Spain travel guide writers face an unusual problem: the country is so good in so many different ways that every list of highlights feels like a betrayal of the things left off it. I’ve spent close to four months in Spain across five trips, and I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface — the north coast alone could take a month, and I’ve given it a combined ten days.
What I can tell you after five trips is this: Spain rewards people who leave the obvious Spain travel guide itinerary. Barcelona and Madrid are extraordinary. They’re also, in certain pockets, exhausted by tourism in ways that can make them feel like expensive theme parks if you’re not deliberate about where you go. The best version of Spain — the one that explains why people move here, retire here, come back every year — exists in the places between the headline destinations. This Spain travel guide tries to point you toward both the famous and the overlooked.
The Basics Before You Pack
Visa: Spain is Schengen. EU citizens need only an ID card. Americans, Brits, Canadians, and Australians get 90 days visa-free.
When to go: May, June, and September are the sweet spot for almost everywhere in Spain. Madrid in July and August is 38°C and deserted by locals. Andalusia in August is 42°C and genuinely oppressive. The north coast (Basque Country, Galicia, Asturias) runs cooler year-round and is best June–September. The Canary Islands work any time of year — that’s literally the point of them.
Getting around: Spain’s high-speed rail network (AVE) is genuinely world-class. Madrid to Barcelona takes 2.5 hours (€30–€90 booked ahead on Renfe’s website). Madrid to Seville takes 2.5 hours. Madrid to Valencia takes 1.5 hours. For the north coast and rural Andalusia, rent a car. Driving in Spain is easy; the roads are excellent; the only challenge is urban parking, which in Barcelona will cost you €4/hour and considerable stress.
Money: Spain is cheaper than France, Italy, or the UK, but the gap has narrowed. A menu del día (fixed lunch: bread, two courses, dessert, and wine) still exists at €12–€16 at local restaurants away from tourist areas — one of the best deals in European travel. Budget travelers can manage €70–€90/day. Mid-range sits at €180–€300/day. The Basque Country and Barcelona run 20–30% more expensive than the rest.
Madrid: The City That Starts at Midnight
Every Spain travel guide covers Madrid, and I want to be careful not to oversell it, because the first reaction of a lot of first-time visitors is “I expected it to be more beautiful.” Madrid doesn’t have a river worth mentioning, or a dramatic geography, or the visual pizzazz of Barcelona’s Gaudí skyline. What it has is a culture — specifically, a way of living where lunch starts at 2pm, dinner at 10pm, and the clubs at 2am — that is so completely itself that you either surrender to it within 48 hours or spend your whole trip slightly out of phase.
I surrendered. I’ve been back four times.
The museums — Spain travel guide non-negotiables: The Prado (one of the world’s great art museums; Velázquez’s Las Meninas, Goya’s Black Paintings, Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights — all in the same building; €15; free entry 6–8pm Monday to Saturday and all day Sunday; book a timed slot in advance). The Reina Sofía (Picasso’s Guernica; the most powerful political painting of the 20th century; €12; closed Tuesday). The Thyssen-Bornemisza (fills the gap between the two — Impressionists, American realism, early Italian masters; €13). The “Golden Triangle of Art” covers all three in a 10-minute walking radius; two days minimum to do them justice.
The neighbourhoods — where this Spain travel guide sends you: Malasaña (the bohemian quarter; independent record shops, vintage clothing, breakfast cafés that open at 10am because nobody woke up before that) and Lavapiés (the most multicultural neighbourhood in Madrid; Moroccan tea houses next to Indian restaurants next to traditional bodegas; gentrifying but slowly; still feels real) are where I spend my time when I want the city to feel like somewhere people actually live.
Madrid food — Spain travel guide highlights: Breakfast is a churro and a thick hot chocolate at Chocolatería San Ginés (open since 1894; operates 24 hours; €5; the churros are worth the line). Lunch is the menu del día — I ate the best one of my life at a tile-walled place near Lavapiés with no English menu and no name visible from the street for €11. Dinner is jamón — specifically Cinco Jotas in Puerta del Sol, where a plate of acorn-fed Ibérico bellota costs €28 and is among the best things I’ve eaten anywhere. Vermouth (vermut) at noon on a Sunday in the La Latina neighbourhood is the local tradition I recommend most.
