Current European energy policies stress the potential of housing stock retrofitting to reduce global energy consumption. In order to implement efficient measures, it is essential to know its real in-use energy behaviour. In southern Europe, social housing represents an important percentage of the residential stock built before the implementation of the first energy regulations. However, there are few studies specifically analysing their energy behaviour. Standardized use and occupancy patterns are not usually suited to Mediterranean social housing, and this mostly results in estimated consumption exceeding real consumption. This research aims to quantify the thermal comfort and energy consumption of the social housing stock during the characteristically mild winters in a Mediterranean climate, based on the monitoring of representative case studies from southern Spain. The results show that the dwellings analysed are far from conforming to adaptive comfort standard EN-15251 and yet, their limited local heating systems are rarely turned on, reducing the expected energy consumption. In addition, real use and occupancy patterns are defined for the case studies, allowing the development of energy simulation models that are better suited to the real behaviour of this social housing stock. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.