The continental shelf surrounding the Spanish coast is very narrow. This is of great importance when studying the wave and surge dynamics in the region and contrasts with other well-studied regions like the North Sea, both in the physics and in the modelling techniques applied to obtain predictions of waves and sea surface elevation at the coastline. This paper describes those differences and presents the approach to the problem implemented in the wave and surge prediction system operational at Clima Marı́timo (CM). The narrowness of the Spanish continental shelf requires very high resolution grids to be applied to localised regions near the coast. The usual configuration of a local system nested to a global system (e.g. grids covering the North Sea nested to the European Centre for Medium Range Weather Forecasting global model) cannot be used in this case. Interpolation and coarse grid errors from boundary conditions provided by a global grid very near the coast will not be corrected by a small-scale local application. It was found that self-contained systems, solving in the same run the basin and local scales by means of variable grid spacing techniques, were the optimal solution. Some new techniques were developed in the process (two-way nesting for the wave generation model, a transfer function technique for the wave spectra) and implemented in the system. Although some of these developments have been already published [Gómez, M., Carretero, J.C., 1997. A two-way nesting procedure for the WAM model: application to the Spanish coast. J. Offshore Mech. Arctic Eng. 119 (February 1997).], the final set-up of both systems is presented here for the first time. Both systems are regularly verified with experimental data from the Spanish network of buoy and tide gauges. Results from this intercomparison are discussed in this paper. The PROMISE Spanish Coast Data Set was used to carry out much of the work presented here (i.e. the forcing and validation of the surge prediction system). This is a collection of physical oceanographic and meteorological data in the Bay of Biscay during stormy periods from November 1995 to March 1996.