Barcelona: Beautiful, Crowded, Worth It Anyway
Every Spain travel guide has to address the Barcelona situation honestly, and this one won’t pretend it isn’t complicated: it is one of the most visited cities in Europe, and in certain zones — Las Ramblas, the Gothic Quarter between 11am and 5pm, Barceloneta beach in August — it feels completely saturated. The locals will tell you about this at length if given the opportunity.
And yet. The city is architecturally extraordinary in a way that nothing else in Spain quite matches, and Gaudí’s buildings specifically are so unlike anything else on earth that they justify the crowds entirely.
The Gaudí circuit: La Sagrada Família (€26 entry + €9 tower access; book weeks ahead; under construction since 1882 and now estimated to complete around 2034; the interior, particularly the nave with its tree-column vaulting and the stained glass that turns the light gold and blue simultaneously, is genuinely transcendent). Park Güell (€10; book online; the mosaic terrace and the dragon staircase are the highlights; the surrounding park is free and worth wandering). Casa Batlló (€35; extravagant but the rooftop dragon scale tiles are unlike anything else; go at dusk). Casa Milà/La Pedrera (€25; the rooftop warrior chimneys are the image most people associate with Gaudí; arguably better than Casa Batlló for the money).
Beyond Gaudí — the Spain travel guide Barcelona extras: The Palau de la Música Catalana (a 1908 concert hall by Lluís Domènech i Montaner; the stained-glass ceiling in the main auditorium is one of the most beautiful interior spaces in Europe; tours €22 or attend an evening concert for €30–€50 which is the better option). The Picasso Museum in the Born neighbourhood (€14; chronological collection of Picasso’s development from age 9 onward; the Las Meninas series — his response to Velázquez — is the highlight). El Born market (a 19th-century iron market building covering excavated ruins of the 1714 siege of Barcelona; free; one of the most unexpected spaces in the city).
Barcelona food — Spain travel guide picks: The Boqueria market on Las Ramblas is tourist theatre; eat at the Mercat de Santa Caterina or Mercat del Ninot instead. Cal Pep (El Born; tapas counter; arrive at opening, 7:30pm, or wait outside for 45 minutes; worth it for the clams and croquetas). Cervecería Catalana (Eixample; the queue moves fast; mixed tapas for €15–€25/person). For something this Spain travel guide strongly recommends: take the Rodalies train to Sitges (40 minutes; a whitewashed fishing town with excellent seafood and much calmer beaches) for a half-day escape.
San Sebastián: The Best Food City in the World
I’m going to make a claim here in this Spain travel guide that reasonable people debate: San Sebastián (Donostia in Basque) is the best city in the world to eat in. Not the most Michelin stars per capita (though it has the second-highest density in the world after Kyoto). Not the most technically sophisticated. The best, in the sense of a city where eating well is so culturally embedded that even the cheapest pintxos bar in the old town is operating at a level that would embarrass mid-range restaurants in most European capitals.
The old town (Parte Vieja) contains more bars per square metre than any area in Europe. They open at 7pm and the routine is: drift from bar to bar, order two or three pintxos (small bites on bread, €2–€3.50 each, lined up on the counter), drink a glass of txakoli (the local slightly sparkling white wine, poured from height to aerate it), move on. No reservations, no menus, no pretension. Ten euros and forty minutes gets you a better meal than many three-course dinners elsewhere.
The three-Michelin-star restaurants (Arzak, Mugaritz, Akelarre, Martín Berasategui) are booked months in advance and cost €200–€350 per person for tasting menus. I’ve eaten at two of them. Both were extraordinary. Neither was as purely enjoyable as a 9pm Tuesday in the Parte Vieja moving between Bar Txepetxa (anchovies; they do essentially nothing else; they don’t need to) and Gandarias and A Fuego Negro.
Beyond the food — the Spain travel guide’s San Sebastián extras: La Concha beach (a curved bay with calm water that the Economist once called the best urban beach in Europe; in September when the summer crowds have thinned, it’s extraordinary). Mount Urgull (the 123-metre hill above the old town; free; the views over the bay are the best in the city). The San Telmo Museum (Basque history and contemporary art; €6; the best museum in the north of Spain that most Spain travel guides barely mention).
