What Are The Best Things To See And Do In Spain?

Spain is one of the most popular countries in the world for travellers, but for far too many people its image is still dominated by package resorts, crowded beaches, all-inclusive hotels and cheap holidays on the Mediterranean coast, and that image seems an extraordinary waste of one of the most fascinating countries in Europe.

Travel beyond the resorts and Spain opens up into an astonishingly diverse country. There are the great Moorish palaces and whitewashed villages of Andalucía, the Modernist architecture and fiercely independent culture of Catalonia, the green mountains and wild Atlantic coastline of the north, the medieval cities of Castilla y León, the pilgrimage routes of Galicia and the volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands. Shaped by Roman, Visigothic, Islamic, Jewish and Christian civilisations and distinct regional cultures that remain very much alive today, even travelling between neighbouring regions can sometimes feel like crossing into a completely different country.

And then there is the sheer amount there is to see and do. You can wander through the Alhambra in Granada, stand beneath the impossible architecture of the Sagrada Família, hike through the Picos de Europa, follow centuries of pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago, watch flamenco in Andalucía or eat your way through pintxos bars in San Sebastián. There are ancient cities, extraordinary landscapes, world-class food and enough history and culture to keep you exploring for a lifetime.

So whether you’re planning your first trip to Spain, returning to explore somewhere new or just looking for an excuse to start planning another adventure, these are some of the best things to see and do in one of my favourite countries in Europe.

Andalucía

If there is one region that captures everything I love about Spain, it is Andalucía. This is the Spain of Moorish palaces and whitewashed hill towns, enormous cathedrals, flamenco, tapas and orange-filled plazas, but also rugged mountains, wild stretches of coastline, wetlands, desert and some of the most beautiful cities in the country.

Centuries of Islamic, Jewish and Christian history have left an extraordinary cultural and architectural legacy here, particularly in Granada, Córdoba and Seville, while Andalucía’s distinctive food, music and famously laid-back approach to life give the region a character entirely its own. You could spend an entire trip exploring Andalucía and barely scratch the surface, but these are some of the places and experiences I wouldn’t miss.

Explore The Alhambra And Generalife, Granada

The Alhambra isn’t just one of Granada’s greatest attractions, it is one of the most extraordinary historic sites anywhere in Spain. Rising above the city against the backdrop of the Sierra Nevada, this vast fortified complex of palaces, courtyards, gardens and defensive walls was developed primarily by the Nasrid dynasty between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, before becoming a Christian royal court after the conquest of Granada in 1492.

The real magic is inside the Nasrid Palaces, where seemingly every wall, arch and ceiling is covered in intricate geometric patterns, carved stucco, Arabic calligraphy and tilework, opening onto courtyards such as the famous Court of the Lions and Court of the Myrtles. Alongside them, the Generalife gardens, Alcazaba fortress and later Palace of Charles V make the Alhambra far more extensive than the single palace many first-time visitors expect.

It is enormously popular and tickets, particularly for the Nasrid Palaces, can sell out well in advance, so this is one attraction where booking ahead really is essential. But don’t rush through simply because you’ve secured a timed palace entry. The Alhambra deserves to be explored properly, and wandering its palaces and gardens while looking out across Granada is easily one of the best experiences in Spain.

Explore The Albaicín, Granada

Sprawling across the hillside opposite the Alhambra, the Albaicín is Granada’s old Moorish quarter and one of the best places in the city to simply wander without much of a plan. Its steep cobbled lanes twist between whitewashed houses, hidden courtyards, little plazas, tapas bars and remnants of its Islamic past, occasionally opening up to spectacular views across the valley towards the Alhambra and Sierra Nevada.

Make your way up to the Mirador de San Nicolás for the classic view of the Alhambra, but don’t treat the Albaicín as nothing more than a route to a viewpoint. Half the pleasure is getting thoroughly lost in the maze of streets, stopping for tapas when the hills inevitably defeat you and discovering whichever little corner you happen to stumble across next.

Explore The Real Alcázar Of Seville

The Real Alcázar is one of Seville’s absolute must-sees, a sprawling royal palace complex where centuries of Islamic and Christian architecture overlap in spectacular fashion. Although its origins stretch back to the Islamic period, much of what you see today was developed under later Christian rulers, most famously the magnificent Mudéjar palace built for Pedro I in the fourteenth century.

The intricate tilework, carved arches and elaborate courtyards are reason enough to visit, but the enormous gardens are every bit as impressive. Filled with fountains, palms, orange trees, pavilions and hidden corners, they turn what could easily be a quick palace visit into somewhere you can happily explore for hours.

See Seville Cathedral And Climb The Giralda

Seville Cathedral dominates the historic centre and is almost absurd in scale. Built largely during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries on the site of the city’s former Almohad mosque, it is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, with an enormous interior filled with chapels, artworks and the monumental tomb traditionally identified as that of Christopher Columbus.

The Giralda alongside it preserves much of the former mosque’s twelfth-century minaret, later transformed into the cathedral’s bell tower. Instead of the usual endless staircase, broad ramps wind their way towards the top, originally designed so the tower could reportedly be ascended on horseback. The reward is one of the best panoramic views across Seville’s rooftops and historic centre.

Discover Medina Azahara

Just outside Córdoba lie the atmospheric ruins of Medina Azahara, the vast tenth-century palace-city built by Abd al-Rahman III as the magnificent new capital of the Caliphate of Córdoba. For a brief period this was one of the great centres of power in Al-Andalus, filled with palaces, government buildings, gardens, mosques and homes before being destroyed during civil conflict barely a century after it was founded.

Today you can wander through the excavated remains and get a remarkable sense of the scale and ambition of the original city, with views stretching across the countryside towards Córdoba. It makes a fascinating companion to the Mezquita-Catedral and reveals another side of Islamic Spain beyond the much better-known monuments of Córdoba and Granada.

Stand Above The Gorge In Ronda

Ronda occupies one of the most spectacular locations of any town in Spain, perched dramatically above the deep El Tajo gorge that splits the historic town in two. The eighteenth-century Puente Nuevo spans the chasm between sheer cliffs, with whitewashed buildings seemingly clinging to the rock on either side.

The famous bridge is the obvious highlight, but Ronda deserves more than a photograph and a quick departure. Wander through the old town, follow the paths to different viewpoints over the gorge and surrounding Serranía de Ronda, and explore the narrow streets, historic buildings and remnants of the town’s Moorish past. The setting alone makes Ronda one of Andalucía’s most memorable places.

Walk The Caminito Del Rey

Clinging to the sheer walls of the Desfiladero de los Gaitanes gorge near Málaga, the Caminito del Rey was once infamous as one of the most dangerous walkways in the world. The original crumbling path has long since been replaced by a modern, secured boardwalk, but walking high above the gorge with cliffs rising around you and the river far below still makes for one of Andalucía’s most spectacular hikes.

The route runs for several kilometres through dramatic limestone scenery, crossing boardwalks, forest trails and a suspension bridge suspended high above the gorge. Numbers are controlled and timed tickets are required, so book ahead rather than simply turning up with your hiking boots and optimism.

Explore Málaga’s Alcazaba

Málaga’s Alcazaba rises above the historic centre on the slopes of Mount Gibralfaro, an eleventh-century Muslim fortress-palace filled with defensive walls, courtyards, gardens and shaded passageways. It may not have the sheer scale of Granada’s Alhambra, but that is part of its charm, and it remains one of the finest surviving examples of Islamic architecture in southern Spain.

The climb through its fortified gateways opens up increasingly impressive views across Málaga and the Mediterranean, while immediately below sits the city’s Roman Theatre, creating another of those wonderful Spanish juxtapositions where completely different periods of history occupy essentially the same patch of ground. Continue uphill to Castillo de Gibralfaro if you want even wider views across the city and coast.

Explore The Sierra Nevada And The Alpujarras

Rising behind Granada, the Sierra Nevada is home to the highest mountains in mainland Spain and some of Andalucía’s most spectacular scenery. In winter you can ski and snowboard within sight of the Mediterranean, while the warmer months open up an enormous network of hiking trails through high mountain landscapes that feel a world away from the heat and crowded streets of Andalucía’s cities.

The southern slopes descend into the Alpujarras, a beautiful region of deep valleys, terraced hillsides and distinctive whitewashed mountain villages. Places such as Pampaneira, Bubión and Capileira make excellent bases for exploring on foot, with trails connecting villages and climbing towards the higher peaks. Granada may be the obvious reason most travellers first come this way, but the mountains beyond it are a reminder of just how quickly the landscape of Andalucía can change.

