🇪🇸 Europe
Sun, tapas and flamenco alongside an enormous heritage: from the Alhambra in Granada to the Sagrada Família, Spain mixes Mediterranean beaches, lively cities and towns with centuries of history behind them.
Spain packs one of the densest concentrations of heritage on the planet into a country you can cross in a few hours: 50 UNESCO World Heritage sites, fifth in the world. None of that, though, explains what makes the trip. What hooks people is the street life, the late timetable, the habit of eating standing up with an elbow on a bar, and the feeling that the city belongs to everyone until dawn.
Geographically it is far more varied than the sun-and-flamenco cliché suggests. The north is green Atlantic Spain — Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria and the Basque Country — rainy, mountainous and home to some of the best cooking in Europe. The centre is the dry meseta, with Madrid, Toledo, Segovia and Salamanca. The east is the Mediterranean: Catalonia, Valencia and the Balearics. The south is Moorish Andalusia, with Granada, Sevilla and Córdoba. And 1.500 kilometres off the mainland sit the Canary Islands, subtropical all year. Almost everything is linked by high-speed rail, and between the big cities the journey rarely tops three hours.
What sets Spain apart in Western Europe is value for money. Eating well is cheap: the menú del día, a fixed-price starter, main, dessert and drink, averages 14,20 euros nationwide (verified July 2026), and a small beer with a free snack costs less than a coffee in Paris. Add public transport that actually works and the fact that you can build a two-week trip without renting a car, and Spain becomes the Western European destination with the shortest learning curve for a first-time visitor.
The local currency is the euro (EUR). It is worth carrying some cash, telling your bank before you travel and checking the day's exchange rate.
Full converter for EUR →Madrid-Barajas (MAD) and Barcelona-El Prat (BCN) are the two big long-haul gateways, and both are well connected to the Americas: Iberia, Air Europa, Aerolíneas Argentinas, Latam and Avianca fly direct from almost every capital in Latin America. From Barajas into central Madrid you take metro line 8, with an airport supplement paid on top of the normal fare; in Barcelona the Aerobús drops you at Plaça Catalunya in about half an hour, and the metro is cheaper and slower. Inside the country the Renfe AVE high-speed train rules: Madrid–Barcelona and Madrid–Sevilla are both around two and a half hours, Madrid–Málaga a little more. Since Ouigo and Iryo started competing on the same tracks, buying weeks ahead makes a big difference to the price. ALSA coaches cover what the train does not and cost far less. You reach the Balearics by plane or by ferry from Barcelona, Valencia and Denia; the Canaries by plane, with ferries and short hops between the islands.
The two best windows are spring (April to June) and autumn (September and October): pleasant temperatures countrywide, long days, prices below peak and southern cities still walkable. July and August are absolute high season and also the most uncomfortable months inland: Sevilla and Córdoba regularly clear 40 degrees, Madrid empties of madrileños, and the Mediterranean coast and the islands fill with European holidaymakers and get expensive. August is also when Spaniards themselves take their holidays, so plenty of neighbourhood bars and shops simply close.
The Atlantic north works in reverse: Galicia, Asturias and the Basque Country are at their best in exactly those months, July and August, when the rest of the country is baking, and are rainy and cool the rest of the year. Winter (December to February) is low season in the cities: dry cold in Madrid and on the meseta, mild in Andalusia and along the Mediterranean, and 20-degree sunshine in the Canaries, with noticeably cheaper flights and hotels and no queues at the museums. It is also ski season in the Sierra Nevada and the Pyrenees. If you travel for festivals, note Semana Santa in March or April (spectacular in Sevilla and Málaga, but everything is booked out and expensive), Las Fallas in Valencia in March, the Feria de Abril in Sevilla and the San Fermín bull-running in Pamplona from 6 to 14 July.
Eating in Spain is a social sport. The headline format is the tapa: small portions ordered several at a time and shared standing at the bar. In the Basque Country and Navarra they are called pinchos and are laid out along the counter. The non-negotiables: acorn-fed jamón ibérico, tortilla de patatas (the eternal argument being with or without onion), croquetas, boquerones in vinegar, Galician pulpo a feira, gazpacho and salmorejo in summer, cocido madrileño stew in winter, and a paella valenciana eaten at lunchtime, never at night. To drink: Rioja and Ribera del Duero wines, Catalan cava, vermouth on tap before a meal, cider poured from a height in Asturias, and tinto de verano — red wine with lemon soda — when the heat bites. Finish with churros and thick chocolate at seven in the morning, on your way home.
The budget trick is the menú del día: starter, main course, dessert or coffee and a drink for one fixed price, Monday to Friday at lunchtime. The 2026 national average is 14,20 euros (about 16 dollars), with the Canaries and Andalusia around 13 euros and the Balearics and Catalonia above 15 (verified July 2026). A caña of beer runs 2 to 3 euros and a milky coffee 1,50 to 2,50 depending on the city; in many bars in Granada, León or Jaén the tapa still comes free with the drink. Two warnings: restaurants with laminated photos of paella in tourist areas are traps, and most bar kitchens shut between 4 and 8 p.m., so if you turn up hungry at six you are eating a sandwich.
Spain is a safe country: violent crime against tourists is very low and you can walk at night through the centre of almost any city. The real and fairly widespread problem is pickpocketing. Barcelona has one of the highest rates of pickpocketing in Europe, concentrated on Las Ramblas, the metro, the Sagrada Família and the beach; in Madrid it happens around Sol, Gran Vía and metro line 5. The rule is simple: nothing in your back pockets, backpack worn on your front on public transport, phone off the table on terraces, and luggage never left loose in a station. The other concrete risk is heat: in summer the interior and the south pass 40 degrees and heatwaves are getting more frequent, so water, shade and an afternoon rest are not a joke.
