Overview
About Cantabria
Cantabria covers 29.5 acres inside Talega and holds 56 homes on 67 parcels, at a median parcel of 0.20 acres. Two streets serve the whole community: Calle de la Luna, which carries 42 of the addresses, and Calle Celestial with the remaining 14. Half the acreage, 14.1 acres, is kept as private open space, with 9.2 acres designated Residential Medium Low Density and 2.8 Residential Low Density.
The community sits inside the Talega master association and under the Talega Specific Plan, which governs building here. The state fire hazard severity map places 24.9 acres in its High class and 4.5 in Very High, and the whole boundary sits in federal flood zone X. Capistrano Unified's locator returned Vista del Mar Elementary, Vista del Mar Middle and San Clemente High at all five interior points tested.
View available homes in CantabriaHistory
How Cantabria was built
Cantabria is one of the smaller neighborhoods in Talega and one of the easiest to describe: two streets of single family houses, Calle Celestial and Calle de la Luna, the heavenly one and the moon. The name it was given belongs to a real place, the autonomous community on the north coast of Spain that faces the Bay of Biscay with Santander as its capital, part of the strip that Spaniards call Green Spain. Talega went up from 1999 onward under a queue of production builders, Standard Pacific as the master developer and companies such as Shea Homes taking tracts of their own, and whoever was naming their tracts worked through Spanish and Italian geography one neighborhood at a time, which is how Cantabria got a province.
For most of its life this ground was not in San Clemente at all. The Talega property straddled the city line, with about 1,604 acres inside San Clemente and about 1,906 acres in unincorporated Orange County within the city's sphere of influence. On the county side the same development carried a completely different name, the Rolling Hills Planned Community, and it answered to the Board of Supervisors rather than the city council. San Clemente and the county set up a joint planning authority in 1999 to handle the handover, and the county acreage came into the city in phases rather than in one piece.
By the Numbers
Cantabria by the numbers
Lifestyle
The Cantabria lifestyle
San Clemente keeps ten beaches of its own along the shore, from North Beach past the pier to Riviera, and the city's Marine Safety division staffs them. The pier itself carries restrooms, metered parking, fire rings and the Amtrak and Metrolink platform at its foot.
The city publishes five trail networks that run from the sand up into the canyons and along the ridgelines. Bikes are welcome on all of them, electric bikes are not allowed on the Beach Trail, dogs are welcome on a leash, and horses are permitted on the Forster Ridgeline, Prima Deshecha and Cristianitos trails. City parks are open from 6 am to 10 pm without a reservation unless a group needs a permit.
Schools
Schools serving Cantabria
Capistrano Unified assigns Cantabria to San Clemente High, Vista del Mar Middle and Vista del Mar Elementary. The district's own school locator returned the same assignment at every point tested inside the boundary, and enrollment comes from the federal count for 2024-25.
9-12 · 2,740 students
6-8 · 499 students
K-5 · 692 students
FAQs
Common questions about Cantabria
How big is Cantabria?
The boundary the city publishes covers 29.5 acres, with 56 addresses on 67 parcels. It is the 48th largest of the fifty San Clemente communities mapped here, ahead of only Escala and the Riviera District.
Which schools serve Cantabria?
Capistrano Unified's school locator returned Vista del Mar Elementary, Vista del Mar Middle and San Clemente High at all five points tested inside the boundary. Confirm the assignment for a specific address with the district before you rely on it.
How many streets are in Cantabria?
Two. Calle de la Luna carries 42 of the 56 addresses and Calle Celestial the other 14. Calle de la Luna continues north into Montellano.
How much of Cantabria is open space?
The city's land use layer gives 14.1 of the 29.5 acres the designation Open Space Private, just under half the community.
When was Cantabria laid out?
Two maps cover it. Tract 15955 and Tract 14224 were both recorded in 2000, and Tract 14224 was amended in 2002. Both sit over the 1991 Talega parent map, Tract 13872. A recorded map date is when the subdivision was filed, not when a house was built.