Discover Cabo De Gata

Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park protects one of the wildest and most distinctive stretches of coastline in Andalucía. Volcanic cliffs tumble into intensely blue Mediterranean water, arid hills surround isolated coves and beaches, and tiny whitewashed settlements sit among a landscape that feels almost desert-like in places.

This isn’t the manicured Mediterranean coastline of sprawling resorts and packed beaches. Explore villages such as San José and Las Negras, hike along the volcanic coast or seek out beaches such as Playa de los Genoveses and Playa de Mónsul, where the lack of large-scale development is precisely the attraction. If the Costa del Sol represents the version of coastal Spain I generally try to escape from, Cabo de Gata is much closer to the version I go looking for.

See The Wildlife Of Doñana National Park

Spreading across marshes, dunes, forests and wetlands near the mouth of the Guadalquivir, Doñana National Park is one of Europe’s most important wildlife areas and another side of Andalucía that many visitors never associate with the region. Huge numbers of migratory birds pass through its wetlands between Europe and Africa, while the wider ecosystem supports everything from deer and wild boar to the critically important population of Iberian lynx.

Access to the protected heart of the national park is controlled, so this isn’t somewhere you can simply wander wherever you like. Guided excursions take visitors into areas otherwise inaccessible to the public, while surrounding trails, visitor centres and wetlands offer further opportunities for walking and birdwatching. After Andalucía’s palaces, cathedrals, beaches and mountain villages, seeing one of Europe’s great wilderness areas makes a pretty spectacular change of scenery.

Experience Flamenco In Seville And Triana

Flamenco is woven deeply into the cultural identity of Andalucía, and Seville is one of the best places in Spain to experience it. You can see superb professional performances in dedicated tablaos across the city, but cross the Guadalquivir into Triana and you are in one of the neighbourhoods historically associated with the development of the art form itself.

Flamenco here is more than an organised performance for visitors. Its roots lie in communities, homes, courtyards, taverns and gatherings where guitar, singing, dancing and rhythmic clapping became part of a living social tradition. Whether you book a formal show or are lucky enough to stumble across something far more spontaneous, experiencing the passion, noise and sheer physicality of flamenco is one of the essential experiences of Andalucía.

Walk Through The Mezquita-Catedral Of Córdoba

Few buildings demonstrate Spain’s layered history as dramatically as Córdoba’s Mezquita-Catedral. The great mosque was begun in the eighth century and expanded repeatedly under successive rulers until it became one of the most important monuments of Al-Andalus. After Córdoba returned to Christian rule in 1236 it was consecrated as a cathedral, with later additions culminating in a Renaissance cathedral nave constructed directly within the former mosque.

The result is extraordinary. Hundreds of columns and distinctive red-and-white arches seem to disappear into the distance before suddenly giving way to an ornate Christian cathedral rising from their midst. Architecturally it shouldn’t work, historically it is enormously complicated, but standing inside this collision of cultures and centuries is easily one of the most memorable experiences in Spain.

Discover Cádiz

Almost completely surrounded by the Atlantic, Cádiz feels different from Andalucía’s great inland cities. Often described as one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Western Europe, its long history stretches back to Phoenician settlement, but much of its appeal today comes simply from wandering through the compact old town between weathered buildings, little plazas, markets and streets that suddenly open onto the sea.

Climb the cathedral tower for views across the city’s distinctive rooftops, explore the Mercado Central, walk the waterfront and finish on La Caleta beach as the sun drops towards the Atlantic. Cádiz has plenty of history, but it is the combination of old city, ocean and laid-back gaditano character that makes it worth coming for.

Explore Andalucía’s White Villages

Scattered across the mountains and hills of Andalucía are the famous pueblos blancos, villages of tightly packed whitewashed houses spilling down hillsides or clinging dramatically to rocky ridges. Zahara de la Sierra, Grazalema and Setenil de las Bodegas are among the standouts, although half the fun is driving through the countryside and discovering smaller villages along the way.

Each has its own character, from the mountain landscapes surrounding Grazalema to the extraordinary houses of Setenil built directly beneath huge overhanging slabs of rock. Hire a car if you can, take your time and turn the journey itself into part of the experience rather than trying to race around collecting villages.

Explore The Tabernas Desert

Europe isn’t exactly known for its deserts, which makes the barren landscape around Tabernas in Almería one of the more unexpected sights in Spain. Eroded ravines, dry riverbeds and dusty mountains stretch across a landscape shaped by an exceptionally arid climate, looking far more like somewhere in North Africa or the American West than southern Europe.

That resemblance didn’t go unnoticed by filmmakers. Tabernas became one of Europe’s great outdoor film sets, particularly during the 1960s and 1970s, when Sergio Leone’s spaghetti westerns and numerous other productions transformed the landscape into everything from Mexico to the Wild West. Several old western sets survive as tourist attractions, but you don’t need staged gunfights and saloons to appreciate the place. Get out into the surrounding landscape on one of the walking routes and the desert itself is easily the star of the show.

See The Ancient Dolmens Of Antequera

Long before the Alhambra, the Romans or even the civilisations we normally associate with ancient Spain, people were building enormous stone monuments around what is now Antequera. The Dolmens of Menga and Viera and the nearby Tholos of El Romeral date back thousands of years and together form one of Europe’s most important prehistoric megalithic complexes.

Menga is the real showstopper. Huge stone slabs weighing many tonnes form an enormous chamber beneath an earthen mound, and standing inside something constructed more than five thousand years ago is difficult not to be impressed by. Combined with the dramatic natural formations of La Peña de los Enamorados and El Torcal that form part of the wider UNESCO-listed site, Antequera adds a prehistoric chapter to Andalucía’s history that is very easy to overlook among all those Moorish palaces and Gothic cathedrals.

Extremadura

Extremadura doesn’t attract anything like the visitor numbers of neighbouring Andalucía, but that certainly isn’t because it lacks things worth seeing. Stretching towards the Portuguese border, this vast region of plains, mountains and historic towns contains some of the finest Roman remains in Spain, beautifully preserved medieval cities and huge areas of countryside where wildlife still thrives.

Explore Roman Mérida

If you have even the slightest interest in Roman history, Mérida is one of the best places you can visit in Spain. Founded as Augusta Emerita in 25 BCE for veteran soldiers of the Roman army, it became the capital of the province of Lusitania and developed into one of the most important cities in Roman Iberia.

The spectacular Roman Theatre is the obvious highlight and is still used for performances today, but Mérida isn’t a one-monument city. The neighbouring amphitheatre, Temple of Diana, remarkably preserved Roman bridge, aqueducts, circus and archaeological remains are scattered throughout the modern city, so you constantly find yourself stumbling across another piece of ancient Rome.

Give yourself time for the National Museum of Roman Art too. Mérida’s monuments are impressive individually, but taken together they make the city feel less like somewhere containing a few Roman ruins and more like a modern Spanish city built directly through the remains of an ancient one.

Wander Through Medieval Cáceres

Cáceres has one of the most beautifully preserved historic centres in Spain, a maze of cobbled lanes, fortified houses, towers, palaces and little plazas enclosed within medieval walls. Roman, Islamic, Gothic and Renaissance influences have all left their mark, but the remarkable thing is how intact the old city feels once you step through its gateways.

There isn’t really one monument you need to race towards. The attraction is the ensemble itself. Wander through the Arco de la Estrella into the old town, explore the streets around Plaza de Santa María and Plaza de San Jorge and climb one of the towers for views across the jumble of stone rooftops. After dark, when the day visitors disappear and the old streets are illuminated, Cáceres becomes even more atmospheric.

Explore Trujillo

Trujillo’s enormous Plaza Mayor is one of those places that makes you stop almost as soon as you arrive. Renaissance palaces and arcaded buildings surround the square beneath the imposing silhouette of the hilltop castle, while an equestrian statue of Francisco Pizarro sits rather prominently in the middle of it all.

That connection with the conquistadors runs throughout the town. Both Pizarro and Francisco de Orellana were born in Trujillo, and wealth brought back from the Americas helped fund many of the grand houses and palaces that survive today. That history is obviously inseparable from conquest, violence and colonialism, but ignoring it would make understanding the town impossible.

Climb through the steep streets of the old town towards the medieval castle for views over Trujillo’s rooftops and the vast Extremaduran plains beyond. It is much smaller than Mérida or Cáceres, but between that magnificent central square, the old town and the castle above it, Trujillo easily earns its place here.

