As seen on TVE · 1981
Verano Azul was filmed here.
Forty-five years on, Verano Azul is still the coming-of-age series every Spanish person over thirty grew up with. Nineteen episodes, twenty million viewers a week, and a summer-on-the-coast atmosphere that built Nerja’s tourism reputation in a single year. Here’s where each location is, and how to walk them today.
What is Verano Azul?
Verano Azul (English: Blue Summer) is a Spanish television drama created and directed by Antonio Mercero, broadcast on Televisión Española from 11 October 1981 to 14 February 1982. Nineteen episodes, an hour each. It follows a group of children and teenagers between the ages of nine and seventeen spending the summer in a small Mediterranean coastal town — the fictional Nerja, which is also the real Nerja, six kilometres down the hill from Frigiliana.
The cast became household names overnight. The boat, La Dorada, became a national icon. The series was re-run on national TV through the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s and is still routinely cited as the most beloved Spanish family series ever made. Verano Azul is also widely credited with putting Nerja on the Spanish-tourism map — which it had not previously been.
It is the reason that the older waiter in your beach bar in Nerja, hearing your accent, will ask if you’ve seen it.
Walk the route
The locations, one by one.
All within central Nerja, all freely accessible. A half-day if you take it slow.
Chanquete’s boat — Parque de Verano Azul
La Dorada, the boat where the old fisherman Chanquete lives in the series, sits on dry land in the park dedicated to the show in central Nerja. A replica (the original was destroyed years ago), but a faithful one and the most-photographed spot on this list. The park is a short walk inland from the seafront, signed from the centre.
Where: Parque de Verano Azul, Calle Antonio Ferrandis, Nerja
The Balcón de Europa
Nerja’s famous semicircular clifftop promenade appears repeatedly in the series — group walks, arguments, wide pull-back shots over the bay. Still looks essentially identical: the stone balustrade, the palm trees, the statue of King Alfonso XII at the centre. The single best viewpoint in town.
Where: Plaza Balcón de Europa, central Nerja
Burriana Beach
The main beach of the series — long sandy crescent, pedalo rentals, beach bars (chiringuitos), the gentle family-summer atmosphere that the show is built on. Burriana is still Nerja’s family beach today, and still has the chiringuito tradition (try the espetos de sardinas grilled over a wood fire on an old fishing boat).
Where: Playa de Burriana, east end of Nerja seafront
Calahonda Cove
The small, dramatic cove directly below the Balcón de Europa, reached by a stone staircase. Several scenes were filmed here — quieter than Burriana, with rocks and tucked-in stretches of sand. Worth the descent for the view back up to the Balcón.
Where: Playa de Calahonda, below Balcón de Europa
The seafront promenade
Walking scenes between locations were filmed along the paseo running east from the Balcón. The promenade has been resurfaced and the cafés have changed hands, but the geometry — the sea on one side, whitewashed apartments on the other — is unchanged.
Where: Paseo de los Carabineros / Paseo Balcón de Europa
Beyond Nerja: Motril and Almuñécar
A handful of episodes used additional coastal scenery in Motril and Almuñécar, just over the provincial border in Granada province. Worth knowing if you’re a completist; not really worth driving for if you’re not.
Where: Costa Tropical, Granada province
How to watch it while you’re here
All nineteen episodes are available on RTVE Play, the public broadcaster’s free streaming service (rtve.es/play). The series is in Spanish; subtitles are in Spanish only on RTVE, but the pace is gentle and a beginner-level Spanish viewer can follow most of it. There is no dubbed English version.
Our recommendation: watch episode one before breakfast on a morning you’re heading down to Nerja anyway. The show is unhurried — long Mediterranean days, kids on bikes, slow conversations on benches — and it sets a particular pace for the day that the rest of the Axarquía will reward.
Why this one matters
For Spanish visitors, Verano Azul is a memory check — standing in the Parque de Verano Azul as an adult, looking at the boat that defined a childhood, is one of the small surprising emotional moments of a Costa del Sol trip. The series is also genuinely well made: Antonio Mercero went on to direct several of the most acclaimed Spanish productions of the next two decades, and you can see the craft.
For international visitors, the show is a key to a corner of Spain that’s easy to miss otherwise: a particular atmosphere of 1980s Mediterranean family life that still shapes how Nerja and the Axarquía present themselves to the world.
Common questions
Is the original Chanquete’s boat still in Nerja?
The original prop boat, La Dorada, was destroyed in the early 2000s. The boat in the Parque de Verano Azul today is a faithful replica, paid for by the Nerja town hall and unveiled in 2008.
Is there a guided Verano Azul tour?
Local guides occasionally run themed walking tours, especially in summer; the Nerja tourist office (on Calle Carmen, just behind the Balcón de Europa) can point you to whoever is running them in the current season. The route is short enough that most people walk it self-guided.
Was there a sequel?
A short three-episode follow-up, Verano azul... otra vez, aired in 2024 — reuniting the surviving cast members forty-plus years on. It was filmed in Nerja again. Reactions were mixed; the original is the original.
How does this fit with Frigiliana?
Frigiliana itself doesn’t appear in Verano Azul, which was a Nerja-set series. But Frigiliana is six kilometres up the hill from Nerja and the natural inland complement to a Verano Azul day — mornings on the beach, lunch in the village, an old-town wander as the heat drops.
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