verified assessment before you bid is not a luxury in Manacor.
From our office in Cala Ratjada the city is a good half hour away — as the supply centre of the east, it is part of our daily routes anyway.
New ETV licences are not currently being issued on Mallorca. What matters is therefore not the location but whether the individual property carries an existing one. Every property of ours states it in the key facts.
Guide to the holiday rental licenceBuying on Mallorca rarely takes weeks. Tell us what you are looking for — we get in touch when something fitting comes up, and no more often than that.
Population figures are official, from the INE. Market observations are our own and are not statistics.