Visit The Royal Monastery Of Guadalupe

Tucked into the hills of eastern Extremadura, the small town of Guadalupe grew around one of Spain’s most important monasteries. The Royal Monastery of Santa María de Guadalupe was founded in the fourteenth century and developed over the centuries into an extraordinary mixture of Gothic, Mudéjar, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical architecture.

The monastery became closely connected with the Catholic Monarchs and Spain’s voyages to the Americas, but you don’t need to be particularly interested in religious history to appreciate the building itself. Its Mudéjar cloister is beautiful, the church and sacristy are packed with art and decoration, and the monastery rising above the narrow streets of tiny Guadalupe makes the journey into the Extremaduran countryside worthwhile in its own right.

See The Wildlife Of Monfragüe National Park

Monfragüe protects a rugged landscape of Mediterranean forest, rocky cliffs and the Tagus and Tiétar river valleys, and is one of the best places in Spain for watching birds of prey. Huge Eurasian black vultures nest here alongside griffon vultures, Spanish imperial eagles, black storks and numerous other species, often circling almost effortlessly above the cliffs.

Head for the Salto del Gitano viewpoint, where vultures soar around the enormous rock face across the river, and climb to Monfragüe Castle for sweeping views over the park. Even if you couldn’t tell a griffon vulture from a particularly ambitious pigeon, the landscape alone makes Monfragüe worth exploring, but bring binoculars and you’ll get considerably more out of it.

Catalonia

Catalonia has one of the strongest and most distinctive regional identities in Spain, with its own language, traditions and cuisine, and landscapes that stretch from the Mediterranean coves of the Costa Brava to the high Pyrenees. Barcelona understandably gets most of the attention, and its extraordinary Modernist architecture alone could fill this list, but travel beyond the city and there are medieval towns, Roman ruins, mountains, beaches and some of the most spectacular scenery in northern Spain.

Stand Beneath The Sagrada Família

Barcelona has no shortage of extraordinary architecture, but nothing else comes close to Antoni Gaudí’s Basílica de la Sagrada Família. Construction began in 1882 and, after more than a century of work, the basilica is now approaching the final stages of its extraordinary transformation of Barcelona’s skyline. Its enormous sculpted façades and towers are unlike anything else in the city, blending religious symbolism with the organic forms that define so much of Gaudí’s work.

As impressive as the exterior is, the interior is where the Sagrada Família really becomes something special. Vast branching columns rise like trees towards the ceiling while coloured light pours through stained-glass windows and shifts across the stone throughout the day. It is one of those incredibly rare attractions that is even more impressive in person than all the photographs suggest.

Explore Park Güell

Gaudí’s imagination runs wild again at Park Güell, where colourful mosaics, twisting stonework and architecture inspired by natural forms spread across a hillside overlooking Barcelona. Originally conceived as an ambitious residential development, the project never succeeded as intended, but what remains became one of the city’s most distinctive public spaces.

The famous mosaic-covered terrace and serpentine bench get most of the photographs, along with the colourful dragon staircase, but the strange stone colonnades, viaducts and gardens are just as much a part of the experience. Some areas of the wider park remain freely accessible, while the Monumental Zone containing most of Gaudí’s major works requires a timed ticket, so book ahead if you want to see the parts you’ve actually come for.

See Casa Batlló And La Pedrera

The Sagrada Família may be Gaudí’s masterpiece, but two of his most extraordinary residential buildings sit just a short walk apart on Passeig de Gràcia. Casa Batlló looks almost alive, its rippling façade covered in colourful mosaics, curved balconies and bone-like columns beneath a roof often compared to the scales of a dragon. La Pedrera, officially Casa Milà, is completely different but no less distinctive, with an undulating stone exterior and wrought-iron balconies that seem to flow around the building.

Both can be explored inside, where Gaudí’s obsession with natural forms continues through staircases, courtyards, windows, furniture and almost every architectural detail. If you only have time for one, choose whichever appeals to you most, but at the very least walk along Passeig de Gràcia and see both façades. They are wonderful examples of why Barcelona can sometimes feel less like a city containing Gaudí’s architecture and more like a city he was allowed to experiment on.

Wander Through Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter

Barcelona’s Barri Gòtic is a dense maze of narrow streets, little squares, medieval buildings and remnants of the Roman city that once stood here. Barcelona Cathedral dominates the neighbourhood, but some of the best moments come from ignoring any particular route and disappearing down whichever alley looks interesting.

Look for the surviving Roman walls and columns of the Temple of Augustus, wander through Plaça del Rei and Plaça Sant Felip Neri, and stop regularly for coffee, food or simply to watch the neighbourhood carry on around you. Some streets can become extremely busy, particularly around La Rambla, but wander a few turns away from the main pedestrian routes and the Gothic Quarter still rewards aimless exploration.

Visit Montserrat

Rising abruptly from the landscape northwest of Barcelona, the serrated mountains of Montserrat look almost unreal from a distance, with enormous rounded pillars of rock towering above the surrounding countryside. Perched among them is the Benedictine monastery of Santa Maria de Montserrat, home to the revered Black Madonna and one of Catalonia’s most important religious sites.

The monastery is worth seeing, but don’t come all this way and immediately head back to Barcelona. Funiculars and hiking trails climb higher into the mountains, opening up spectacular views across the bizarre rock formations and, on clear days, far across Catalonia. Montserrat works perfectly as a day trip from Barcelona, but the landscape is impressive enough to deserve far more attention than simply treating it as an excursion to a monastery.

Explore Medieval Girona

Girona is one of those cities that seems designed for aimless wandering. Its beautifully preserved old quarter climbs above the River Onyar in a tangle of stone stairways, narrow lanes, hidden courtyards and medieval buildings, with the enormous Cathedral of Girona looming over it all from the top of an equally enormous staircase.

Walk along the medieval city walls for views across the rooftops, explore the atmospheric Jewish Quarter and cross the river to see the colourful houses lining the Onyar. Girona is compact enough to explore easily on foot and makes an excellent day trip from Barcelona, but there is more than enough here to justify staying longer and enjoying the city after the day-trippers have disappeared.

Discover The Costa Brava

Stretching north from Barcelona towards the French border, the Costa Brava is a world away from the sprawling package resorts that dominate the popular image of Spain’s Mediterranean coast. Rugged cliffs drop into clear blue water, pine forests run almost to the shoreline and old fishing villages sit between secluded coves and long stretches of beach.

Places such as Cadaqués, Begur, Calella de Palafrugell and Tossa de Mar are excellent bases for exploring, but one of the best ways to experience the coast is on foot along sections of the Camí de Ronda, the old coastal paths that wind between beaches, headlands and villages. Some stretches are easy seaside walks while others are much more demanding, but slowing down and exploring the coastline on foot reveals exactly why the Costa Brava deserves its reputation.

Enter Salvador Dalí’s World In Figueres

Calling the Dalí Theatre-Museum in Figueres an art gallery doesn’t really do it justice. Designed by Salvador Dalí himself around the ruins of the town’s former theatre, the entire building is effectively one enormous Surrealist artwork, topped by giant eggs and filled with paintings, sculptures, installations, optical illusions and increasingly bizarre rooms.

Dalí deliberately created the museum as an immersive experience rather than a conventional chronological collection, so don’t expect to quietly shuffle past paintings hanging neatly on white walls. From Mae West’s face assembled out of furniture to the enormous geodesic dome above the central courtyard, the whole place feels like wandering around inside Dalí’s imagination. He is even buried in a crypt beneath the museum floor, because apparently merely designing the place wasn’t quite Dalí enough.

Explore Roman Tarragona

Modern Tarragona was once Tarraco, the capital of Roman Hispania Citerior and one of the most important cities in Roman Iberia, and substantial pieces of that ancient city are still scattered throughout the modern one. The most spectacular is the Roman amphitheatre, built into the hillside immediately beside the Mediterranean, where gladiatorial contests once took place with a considerably better sea view than anyone involved was probably in a position to appreciate.

The amphitheatre is only part of the story. Roman walls, the remains of the provincial forum and circus survive throughout the historic centre, while the enormous Les Ferreres Aqueduct sits just outside the city. Tarragona also has a handsome medieval old town, cathedral and beaches, making it somewhere worth exploring in its own right rather than simply ticking off the Roman ruins and heading straight back to Barcelona.

Hike Through Aigüestortes National Park

High in the Catalan Pyrenees, Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici National Park swaps Barcelona’s architecture and the Mediterranean coast for granite peaks, forests, waterfalls and hundreds of mountain lakes. It is Catalonia’s only national park and one of the best places in the region to pull on a pair of boots and disappear into the mountains.

