locations guide

Location guide to Spain

Osbornes Spanish BullOnce away from the typical holiday costas, you could only be in Spain. In the cities, narrow twisting old streets suddenly open out to views of daring modern architecture, while spit-and-sawdust bars serving wine from the barrel rub shoulders with blaring, glaring discos.

Travel is easy, accommodation plentiful, the climate benign, the people relaxed, the beaches long and sandy, the food and drink easy to come by and full of regional variety. More than 50 million foreigners a year visit Spain, yet you can also travel for days and hear nothing but Spanish.

Spain can be enjoyable any time of year. The ideal months to visit are May, June and September (plus April and October in the south and not forgetting Fallas in Valencia at the end of March). At these times you can rely on good-to-excellent weather, yet avoid the extreme heat - and the main crush of Spanish and foreign tourists - of July and August. But there's decent weather in some parts of Spain virtually year round. Winter along the southern and southeastern Mediterranean coasts is mild, while in the height of summer you can retreat to the northwest, to beaches or high mountains anywhere to escape excessive heat. The best festivals are mostly concentrated between Semana Santa (the week leading up to Easter Sunday) and September to October.

Spanish Weather The meseta and Ebro basin have a continental climate: scorching in summer, cold in winter and dry. Madrid regularly freezes in December, January and February and temperatures climb above 30°C (86F) in July and August (locals describe it as: nueve meses de invierno y tres de infierno - nine months of winter and three of hell). Valladolid on the northern meseta and Zaragoza in the Ebro basin are even drier, with only a little more rainfall per year than Alice Springs in Australia. The Guadalquivir basin in Andalucía is only a little wetter and positively broils in high summer. This area doesn't get as cold as the meseta in winter.

The Pyrenees and the Cordillera Cantábrica backing the Bay of Biscay coast bear the brunt of cold northern and northwestern airstreams, which bring moderate temperatures and heavy rainfall (three or four times as much as Madrid's) to the northern and northwestern coasts, including cities like A Coruña. Even in high summer you never know when you might get a shower. The Mediterranean coast as a whole, and the Balearic Islands, get a little more rain than Madrid and the south can be even hotter in summer. Barcelona's weather is typical of the coast, milder than in inland cities, but more humid.

In general you can rely on pleasant or hot temperatures just about everywhere from April to early November (plus March in the south, but minus a month at either end on the northern and northwestern coasts). In Andalucía there are plenty of warm, sunny days right through winter. In July and August, temperatures can get unpleasant, even unbearable, anywhere inland (unless you're high enough in the mountains). Snowfalls in the mountains start as early as October and some snow cover lasts all year on the highest peaks.

Getting There Spain is dotted with international airports, and connections with the rest of Europe are good. If you're coming from the UK or from Morocco, you could consider a ferry. Otherwise, bus is the cheapest option, unless you're young enough to qualify for a rail pass.

Getting Around Getting around within Spain is best done by bus; the bus network gives you better coverage and more mile for your Euro than the rail system. If you're swanning off to the Balearics, you can go the whole luxury hog and get a flight, or slow down to Sanish-pace and take a ferry.