Casa Marie Curie

Benijófar is a working Spanish village of about three and a half thousand people, not a resort. There is a market on Tuesday mornings, a municipal pool, and enough bars and shops to make a week feel easy. The house sits in the Monteazul urbanisation, with a communal pool complex and its own children's pool a few blocks from the door.

The front terrace is where the holiday actually happens. Tiled, gated and open to the sun, with a table for six at one end and a deep lounge sofa at the other, a parasol for midday and an awning over part of it.

Inside, living and dining share one bright room with cool tiled floors and air conditioning. An oak table seats six. There is a corner sofa, a round boucle armchair and a large flat screen TV.

The kitchen is separate and properly kitted out: induction hob, built in oven, extractor, Siemens dishwasher and a tall Siemens fridge freezer, an island for prep, and its own door out to the terrace.

All three bedrooms have a wide double bed and their own air conditioning. Two have fitted wardrobes with sliding doors. One opens onto a private terrace of its own. Upstairs there is also a sun terrace with two loungers.

Two bathrooms. A shower room on the ground floor under the stairs, and a full bathroom upstairs with a corner bath, rain shower and a window that opens.

Getting around: you will want a car. The beaches at Guardamar del Segura are about fourteen kilometres away, under twenty minutes by road. Ciudad Quesada, with its restaurants, banks and health centre, is four minutes down the road, and there is a Mercadona in Benijófar itself. Golfers have La Marquesa ten minutes away and La Finca at Algorfa eleven. Alicante-Elche airport is roughly forty minutes, Murcia Corvera closer to fifty.