Trails range from relatively gentle walks around lakes and valleys to demanding routes high into the Pyrenees, with the distinctive twin peaks of Els Encantats rising above Estany de Sant Maurici providing one of the park’s classic views. After Gaudí, medieval cities and Roman ruins, ending Catalonia surrounded by mountains, pine forests and glacial lakes feels like an appropriate reminder of just how varied this region really is.

Navarra And La Rioja

Navarra and neighbouring La Rioja offer another dramatic change of scenery, from the strange semi-desert landscapes of Bardenas Reales to rolling vineyards responsible for some of Spain’s most famous wines. Neither region needs a huge list of attractions here; these two experiences alone are worth making the journey for.

Explore The Bardenas Reales

The Bardenas Reales looks like somebody dropped a piece of the American Southwest into northern Spain. Centuries of erosion have carved this vast semi-desert landscape into cliffs, ravines, plateaus and bizarre freestanding rock formations, surrounded by an otherwise surprisingly green part of the country.

The unmistakable Castildetierra rock formation is the famous landmark, but the real attraction is the landscape itself. A network of marked routes allows you to explore sections of the reserve on foot, bicycle or by car, passing through increasingly strange badlands that seem completely out of place compared with almost anywhere else in northern Spain. Go early or late in the day if you can, both for the light and to avoid the worst of the summer heat.

Discover Rioja Wine Country

La Rioja is synonymous with wine, and travelling through the region means passing seemingly endless vineyards, hilltop villages and wineries ranging from centuries-old underground cellars to extraordinary pieces of modern architecture. Haro is one of the traditional centres of Rioja production, while Logroño combines the region’s wine culture with one of northern Spain’s great streets for eating and drinking, Calle Laurel.

You don’t need to be a wine expert to enjoy exploring the region. Visit a bodega to see how Rioja is produced and aged, sample a few glasses at source and spend the rest of the day working your way through local food and wine. Just preferably don’t volunteer to be the designated driver after enthusiastically embracing the tasting part.

Madrid And Central Spain

Madrid sits right at the heart of Spain, both geographically and culturally, and has more than enough world-class museums, royal architecture, historic neighbourhoods, markets and restaurants to keep you occupied for days. It may lack the immediately recognisable regional identity of Andalucía or Catalonia, but what it does have is an infectious energy and a habit of staying awake considerably later than you intended to.

Beyond the capital, central Spain opens out into mountains, royal palaces, monasteries and historic towns that make some of the easiest and most rewarding trips from Madrid.

See The Masterpieces Of The Prado

The Museo Nacional del Prado is one of the great art museums of the world, with an extraordinary collection built around centuries of Spanish royal patronage. Velázquez, Goya and El Greco are the obvious heavyweights, alongside major works by Titian, Rubens, Bosch and countless others.

Even if you aren’t normally someone who spends entire days wandering around art galleries, the Prado deserves a few hours. Velázquez’s Las Meninas, Bosch’s wonderfully bizarre Garden of Earthly Delights and Goya’s haunting Black Paintings are worth seeking out individually, but trying to see everything in a single visit is a quick route to cultural exhaustion. Pick the collections that interest you most and leave yourself an excuse to come back.

Explore Madrid’s Royal Palace

Madrid’s Palacio Real is one of the largest royal palaces in Europe, built during the eighteenth century on the site of the old Alcázar after it was destroyed by fire. Although it remains the official residence of the Spanish monarch, the royal family doesn’t actually live here, leaving much of the enormous complex open for visitors and ceremonial use.

Inside, grand staircases lead through lavish state rooms filled with tapestries, frescoes, chandeliers, paintings and enough gilding to make subtlety seem like a personal insult. The Throne Room and Royal Armoury are highlights, but don’t miss the views towards the Casa de Campo and the neighbouring Almudena Cathedral before heading back into the streets of central Madrid.

Relax In El Retiro

After Madrid’s palaces and museums, El Retiro is where the city goes to breathe. Once part of a royal estate, this enormous park in the centre of Madrid is filled with tree-lined avenues, gardens, fountains, cafés and monuments, and is just as popular with Madrileños running, walking dogs, meeting friends or doing absolutely nothing as it is with visitors.

Hire a rowing boat on the lake beneath the Monument to Alfonso XII, wander through the gardens and look inside the beautiful glass Palacio de Cristal, originally built in the nineteenth century and now used for temporary exhibitions. On a warm afternoon, there are few better places in Madrid to stop sightseeing for a while and simply enjoy being in the city.

Watch The Sunset At The Templo De Debod

An ancient Egyptian temple is probably one of the last things you expect to find in the middle of Madrid, but the Templo de Debod has stood in Parque de la Montaña since the 1970s. Originally constructed in southern Egypt in the second century BCE and later expanded under the Ptolemies and Romans, the temple was gifted to Spain by Egypt after Spanish assistance in the international campaign to save the monuments threatened by the construction of the Aswan High Dam.

The temple itself is fascinating, but its position overlooking western Madrid has also made it one of the city’s favourite sunset spots. Come towards the end of the day, wander around the monument and stay as the sun drops behind the distant hills and the sky changes above the temple’s ancient stone gateways.

Visit El Escorial

About an hour from Madrid, the enormous Royal Site of San Lorenzo de El Escorial was built for Philip II in the sixteenth century as a royal palace, monastery, basilica, library and dynastic pantheon all rolled into one suitably monumental complex. Its austere granite exterior gives little indication of just how much is hidden inside.

The magnificent library is one of the highlights, with frescoed ceilings hanging above shelves of historic manuscripts and books, alongside royal apartments, artworks, the basilica and the Pantheon of the Kings, where many of Spain’s monarchs are buried. El Escorial is vast, imposing and occasionally overwhelming, but for understanding the power and ambition of Spain at the height of its empire, few places make the point quite so effectively.

Asturias And Cantabria

Green, mountainous and facing the wild Atlantic rather than the Mediterranean, Asturias and Cantabria feel a very long way from the Spain of sun-baked plazas and southern beaches. This is a landscape of dramatic limestone mountains, deep valleys, rugged coastline and prehistoric caves, with some of the finest hiking and natural scenery anywhere in the country.

Hike The Picos De Europa

The Picos de Europa rise dramatically across Asturias, Cantabria and neighbouring Castilla y León, a spectacular landscape of jagged limestone peaks, deep gorges and impossibly green valleys. This was Spain’s first national park, and for anyone who loves mountains it is easily one of the country’s great natural highlights.

There are routes for almost every level of ambition, from relatively gentle valley walks to serious mountain hikes. The famous Ruta del Cares follows a spectacular path carved into the side of a gorge between Poncebos and Caín, while the Fuente Dé cable car provides a considerably less exhausting route into the high mountains. However you explore them, the Picos are the kind of landscape that completely dismantles the stereotype of Spain as an endless succession of hot beaches and dry Mediterranean countryside.

See The Lakes Of Covadonga

High in the Asturian section of the Picos de Europa, the glacial Lakes of Covadonga sit among rolling green mountains where cattle graze beneath limestone peaks. Lagos Enol and Ercina are the two principal lakes, connected by walking trails through scenery that can switch from brilliant sunshine to thick mountain mist with remarkable speed.

Combine the lakes with the Sanctuary of Covadonga lower down the mountain, an important site in Spanish history and identity associated with the eighth-century Battle of Covadonga and the beginnings of the Christian kingdom of Asturias. Vehicle access to the lakes is restricted during busy periods, with shuttle buses operating from lower down the valley, so check the current arrangements before setting off.

Discover The Prehistoric Art Of Altamira

Some of the most extraordinary art in Spain was created thousands of years before Spain even existed. The Cave of Altamira contains remarkable Upper Palaeolithic paintings and engravings, including its famous polychrome bison, created by prehistoric people more than 14,000 years ago.

Protecting those fragile paintings means access to the original cave is extremely restricted, so most visitors explore the extraordinarily detailed replica, the Neocave, at the National Museum and Research Centre of Altamira. A replica may sound disappointing until you understand what is being protected, but the reconstruction allows you to appreciate the paintings in something close to their original context without contributing to their destruction. Seeing the sophistication of artwork created so deep into prehistory is genuinely humbling.

Wander Through Santillana Del Mar

Just a few kilometres from Altamira, Santillana del Mar is one of the best-preserved medieval towns in northern Spain. Its cobbled streets wind between honey-coloured stone houses, little squares and centuries-old mansions, culminating in the beautiful Romanesque Collegiate Church of Santa Juliana at the heart of the old town.