Andalusia: Alhambra, Flamenco, and White Villages
Andalusia is one of the regions this Spain travel guide returns to most — Seville, Granada — but this Spain travel guide needs to note what connects them: it is the most distinct region in the country, with a Moorish architectural heritage (800 years of Arab rule left more physical evidence here than anywhere else in Europe) and a culture — flamenco, sherry, the pauses in conversations — that feels specifically Andalusian rather than broadly Spanish.
The Alhambra — the Spain travel guide centrepiece of Andalusia: Book tickets the moment you decide to go to Granada. Not when you arrive in Spain. Not when you arrive in Andalusia. The moment you decide to go. Tickets sell out 3–4 weeks in advance for the Nasrid Palaces (the interior of the 13th-14th-century palace complex; the most refined Islamic architecture in Europe; the Generalife gardens and fortress are included in the ticket). Entry €19; Nasrid Palaces only accessible with timed entry. Go in the morning slot.
Ronda: A white city built on two sides of a 120-metre gorge connected by the Puente Nuevo (completed 1793) — the most dramatic urban landscape in Andalusia, and the location of the oldest bullring in Spain (1785; now a museum). Two hours from Málaga by bus. Worth it as a day trip or one-night stay.
The White Villages — the Spain travel guide’s Andalusia secret: The route through the sierra between Ronda and Arcos de la Frontera passes through Grazalema, Zahara de la Sierra, and Setenil de las Bodegas (a village where the buildings are literally built under a rock overhang; one of the strangest and most beautiful places in Spain) — rent a car and do this slowly over two days.
The North Coast: Spain’s Secret
Galicia, Asturias, and Cantabria — the green, rainy, Celtic north — are the section of this Spain travel guide most people are surprised by, and almost entirely absent from most Spain travel guide itineraries, which is a consistent failure of imagination.
Santiago de Compostela: The endpoint of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage routes and one of the great cathedral cities of Europe — the baroque façade of the Cathedral of Santiago (free; the pilgrim mass at noon; the Botafumeiro incense burner swinging on a cable across the nave) and the old city (UNESCO World Heritage) are extraordinary. Walk at least two days of the Camino if you have the time; the Camino Inglés from Ferrol (75km) or the Camino Portugués from Tui (120km) are the most accessible for non-committed walkers.
The Asturian coast: Llanes, Cudillero, and the beaches of the Costa Verde — cliff-backed Atlantic beaches with water cold enough to make you sharp and green hills behind them that look nothing like the Spain of tourist brochures. Cidre (Asturian cider, poured from height into a wide glass) and fabada asturiana (a white bean stew with chorizo and morcilla) are the things to eat and drink.
Budget Breakdown
| Category | Budget | Mid-Range | Comfortable |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accommodation | €25 (hostel dorm) | €100 (boutique hotel) | €250+ (design hotel) |
| Food | €20 (menu del día + pintxos) | €60 (café + restaurant) | €150+ |
| Transport | €8 (metro/bus) | €25 (metro + occasional taxi) | €60 (taxi/car hire) |
| Activities | €15 | €40 | €80 |
| Daily Total | €68 (~$74) | €225 (~$244) | €540+ (~$585) |
San Sebastián always runs 25–30% above these averages in any Spain travel guide budget. The Basque Country generally does.
Two Weeks in Spain: What I’d Actually Do
Madrid (3 nights) → overnight train to San Sebastián (2 nights; the Trenhotel leaves Madrid Chamartín at 9:45pm and arrives at 7:30am; €40–€60; book on Renfe; one of the great rail journeys in Europe) → fly or train to Barcelona (3 nights) → fly to Seville (2 nights) → Granada and the Alhambra (2 nights) → fly home from Málaga.
What this Spain travel guide deliberately leaves out of a two-week trip: the Canary Islands (a separate destination requiring a flight; Tenerife for hiking El Teide, Lanzarote for volcanic landscapes; any time of year), the Balearic Islands (Mallorca and Menorca for less-crowded alternatives to Ibiza; best May–June or September), Valencia (the actual home of paella, a fascinating city, and chronically underrated), and the entire north coast (save it for a second trip; it will make you reconsider everything you thought you knew about Spain).
One last Spain travel guide resource worth bookmarking — Spain’s tourism board has reliable practical information on visas, regions, and current entry requirements.