Diving & Combat

Diving & Combat has two unusual ingredients for a Costa Brava centre. The first is military pedigree: technical director Juan Antonio Navarro joined the Spanish Navy diver corps in 1993 and built his career around training and rescue work, a lineage no other Tossa operator carries. The second is breadth — the course menu runs the full PADI ladder from Bautizo through IDC and the parallel CMAS Moniteur Federal track, then keeps going into specialties most local centres do not touch: ice diving, altitude diving and DPV scooter, branded D&C XTREME.

Day-to-day, the operation reads as a small-shop family business with deliberate logistics. The premises sit on Avinguda de Catalunya, a few minutes inland from the beach, with private parking kept free for clients even at the height of August. Divers and kit ride to Mar Menuda by van for three daily slots — 09:00, 11:30 and 16:30 — and arrive thirty minutes early to prep gear. Beyond guided diving, the team runs snorkeling (2.5 h, instructor included), full kit rental, air and Nitrox fills, an on-site repair workshop, a shop, FECDAS licence management and DAN/AXA insurance on request.

Across recent English- and Spanish-language reviews, four themes recur. First, the patience and individual attention reviewers describe is consistent enough across try-divers, course students and returning customers to read as the centre's signature. Reviews credit named instructors — Ari and Ona on recent baptisms, Adrian, Kike, Iker and Andrea earlier — and Montse runs front-of-house with enough continuity that one 8-year customer flagged her by name in 2025.

Second, the small-group ratio shows up in service detail: instructors photograph divers during try dives and send the images by email within 24 hours, and sign-language signals are used underwater to manage anxiety. Third, English-language customers regularly note the English support is functional rather than scripted — international reviewers travelling without Spanish are looked after without an extra charge. Fourth, the value-for-money read is steady: 4.9 across 469 Google reviews and a TripAdvisor #1 ranking in Tossa, with complaints scattered rather than clustered.