Despite its name, Santillana isn’t actually beside the sea, and the old joke that it is the town of three lies claims it is neither holy, flat nor coastal. What it definitely is, however, is extremely pretty. The historic centre is largely pedestrianised and compact enough to explore slowly, making it an easy addition to a visit to nearby Altamira rather than somewhere you need to race around ticking off individual sights.

Castilla y León

Castilla y León stretches across a vast swathe of Spain’s northern plateau, a region of medieval cities, castles, Roman remains, monumental cathedrals and landscapes that played a central role in the formation of the Spanish kingdoms. Some of Spain’s most impressive historic sights are scattered across this enormous region, often in cities compact enough to explore almost entirely on foot.

See Segovia’s Roman Aqueduct And Alcázar

Segovia manages to fit two of Spain’s most spectacular landmarks into one relatively small city. The first is impossible to miss: an enormous Roman aqueduct marches straight into the centre on two tiers of granite arches, constructed around the first or second century CE without mortar and still standing almost two thousand years later.

Follow the streets of the old city away from the aqueduct and you eventually reach the Alcázar, perched dramatically on a rocky outcrop where two rivers meet. With its pointed towers, deep moat and almost ridiculously storybook silhouette, it looks exactly like the castle every child imagines a castle should look like. Inside are decorated halls, armour and royal chambers, while climbing the Tower of Juan II gives you sweeping views across Segovia and the surrounding countryside.

Between the two sits an old city filled with medieval streets, Romanesque churches and Segovia’s enormous late-Gothic cathedral, so don’t make the mistake of treating the aqueduct and Alcázar as two isolated photo stops.

Walk The Medieval Walls Of Ávila

Ávila is surrounded by one of the most complete and spectacular medieval defensive walls in Europe. Built largely during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the fortifications stretch for more than two kilometres around the old city, punctuated by dozens of semicircular towers and monumental gateways.

You can walk substantial sections along the top of the walls, looking inward across Ávila’s churches and rooftops and outward towards the Castilian countryside. The cathedral is incorporated directly into the defensive system, its apse effectively forming another fortified tower, while the old city inside is closely associated with Saint Teresa of Ávila. The walls are impressive from above, but make sure you see them from outside after dark too, when the illuminated fortifications make the entire city look like one enormous medieval fortress.

Explore Salamanca

Salamanca is one of Spain’s great university cities, centred around an extraordinary historic core built largely from warm golden sandstone that seems to glow as the light changes towards evening. Its university was founded in the early thirteenth century, making it one of the oldest in Europe, and generations of students still give the city an energy that stops all that history feeling remotely museum-like.

Start in the magnificent Plaza Mayor, wander through the university quarter and look for the tiny frog hidden among the elaborate carvings of the university’s Plateresque façade, a search that has become something of a Salamanca tradition. The city also has not one but two adjoining cathedrals, conveniently known as the Old and New Cathedrals, where centuries of architectural styles sit almost on top of one another.

Salamanca is beautiful during the day, but stay into the evening if you can. When the sandstone buildings are illuminated and the Plaza Mayor fills with people heading out for dinner and drinks, it becomes very easy to understand why this is one of my favourite historic cities in Spain.

See Burgos Cathedral

Burgos Cathedral is one of the great Gothic cathedrals of Spain, an enormous thirteenth-century building whose elaborate spires rise above the old city and can be seen from streets away. Construction continued and evolved over several centuries, leaving an extraordinary collection of Gothic architecture, sculpture, chapels and later additions behind its already spectacular façade.

Inside you’ll find the magnificent star-shaped dome above the crossing, the elaborate Golden Staircase and the tomb of Rodrigo Díaz de Vivar, better known as El Cid, one of the most famous and heavily mythologised figures of medieval Spain. Burgos is also an important stop on the Camino de Santiago, so the streets around the cathedral still fill with pilgrims following the same route west towards Santiago.

See The Stained Glass Of León Cathedral

If Burgos impresses through scale and elaborate stonework, León Cathedral is all about light. Built primarily during the thirteenth century in the French Gothic style, its relatively slender walls hold an extraordinary collection of medieval stained glass, with vast windows flooding the interior with shifting colour.

There are around 1,800 square metres of stained glass spanning centuries, much of it medieval, and when sunlight pours through the windows the entire character of the cathedral changes. León has plenty more to explore, including Roman remains, Gaudí’s Casa Botines and an excellent old quarter, but the cathedral alone is reason enough to put the city on this list.

Walk Through Las Médulas

The strange red cliffs and pinnacles of Las Médulas look natural until you discover that the entire landscape was effectively engineered by the Romans. This was the largest open-cast gold mine in the Roman Empire, where enormous quantities of water were channelled through tunnels inside the mountains to collapse them from within and expose the gold-bearing earth.

Nearly two thousand years later, chestnut forests have grown between the shattered red rock formations, creating one of the most unusual landscapes in Spain. Walk the trails through the former mining area and climb to the Orellán viewpoint for the classic panorama across the scarred hills. It is beautiful now, but understanding that you’re looking at the remains of an industrial operation on an almost unimaginable ancient scale makes it considerably more fascinating.

Valencia And Murcia

Running along Spain’s southeastern Mediterranean coast, Valencia and Murcia combine historic cities, fertile agricultural landscapes, wetlands and some of the country’s most distinctive food traditions. Valencia itself manages to place medieval towers and Gothic trading halls within walking distance of some of the most futuristic architecture in Spain, while further south ancient palm groves and Roman ruins add yet more variety.

Explore Valencia’s City Of Arts And Sciences

The City of Arts and Sciences looks like somebody dropped a collection of enormous spaceships into the old bed of the River Turia. Designed principally by Valencian architect Santiago Calatrava, alongside Félix Candela, this sprawling complex of brilliant white curves, sweeping arches and reflective pools has become the modern architectural symbol of Valencia.

The complex contains the interactive Science Museum, Hemisfèric planetarium and IMAX cinema, Palau de les Arts opera house and Oceanogràfic, one of Europe’s largest aquariums, among several other spaces. You can buy tickets for whichever attractions interest you, but simply walking around the buildings and their surrounding pools is worth doing even if you never set foot inside any of them.

Explore Valencia’s Historic Centre And La Lonja De La Seda

Valencia’s futuristic architecture gets a lot of attention, but the historic centre is where much of the city’s character lies. Wander through the narrow streets around the cathedral, climb the medieval Torres de Serranos and explore the enormous Mercat Central before stepping into one of Valencia’s greatest historic buildings, La Lonja de la Seda.

Built during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries when Valencia was one of the Mediterranean’s great commercial centres, this former silk exchange is a masterpiece of late Gothic architecture. Its magnificent main trading hall is supported by soaring twisted columns that spread towards the vaulted ceiling like stone palm trees, while the surrounding courtyard and chambers offer a glimpse of just how wealthy and powerful Valencia had become.

Eat Proper Paella In Valencia

Paella may have become shorthand for Spanish food around the world, but it is specifically Valencian, and eating it here is very different from ordering one of the lurid yellow pans of miscellaneous seafood sold to tourists across half of Spain.

Traditional paella valenciana is typically made with rice, chicken, rabbit, green beans and garrofó, a local variety of large white bean, cooked in a wide shallow pan so the rice absorbs the stock and develops the prized caramelised socarrat on the bottom. Seafood versions absolutely exist in Valencian cooking too, but throwing chicken, chorizo, prawns and anything else within reach into yellow rice does not magically make something authentic paella.

For the full experience, head towards the rice-growing areas around La Albufera and villages such as El Palmar, where paella developed from the rural food traditions surrounding the lagoon. It is traditionally a lunchtime dish, preferably shared, and one of those rare occasions where eating something in the place it actually comes from genuinely changes your understanding of it.

Explore La Albufera

Just south of Valencia, La Albufera feels remarkably far removed from the city despite being less than an hour away. This vast freshwater lagoon and surrounding wetlands are separated from the Mediterranean by a narrow strip of dunes and pine forest, creating an important habitat for waterbirds amid the rice fields that have shaped the landscape and local cuisine for centuries.

Take one of the traditional wooden boats out across the lagoon, walk or cycle through the surrounding countryside and stay for sunset, when the water can turn almost mirror-like beneath the changing sky. The village of El Palmar makes a natural stop for lunch and ties this landscape directly into Valencia’s rice culture; this is the countryside that gave rise to paella, not simply a pretty wetland sitting conveniently outside the city.

Walk Through Elche’s Palm Groves

Elche is home to an extraordinary landscape of date palms, with hundreds of individual groves woven through and around the modern city. The Palmeral was developed and expanded under Islamic rule using sophisticated irrigation techniques, although date palms had been cultivated in the area much earlier, and today it forms the largest palm grove landscape of its kind in Europe.

