Torrevieja emergency locksmith, answering 24 hours a day
Shut out of a flat in the centre, a bungalow in Los Balcones or a business on the paseo. The phone is answered at any hour, and you are told what it involves before anybody drives anywhere.
Open 24 hours · 7 days
Right now
What to do while you wait
Most doors in Torrevieja are opened without damage. What decides it is usually what has already been done to the lock before anyone arrives.
Worth doing
- Check every other door: the terrace slider, the patio door, the garage.
- Ask whoever else holds a key, especially if it is a rental or a family flat.
- Photograph the lock and the key and send both on WhatsApp.
- Wait somewhere cool. In summer the wait outside is the worst part of this.
Worth not doing
- Forcing the key that is already stiff. That is how a key snaps.
- Spraying oil into the cylinder. It holds the salt and grit that caused it.
- Pushing on the broken half of a key with the other half.
- Levering the door with a screwdriver. The frame costs more than the lock.
Typical calls
The calls that come in most
The door shut behind you
Keys on the table, wind off the sea, a Yale-type latch. The most common call of all, and usually the quickest to solve.
Keys lost at the beach or the market
Lost on the sand at La Mata or at the Friday market. The door is opened first; whether the cylinder should then be changed is a separate decision, taken calmly.
The key snapped in the cylinder
Usually a lock that had been getting stiff for weeks. The broken part comes out, and the lock is assessed rather than automatically replaced.
The lock has seized
Common in a property that has been closed for months. The key goes in, turns part way and stops, or will not go in at all.
Shut out of a business before opening
A shutter lock that will not lift with a delivery due. Bars and shops get worked around the hour they have to open, not the hour that suits a van.
Guests standing outside a rental
A key box that will not open at eleven at night, with nobody local holding a key. Common on changeover days in July and August.
Once the door is open, what happens next depends on the lock: how the opening itself is done and, if the cylinder did not survive it or never should have been trusted, what replacing it involves. Keys shut inside a vehicle are a different job: car lockouts.
Getting there
Getting to you in a town of two nuclei
Torrevieja is 72 square kilometres, two separate nuclei — the town and La Mata — and a long string of urbanisations spread inland. Add the blue-zone streets in the centre, the pedestrian stretch around San Pascual and San Policarpo, and a summer where the population more than triples, and the address you give matters as much as the distance.
The three things that help most: the name of the urbanisation or the nearest landmark, the door that has failed, and a location pin. Everything else can be worked out on arrival. If your part of the coast is further out — Punta Prima, Orihuela Costa, Guardamar, Ciudad Quesada — it is still covered: see the areas page, or read how to describe where you are.
No arrival time is promised on this website. Anybody who guarantees you ten minutes in August, from an unknown starting point, is guessing. You will get a real estimate on the phone, for your address, at that hour.
Questions
Questions at the worst moment
Is somebody really awake at four in the morning?
The phone is answered at any hour, every day of the year. Being reachable is not the same as being outside your door in ten minutes, so you will be told honestly when the van can be there before you decide to wait.
It is the middle of August and the town is full. Does that change things?
It changes the driving, not the answer. Torrevieja goes from around 110,500 residents to more than 350,000 in the high season, and the seafront and the centre are slow from late afternoon. Say where you are early and it gets planned around.
My key snapped and half of it is still in the lock.
Do not push the other half in after it, and do not spray oil into the cylinder. A broken key can often be drawn out and the lock kept, but only while nothing has been forced in on top of it.
I am locked out of a bungalow and I do not know the address.
Send a WhatsApp location pin, the name of the urbanisation and whether you are the ground floor unit or the one up the outside stairs. In this town that is worth more than a street name, which often repeats across neighbouring urbanisations.
What will it cost at night?
The hour is one of the things that decides the price, along with the door and the lock. You are given the figure before anybody sets off, and it does not change on arrival unless what is behind the door is not what was described.
Outside your own door right now?
Call and say what the key is doing. If it is easier, send a photograph of the lock and a location pin on WhatsApp and you will get an answer straight back.
Open 24 hours · 7 days