No vaccinations are required to enter. Tap water is drinkable in practically the whole country (more than 99% of samples meet European standards), though the taste varies a lot from region to region and on some islands and in some rural areas it is worth asking. Public healthcare is excellent, but a non-EU tourist is not covered by it, so travel insurance with medical cover is essential: the policy of at least 30.000 euros required from Schengen visa applicants is a good minimum benchmark, and border officers can ask to see it even if you do not need a visa. Pharmacies (green cross) solve a great deal and cities have 24-hour duty pharmacies. The single emergency number is 112, free from any phone and staffed in several languages (verified July 2026).
Spain is one of the cheapest countries in Western Europe, above all for food. With the euro at around 1,15 dollars (31 July 2026), a backpacker day — hostel bed, menú del día, public transport and one admission ticket — comes to 60 to 80 euros, or about 70 to 92 dollars. A mid-range trip, with a three-star hotel, a couple of à la carte meals and the odd train, runs 110 to 150 euros a day (125 to 175 dollars). A comfortable one, with four-star hotels and restaurants you have chosen rather than stumbled into, starts at 200 euros (around 230 dollars) and has no ceiling.
Concrete reference points from July 2026: a single Madrid metro ticket costs 1,50 € (plus a one-off 2,50 € for the rechargeable Multi card), and a 10-trip MetroBús pass 7,30 €. A coffee is 1,50 to 2,50 €, a caña 2 to 3 €, the menú del día 14,20 € on average. The big-ticket admissions: Museo del Prado 15 €, Alhambra 22,27 €, Sagrada Família from 26 €, Real Alcázar in Sevilla 13,50 €, Mezquita in Córdoba 15 €. Accommodation varies most and has no official price: as a guide, a hostel dorm bed goes for 20 to 40 € depending on city and season, and a three-star double for 80 to 130 €, considerably more in Barcelona or on the coast in August. Add the tourist tax, which in Barcelona reached 9,50 € per person per night in tourist flats in 2026 and up to 12 € in five-star hotels. High-speed rail can be a giveaway or brutally expensive depending on when you buy: Madrid-Barcelona goes from 7 to 25 € booked weeks ahead on Avlo, Ouigo, iryo or AVE, and climbs above 100 € close to the date.
Spanish is the national language, and if you learned yours in Latin America the vocabulary is what will trip you up rather than the accent. Here it is coche, not auto; ordenador, not computadora; móvil, not celular; zumo, not jugo. The word vale works as an all-purpose 'okay', tío and tía are friendly rather than rude, and the verb coger is completely innocent and used constantly. Catalonia, Galicia, the Basque Country, Navarra, the Balearics and Valencia each have a co-official language — Catalan, Galician, Basque, Valencian — which you will see on signs and menus, but Castilian Spanish will never cause you a problem anywhere.
The timetable is what throws people most. Breakfast is light, lunch happens between 2 and 4 p.m. and dinner between 9 and 11 p.m.; a kitchen open at 7.30 p.m. is a sign of a restaurant aimed at tourists. Outside the big cities many shops close from 2 to 5 p.m. and on Sundays almost everything shuts. Sockets are type C/F (two round pins, the European standard) at 230 V and 50 Hz, so North American, British and Australian plugs all need an adapter — and if your device is not dual-voltage, a 120 V North American appliance needs a converter as well, though modern chargers and laptops handle the voltage without trouble. For connectivity, the simplest option is an eSIM bought before you leave; if you buy a local prepaid SIM, roaming across the European Union is included and covers the whole trip. Tipping is neither compulsory nor expected: you round up the bill or leave 5 to 10% only if the service was very good. And there is no Italian-style cover charge: bread is sometimes billed separately, but nobody charges you for sitting down.
The history of Spain is the history of a crossroads between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, between Europe and Africa, where for three thousand years peoples, languages and religions piled up on top of one another without any of them ever fully erasing the last. In the caves of Altamira, more than fifteen thousand years ago, Palaeolithic hands painted bison that still astonish; then came Iberians and Celts, Phoenicians and Greeks trading along the coasts, Hannibal's Carthage, and the Rome that turned Hispania into one of its richest provinces and gave the Empire emperors and philosophers. On that foundation rose the Visigothic kingdom, the eight centuries of al-Ándalus with the Caliphate of Córdoba as the beacon of the West, and the Christian kingdoms of the north that redrew the map of the peninsula through a mixture of war and negotiation.
The year 1492 changed everything: Granada, the last Muslim kingdom, fell; Columbus crossed the Atlantic and opened up an empire of planetary scale for Castile; and a decree expelled the Jews, closing centuries of difficult coexistence. Then came the Golden Age and the Habsburg monarchy, the conquest of the Americas with its glory and its demographic catastrophe, the Inquisition, decline and the Bourbons. After that, the war against Napoleon and the first constitution, the loss of the colonies, the Second Republic, the Civil War of 1936-1939 and four decades of Franco's dictatorship, the Transition to democracy and a Spain of autonomous regions still cut through by its territorial tensions. To travel Spain — from the Alhambra to the Sagrada Família, from the aqueduct of Segovia to the white villages, from the Camino de Santiago to the Guggenheim in Bilbao — is to move through all those layers of history at once.
Read the full history of Spain →Pick a region and open each destination to see what to do, prices and how to get there.
These are the sources we cite most across this country's guides, with how many times each appears. Hard data —tickets, opening hours, requirements, transport— comes from the official source and carries the date we checked it. Restaurant and hotel picks come from guides and reviews, and we say so on each page.