The result doesn’t feel like a conventional park. Paths and streets weave between thousands of palms, gardens and irrigation channels, with places such as the Huerto del Cura offering a more cultivated introduction to the landscape. Wandering beneath all those palms feels surprisingly exotic for mainland Spain and is a fascinating surviving example of how agriculture, water management and urban life have shaped one another here for centuries.

Explore Roman Cartagena

Cartagena has one of the deepest natural harbours on Spain’s Mediterranean coast, a location that has made it strategically important for well over two thousand years. Founded by the Carthaginians in the third century BCE and captured by Rome soon afterwards, ancient Carthago Nova became one of the most important Roman cities in Hispania.

Its spectacular Roman Theatre was hidden beneath later buildings for centuries before being rediscovered in 1988, and today it sits dramatically among the streets of the modern city. The theatre and excellent museum are the obvious highlights, but Roman remains appear throughout Cartagena alongside Punic walls, military fortifications and layers of later history. Few places in Spain make it quite so easy to walk through more than two millennia of Mediterranean history in the space of an afternoon.

Galicia

Tucked into Spain’s northwestern corner, Galicia feels very different from the Mediterranean Spain many travellers know best. Green hills roll towards a rugged Atlantic coastline, Galician has equal official status alongside Spanish, seafood dominates local menus and centuries of Celtic, Roman and Christian history have given the region a cultural identity entirely its own.

It is also the end point of one of the world’s great pilgrimage routes, but there is far more to Galicia than Santiago alone. Wild islands, dramatic river valleys, Roman monuments and some of the best seafood in Spain make this a region worth exploring long after you’ve taken off the hiking boots.

Walk The Camino De Santiago

The Camino de Santiago isn’t a single trail but a network of pilgrimage routes stretching across Spain and beyond, all converging on Santiago de Compostela. Pilgrims have been walking these routes for more than a thousand years, traditionally to reach the supposed tomb of Saint James the Apostle, although modern walkers undertake the journey for every conceivable mixture of religious, cultural, personal and occasionally just stubborn reasons.

The Camino Francés across northern Spain is the most famous route, but alternatives such as the Camino Portugués, Camino del Norte and Camino Primitivo offer very different journeys. You don’t have to walk hundreds of kilometres either; many people tackle individual stages or shorter sections. Whatever route you choose, days spent walking between villages, sharing meals and hostels with other pilgrims and watching the distance to Santiago slowly disappear make the Camino far more than simply another long-distance hike.

Reach Santiago De Compostela

After weeks on the Camino, walking into the vast Praza do Obradoiro and seeing Santiago Cathedral must be an extraordinary moment, but you certainly don’t have to arrive on foot to appreciate the city. Santiago’s beautifully preserved old town is a maze of granite streets, arcaded squares, churches, monasteries, cafés and bars that have welcomed travellers and pilgrims for centuries.

The cathedral dominates everything, traditionally believed to contain the tomb of Saint James and marking the spiritual end of the Camino. Go inside, explore the surrounding streets and stay into the evening when the day-trippers thin out and the old stone squares take on an entirely different atmosphere. Santiago is famous because of the pilgrimage, but it is easily one of Spain’s great historic cities in its own right.

Escape To The Cíes Islands

Just off Galicia’s Atlantic coast, the Cíes Islands protect a landscape of white-sand beaches, clear turquoise water, pine-covered hills and rugged cliffs that looks almost suspiciously tropical until you put a foot into the Atlantic and remember exactly where you are.

Ferries run seasonally from Vigo and other nearby ports, with visitor numbers controlled to protect the islands as part of the Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park. Playa de Rodas is the famous beach, a beautiful sweep of sand linking two of the islands, but hiking trails climb away from the crowds towards lighthouses and viewpoints over the Atlantic. Come for the beaches, but make time to explore beyond them; the islands are at their best when you see just how wild the coastline becomes away from the ferry dock.

See The Tower Of Hercules

Standing on a rocky headland outside A Coruña, the Tower of Hercules is the oldest surviving Roman lighthouse still in use anywhere in the world. Built in the late first century CE to guide ships approaching the northwestern edge of the Roman Empire, it has been altered and restored over the centuries but still contains the original Roman structure within its later exterior.

You can climb the interior to the top for sweeping views across the Atlantic and A Coruña’s coastline, but the surrounding headland is just as much a part of the visit. Walking trails wind through the grassy landscape around sculptures, rocky coves and viewpoints over an ocean that can switch from beautifully calm to violently Atlantic with very little warning. Nearly two thousand years after Roman sailors looked for this tower from the sea, it is still doing the same job.

Explore The Ribeira Sacra

The rivers Sil and Miño cut through deep green valleys in inland Galicia, creating the spectacular landscape of the Ribeira Sacra. Vineyards cling to slopes so steep that much of the work still has to be done by hand, producing wines from terraces first developed centuries ago and giving rise to the wonderfully dramatic description of local viticulture as heroic.

Drive between viewpoints above the Sil Canyon, visit some of the region’s wineries or take a boat along the river to see the terraces rising almost vertically from the water. Hidden among the forests and vineyards are also an extraordinary concentration of medieval monasteries and Romanesque churches, the religious heritage that gave the Ribeira Sacra its name.

Galicia’s coast gets much of the attention, but this combination of dramatic river scenery, ancient monasteries and improbably steep vineyards makes the Ribeira Sacra one of the most distinctive landscapes in northern Spain.

Aragón

Stretching from the plains of the Ebro Valley to the high Pyrenees, Aragón is one of those regions that demonstrates just how quickly Spain can change as you travel inland. Zaragoza brings together Roman, Islamic, Mudéjar and Christian history, while further north medieval castles and villages give way to some of the most dramatic mountain scenery in the country.

See Zaragoza’s Basílica Del Pilar

The enormous Basílica de Nuestra Señora del Pilar dominates Zaragoza’s riverfront, its towers and colourful tiled domes rising above the Ebro and creating one of the most recognisable skylines in Spain. According to Catholic tradition, the Virgin Mary appeared here to Saint James while standing on a pillar, making the site an important place of pilgrimage for centuries.

Inside, the scale is immense, but look beyond the religious significance and you’ll also find frescoes painted by Francisco de Goya, who was born in Aragón and spent part of his early career in Zaragoza. For one of the best views, climb the basilica’s tower and look back across the domes, river and rooftops of the city.

Hike Ordesa Y Monte Perdido

Deep in the Pyrenees, Ordesa y Monte Perdido National Park is one of Spain’s great mountain landscapes, where enormous limestone cliffs rise above glacial valleys, waterfalls tumble through forests and the 3,355-metre summit of Monte Perdido towers over the surrounding peaks.

The Ordesa Valley is the classic introduction, with trails following the Río Arazas past waterfalls and beech forests towards the spectacular Circo de Soaso. Experienced hikers can head much higher into the mountains, but you don’t need to tackle a major summit to appreciate the park. Even the lower routes offer the kind of huge Pyrenean scenery that makes stopping every few minutes to stare at another cliff entirely reasonable.

Explore Albarracín

Wrapped around a rocky hillside above the Guadalaviar River, Albarracín is a maze of narrow lanes, crooked houses, timber balconies and pinkish stone buildings enclosed by medieval walls that climb dramatically over the ridge above the town.

The pleasure here is simply exploring. Wander through the old streets, climb towards the castle and cathedral and follow the walls for views over Albarracín and the surrounding mountains. It is frequently described as one of the most beautiful villages in Spain, which is the sort of label that gets thrown around far too easily, but in this case it has a pretty convincing argument.

Explore Loarre Castle

Perched on a rocky outcrop beneath the Pyrenees, Loarre Castle is one of the finest Romanesque castles in Spain and looks every bit as formidable today as it must have done when construction began in the eleventh century. Towers and defensive walls rise almost directly from the rock, overlooking an enormous sweep of plains towards the south.

Inside, steep passages, vaulted chambers, defensive towers and the beautiful Romanesque church of San Pedro make this far more than an impressive exterior. Its relatively isolated setting adds enormously to the atmosphere too. Spain has no shortage of castles, but Loarre is one of those rare examples where the fortress and the landscape around it feel completely inseparable.

The Basque Country

The Basque Country has one of the most distinctive cultures anywhere in Spain, with its own ancient language, strong regional identity, exceptional food and a rugged Atlantic coastline backed by green mountains. Bilbao and San Sebastián are completely different cities but equally worth visiting, while the coast between and beyond them is scattered with fishing villages, beaches and dramatic cliffs.

