Paradisus by Meliá Fuerteventura

Paradisus by Meliá Fuerteventura stands on Playa de la Barca, the northern end of Sotavento, the nine-kilometre beach on the leeward side of the Jandía peninsula, south of Costa Calma. The building went up in 1978, was long known as Los Gorriones and ran under Meliá's Sol and Meliá brands, latterly as the Meliá Gorriones and then the Meliá Fuerteventura. Meliá and Banca March, its co-owners, spent €32 million turning it into a five-star, all-inclusive Paradisus, which reopened on 1 August 2025 with 363 rooms and suites.

The entry Premium Room has 41 m², a terrace and a standard view, and the Premium Room with Double Sofa Bed is the same size and adds a double sofa bed. The Ocean View and Ocean Front rooms (41 and 44 m²) look at the Atlantic. Families with two children look to the suites: the Suite has 70 m² and a lounge with a sofa bed, and the Suite Ocean Front has 66 m², a separate living room with a double sofa bed and a balcony facing the sea. The Reserve is the adults-only (16+) part of the hotel: rooms and suites on the upper floors with their own lounge, private check-in, breakfast and pool, up to a 143 m² penthouse suite with a whirlpool on its terrace.

The reason to bring children is the water. A sandbar between 100 and 300 metres offshore holds back a tidal lagoon more than four kilometres long. For about a week around each full and new moon it fills for a few hours around the daytime high tide, usually under a metre at its deepest, and the hotel gardens lead down to it by a ramp and steps. Back at the hotel there is a children's pool with slides, a playground, a kids' club and a children's entertainment programme, while parents have a heated saltwater pool shaped like a lake and a second, tropical one. The René Egli windsurf and kite school, in the hotel's palm garden, teaches anyone old enough on the same lagoon.

The trade is the setting. The lagoon follows the moon: it holds water on about half the days of the year, and for only a few hours on those, so for the rest of the time the water at the gate is the open beach. Sotavento is the windsurf and kite beach of Jandía, and the wind reaches the pools too. The hotel is on its own: Costa Calma is a 47-minute walk, and the airport a 64-minute drive. Book it for a week of sand, pools and lagoon with young children, check René Egli's lagoon calendar before you choose the dates, and take the Suite for the space.