Explore San Sebastián And Eat Pintxos

San Sebastián, or Donostia in Basque, occupies an almost ridiculously beautiful position around the sweeping curve of La Concha Bay, with elegant nineteenth-century architecture lining the waterfront and green hills rising on either side. Walk the promenade, climb Monte Urgull or take the funicular up Monte Igueldo for the classic view across the bay, but sooner or later the real business of eating has to begin.

San Sebastián is one of the great food cities of Europe, and its pintxos culture is the easiest way to experience it without requiring a reservation at one of its famous restaurants. The bars of the Parte Vieja cover their counters with small dishes ranging from simple anchovies, tortilla and local cheeses to elaborate miniature creations that wouldn’t look out of place on a tasting menu.

Don’t settle into one bar for the night. The whole point is to move between them, ordering a pintxo or two and a drink before carrying on to the next place. Everyone will develop their own favourites, which is an excellent excuse to repeat the entire exercise the following evening purely for research purposes.

Explore Bilbao And The Guggenheim

Bilbao reinvented itself spectacularly from an industrial port into one of northern Spain’s most interesting cities, and nothing symbolises that transformation better than Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum. Its enormous curves of titanium, glass and limestone twist along the Nervión riverfront, changing appearance constantly as the light moves across them.

The building is arguably as famous as the modern and contemporary art inside, but explore both before heading into Bilbao itself. Wander through the narrow streets of the Casco Viejo, browse the stalls of the Mercado de la Ribera and inevitably stop for more pintxos, because apparently the Basque Country considers three conventional meals a day an unnecessary restriction.

The Guggenheim may have put modern Bilbao on the international map, but the city surrounding it is the reason to stay.

Climb To San Juan De Gaztelugatxe

A tiny stone hermitage perched on top of a rocky island would already be picturesque enough, but San Juan de Gaztelugatxe adds a dramatic stone bridge and a winding staircase climbing above the crashing Bay of Biscay for good measure.

The walk down to the bridge and up the steps to the hermitage is steep enough to make you earn the view, particularly when you remember that you have to climb back out again afterwards. At the top, the coastline stretches away in both directions beneath cliffs and green hills, and tradition says ringing the hermitage bell three times will bring good luck. Whether it does or not, you’ve climbed all those steps, so you may as well give it a try.

Access arrangements have changed over the years as visitor numbers have increased, so check current reservation requirements before visiting rather than simply turning up.

Explore The Basque Coast

The Basque coastline deserves more than being treated as scenery between Bilbao and San Sebastián. Steep green hills tumble towards the Bay of Biscay, cliffs frame wild beaches and old fishing ports sit in sheltered coves along a coast that feels far removed from Mediterranean Spain.

Stop in places such as Getaria, an old fishing town famous for its seafood and txakoli wine, or explore the dramatic cliffs and geological formations of the Basque Coast Geopark around Zumaia. The exposed layers of rock known as flysch record millions of years of geological history and create one of the most distinctive stretches of coastline in Spain.

This is a coast best explored slowly, stopping whenever a village, beach or viewpoint gives you a good enough reason to abandon whatever plan you thought you had for the day.

Castilla-La Mancha

Stretching south and east of Madrid across enormous plains, rolling hills and historic towns, Castilla-La Mancha is the Spain immortalised by Cervantes in Don Quixote. But beyond the windmills and literary associations, this is a region shaped by centuries of Christian, Jewish and Islamic history, with two of Spain’s most spectacular historic cities sitting among its vast landscapes.

Explore Toledo

Perched high above a bend in the River Tagus, Toledo is one of Spain’s great historic cities. Once an important Roman settlement and later the capital of the Visigothic kingdom, the city subsequently flourished under Islamic and Christian rule, with significant Jewish communities helping shape the extraordinary mixture of cultures still visible throughout its old streets.

Churches, synagogues, mosques, monasteries and palaces sit within a maze of steep lanes enclosed by medieval walls. The enormous Gothic cathedral is the obvious heavyweight, but don’t miss the former mosque of Cristo de la Luz, the synagogues of the old Jewish quarter and the works of El Greco, who made Toledo his home.

Toledo is an easy day trip from Madrid, but staying overnight is far better if you can. Once the tour groups leave, the old city becomes considerably quieter, and seeing its illuminated walls and skyline above the Tagus after dark is worth missing the last train back for. There are some amazing accomodation options here that rarely get crowded.

See The Hanging Houses Of Cuenca

Cuenca’s old town occupies one of the most dramatic positions of any city in Spain, squeezed onto a rocky ridge between the deep gorges of the Huécar and Júcar rivers. Medieval streets climb through the historic centre towards the cathedral and eventually reach the city’s most famous sight, the Casas Colgadas, or Hanging Houses, whose wooden balconies project precariously over the Huécar Gorge.

Cross the iron-and-wood San Pablo Bridge for the classic view back towards them, but Cuenca is much more than a handful of balconies. The entire old town seems to grow directly out of the cliffs, with viewpoints opening unexpectedly between houses onto the surrounding gorges and countryside.

The combination of architecture and landscape is what makes Cuenca special. There are prettier medieval towns in Spain and there are more spectacular natural gorges, but very few places fuse the two together quite like this.

See The Windmills Of Consuegra

Few images are as closely associated with central Spain as white windmills standing on a ridge above the plains of La Mancha. The windmills of Consuegra line Cerro Calderico beside a medieval castle, looking out across the enormous flat landscape that inspired Miguel de Cervantes and the famously misguided adventures of Don Quixote.

The surviving mills mostly date from the sixteenth century onwards, and several retain reconstructed machinery showing how they were once used to grind grain. Walk along the ridge between them and explore the neighbouring castle, but the real attraction is the setting: white towers and wooden sails silhouetted against an apparently endless Castilian horizon.

You don’t need to have read all of Don Quixote to appreciate it either, which is fortunate because that is a significantly larger commitment than climbing the hill.

The Balearic Islands

The Balearic Islands have suffered perhaps more than anywhere else in Spain from having their entire identity swallowed by mass tourism. Mention Mallorca and people picture sprawling package resorts. Mention Ibiza and they picture superclubs, foam parties and people making bad life choices at four in the morning. Menorca has escaped the worst of it, but even then it is usually sold primarily on its beaches.

And yes, the beaches are beautiful, and Ibiza absolutely knows how to throw a party, but there is so much more to these islands than that. Ancient cities, prehistoric civilisations, spectacular mountains, fortified old towns and wild stretches of Mediterranean coastline have been sitting there patiently behind all those holiday brochures the entire time.

Explore Palma And Its Cathedral

Far too many people fly into Palma, collect their luggage and immediately disappear towards a resort without ever properly exploring Mallorca’s capital, which is a shame because Palma is one of the most attractive cities in the Mediterranean.

Its historic centre is a wonderfully walkable maze of narrow lanes, hidden courtyards, handsome mansions, cafés and little squares, all dominated by the enormous Gothic Catedral-Basílica de Santa María, or La Seu, rising spectacularly above the waterfront. Its vast rose window floods the interior with coloured light, and Antoni Gaudí even spent a decade working on alterations to the cathedral in the early twentieth century, because apparently Barcelona wasn’t enough to keep him occupied.

Explore La Seu and the neighbouring Royal Palace of La Almudaina, then forget about sightseeing for a while and disappear into the old streets. Palma is somewhere to wander, eat and linger, not simply an airport you tolerate before your holiday starts.

Explore The Serra De Tramuntana

If your mental image of Mallorca is swimming pools, sun loungers and hotel buffets, the Serra de Tramuntana should destroy it fairly quickly.

Running along the island’s northwestern coast, this spectacular mountain range is a landscape of limestone peaks, olive groves, ancient terraces and stone villages perched above an intensely blue Mediterranean. Centuries of farming and ingenious water management have shaped the mountains so completely that the entire range is now recognised by UNESCO as a cultural landscape.

Drive the twisting roads through Valldemossa, Deià and Sóller, stop whenever the view gives you a good enough excuse and, even better, pull on your boots and walk part of the GR221 Dry Stone Route. There are secluded coves hidden beneath the mountains too, so you don’t even have to sacrifice the Mediterranean beach part of the Mallorca experience. You just get a considerably better version of it.

Discover Menorca’s Ancient History And Wild Coast

Menorca has always felt like the quieter sibling of the Balearics, which is probably one of the reasons it has managed to preserve so much of what makes it special. The island has beautiful beaches, obviously, but behind them is one of the richest prehistoric landscapes in the Mediterranean.

Thousands of years before anyone contemplated building a package resort here, Menorca’s Talayotic communities were constructing enormous stone towers, settlements, burial chambers and the mysterious T-shaped monuments known as taulas. Sites such as Torre d’en Galmés and Naveta des Tudons are scattered across the island, often sitting quietly among fields and dry-stone walls with remarkably little separating you from their ancient landscape.

Then there is the coast. The historic Camí de Cavalls circles the entire island for around 185 kilometres, passing through pine forest, farmland, cliffs and isolated coves that are inaccessible by road. You certainly don’t have to walk all of it, but pick a section, spend the morning exploring prehistoric ruins and finish the afternoon swimming somewhere ridiculous.

There are worse ways to spend a day.

Explore Ibiza Beyond The Nightlife

Ibiza may be the most misunderstood island in Spain. Decades of superclubs, package holidays and increasingly expensive opportunities to dance beside people wearing very little have turned partying into its entire international identity, despite the fact that people were rather happily living here for several thousand years before the invention of the DJ booth.

Start with Dalt Vila, the magnificent fortified old town rising above Ibiza Town behind huge Renaissance walls. Wander up through its cobbled lanes towards the cathedral and battlements for views across the harbour and Mediterranean, then get away from the main resorts and head into the island’s quieter north and interior.

Here Ibiza changes completely. Pine-covered hills roll towards hidden coves, whitewashed churches sit in tiny villages and stretches of rural countryside feel remarkably distant from the clubs barely an hour away. There is a reason artists, writers and assorted countercultural wanderers were attracted to Ibiza long before mass tourism arrived.

And if you want to spend the night dancing until sunrise afterwards, go for it. That is part of Ibiza too. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking it is the whole island.

The Canary Islands

Sitting in the Atlantic off the coast of North Africa, the Canary Islands are another part of Spain whose international identity has been thoroughly hijacked by package tourism. Millions arrive every year for reliable sunshine, enormous resorts and beaches, and many barely see the extraordinary islands those resorts happen to have been built on.

Because the Canaries are ridiculous. These are volcanic islands where you can stand on Spain’s highest mountain, walk across landscapes that resemble the surface of Mars, disappear into ancient subtropical forests, hike along enormous volcanic calderas and explore deserts, dunes and black-sand beaches. Even neighbouring islands can feel like completely different worlds.

Explore Teide National Park, Tenerife

Tenerife’s resort-lined southern coast gives absolutely no indication of what is waiting in the middle of the island. Drive upwards and the development gradually disappears, pine forest gives way to increasingly barren volcanic terrain and eventually the enormous summit of Mount Teide rises above a landscape of lava flows, craters and twisted rock formations.

At 3,715 metres, Teide is the highest mountain in Spain and the third-highest volcanic structure on Earth when measured from its base on the ocean floor. A cable car takes you most of the way towards the summit, although reaching the summit itself requires a permit and a final hike at serious altitude. Experienced hikers can of course climb the mountain properly, preferably while feeling smug about everyone floating past them in the cable car.

But Teide National Park is much more than the summit. Walk among the strange formations of the Roques de García, explore old lava fields and stay after dark if you can. Tenerife’s altitude and exceptionally clear skies make it one of the world’s great locations for astronomy, and seeing the Milky Way above that volcanic landscape is a considerably better Tenerife memory than the hotel buffet.

Walk Through Timanfaya, Lanzarote

Lanzarote’s Timanfaya National Park looks like the Earth hasn’t quite finished forming yet. Vast lava fields, volcanic cones and craters stretch across a landscape created largely by enormous eruptions between 1730 and 1736, when volcanoes buried villages and farmland beneath lava and transformed a huge section of the island.

There is remarkably little vegetation across much of the park, leaving great sweeps of black, rust-red and ochre rock that can look almost extraterrestrial. Geothermal demonstrations at the visitor area reveal just how much heat remains beneath the surface, with water poured into boreholes erupting back out as steam seconds later.

Access to the most protected areas is controlled, and much of the classic volcanic route is explored on official buses rather than independently on foot. That may feel restrictive, but the landscape is exceptionally fragile. There are designated walking opportunities elsewhere around Timanfaya and the surrounding volcanic country where you can get considerably closer to the lava beneath your boots.

Hike La Palma’s Volcanic Landscapes

La Palma calls itself La Isla Bonita, and for once the tourism slogan has a point. The island rises steeply from the Atlantic into a landscape of pine forests, enormous ravines and volcanic peaks, with comparatively little of the mass development found on some of its larger neighbours.

Caldera de Taburiente National Park dominates the centre, an enormous erosion crater surrounded by peaks reaching more than 2,000 metres. Trails descend into its forests and ravines, while the Ruta de los Volcanes follows the high volcanic ridge through craters, lava fields and pine woodland towards the south of the island.

You don’t have to look very far into the geological past to understand how active all of this still is either. The 2021 Tajogaite eruption lasted almost three months, destroying homes, roads and farmland and covering large areas in fresh lava. Those enormous black lava fields are now part of the landscape, sitting alongside much older cones and flows and making the volcanic forces that created La Palma feel considerably less abstract than they do on most islands.

Walk Through Garajonay’s Ancient Forest, La Gomera

La Gomera is one of the smaller and quieter Canary Islands, and at its heart lies something completely different from the volcanic landscapes you might expect. Garajonay National Park protects an extraordinary laurel forest, a surviving fragment of the subtropical forests that covered much of southern Europe millions of years ago.

Clouds and mist drifting across the mountains keep the forest permanently damp, covering twisted trunks and branches in moss, lichens and ferns. Walking beneath the dense canopy can feel almost primeval, particularly when the mist rolls through and reduces the outside world to a few metres of dripping green forest.

A network of trails runs through Garajonay and into the deep ravines and villages surrounding it, making La Gomera a superb walking island generally. And if you want another piece of culture unique to the island, listen out for Silbo Gomero, the traditional whistled language developed to communicate across those enormous valleys and still taught in schools today.

Explore Gran Canaria’s Mountainous Interior

Gran Canaria’s famous southern resorts occupy only a tiny fraction of an island that becomes dramatically more interesting the moment you turn inland. Roads climb rapidly away from the coast through deep ravines, pine forests and mountain villages towards an interior of volcanic peaks and enormous rock formations that bears almost no resemblance to the beaches below.

The area around Tejeda is a good place to start, surrounded by mountains and looking towards the immense volcanic monolith of Roque Nublo, one of the island’s great natural landmarks. Hiking trails thread through the surrounding landscape, while villages such as Artenara cling to the mountainsides among cave houses and viewpoints over the island’s rugged centre.

Gran Canaria is often described as a ‘miniature continent’ because of the extraordinary variety of landscapes squeezed onto one island. The phrase gets repeated so often it has become a tourism cliché, but drive from the dunes and beaches of the south into these mountains and annoyingly, it turns out to be pretty accurate.

Discover Fuerteventura’s Wild Landscapes And Beaches

Fuerteventura is the driest and most windswept of the major Canary Islands, with an austere landscape of volcanic hills, enormous skies and long stretches of coastline that feel almost empty once you get away from the main resorts.

The great dune fields of Corralejo spill towards turquoise water in the north, while the wild Cofete beach stretches beneath the mountains of the Jandía peninsula in the south, reached by a rough road that only adds to the sense of isolation. Inland, old villages and barren volcanic landscapes reveal an island shaped as much by wind, drought and geology as by the Atlantic surrounding it.

Fuerteventura does beaches exceptionally well, so there is no need to pretend otherwise simply because we’re trying to look beyond the resort stereotype. The difference is that some of its best beaches still feel genuinely wild. Find one, put the sightseeing list away and spend a few hours doing absolutely nothing. Not every great experience in Spain needs a cathedral attached to it.

There Is Always More Of Spain To Discover

The more I travel through Spain, the harder I find it to think of it as a single destination. Andalucía feels completely different from Galicia, the mountains of Asturias bear little resemblance to the volcanic landscapes of the Canary Islands, and travelling from Barcelona to Extremadura can sometimes feel like travelling between different countries entirely. That extraordinary diversity is precisely what keeps bringing me back.

And this is still only a fraction of what Spain has to offer. There will always be another village, another stretch of coastline, another mountain trail or ancient ruin that could have made this list, and hopefully I’ll keep finding more of them.

So by all means come to Spain for the sunshine and the beaches. Just don’t stop there. Get on a train, hire a car, pull on your walking boots and go and see what else is out there. Spain gets considerably more interesting the further you explore.