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Travel Guides: All Countries / Europe / Spain
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In search of the perfect paella
From the Daily Mail
There is only one meal that makes a trip to Spain complete: paella. As far as the British are concerned, this mixture of rice, chicken and seafood, with the odd bit of veg thrown in, is Spain's national dish.
But in a land where regional gastronomy is taken very seriously, Spaniards wring their hands at this notion.
For true paella comes from Valencia - everything else is just rice.
Paella is by no means a fast food. It takes a minimum of 30 minutes to cook one properly. So I went to Valencia to discover its secrets.
Outside Spain's third-largest city is La Albufera, a freshwater lake which is now part of a national park.
Here, at the end of the 7th century, the Moors introduced irrigation to cultivate Spain's first rice paddies.
Today, they cover a vast area of this coastal plain, stretching 35 kilometres south of the city.
'This is the place where paella was born,' said my guide Juan Llantada.
'When the farmers stopped working the fields for their midday meal, they added whatever they had to the rice - rabbit, duck, snails and green beans.'
Today, there are more than 300 varieties of paella - pronounced 'pah-ay-yah' - which is actually the name of the shallow pan in which it is cooked.
Travel Guide: Spain
Walking back to happiness
Forgive me if I spend the next few paragraphs out of breath.
You see, I'm approaching 8,500ft in the Pyrenees and while I'm Edmund Hillary at heart, I am Buddha in body; the spirit is indomitable, but the flesh is... well, there's just too much of the flesh.
It was all so deceptive at the beginning. We had started in France, in part of the old nation of Catalonia, sauntering across meadows of yellow gentians, through cool pine woods and into a valley rising gently towards Spain.
It was mid-June. A week ago, one side of the valley had been puce with azaleas, the other golden with broom.
Now there were wild geraniums and Pyrenean lilies with curly yellow petals. Way above us, ranged the mountains, hard, sharp peaks on which snow still lay in patches.
We picnicked on bread, chewy mountain ham, brie, and country wine.
After that life changed. From a world of wildflowers the landscape turned mean. Gone were the buttercups and bilberries, around us now were harsh falls of scree.
The broad stone path had narrowed to a rocky culvert; the river that came tumbling past us in the valley was now a meagre stream. And instead of the calm forest we were now on a grizzled skinhead of mountainside.
The gradient had been ratcheted up to precipitous and the air was sapped of oxygen. My thighs were stretched like bungee cords and my lungs stuffed with pebbles.
At last, the mountain relented and flattened out in a snowfield at the top of the col. We were at 8,727ft, and had crossed the border into Spain. It had taken six hours to climb from 'bonjour' to 'buenos dias'.
In another two hours, we had scrambled down steep scree on the Spanish side to arrive at Nuria, a ski station.
Sore and tired I might be but I had survived to embroider the tale. Over a beer, Thierry, our French guide, put the day into perspective.
Our route was an old smugglers' trail. You name it, someone had smuggled it: tobacco and alcohol in the 19th century-Allied prisoners of war escaping occupied France in World War II.
Travel Guide: Spain
Isle of contrasts
Los Cristianos is a small town in which you can have a relaxing peaceful holiday or a lively one. There are plenty of cheap, good-quality restaurants and bars where you can pay as little as £3.50 for a three-course meal.
The beaches all have clean white sand, and offer watersports if you wish. There are also weekly markets where you can buy local crafts and there are plenty of places to visit around the island.
Two miles up the road is Playa de Las Americas, which is very lively but a bit like Blackpool in the sun with its clubs and dirty streets. These two towns are completely opposite to each other and you will find the more sophisticated in Los Cristianos, whilst the lager louts club it up in Las Americas, which is also a lot more expensive - you could pay up to £5 for a drink.
Travel Guide: Spain
Love it or hate it
Well, after returning from two weeks in Tenerife, it make me wonder.
Firstly, how can people go back year after year and secondly what is exactly the attraction?
The only reason we went is because of a cheap deal through work but I would not go again.
Tenerife is dull, culture-less and simply England in the Sun. Don't get me wrong Los Gigantes (where we stayed) was lovely and quiet but the rest will be easily forgotten.
We hired a car for four days and by the third day we had run out of places to go and see.
To anyone thinking about Tenerife, you will either love it or hate it.
Sun worshipers who like chips with everything will love it. People who like to explore and like to go somewhere with different cultures to England, think carefully.
Travel Guide: Spain
Tenerife revisited, the good and the bad
Having been to Puerto de la Cruz about 30 years ago, I was disappointed to see how tacky it's become. A last-minute booking had turned up a self-catering deal in Las Galletas, which was quiet but unremarkable.
I hired a car and set out to rediscover the island. Puerto didn't come up to my memories of it, but on the other side of the island Santa Cruz is still a pleasant working town, good for shopping and for mixing with real Canarians.
Las Canadas National Park is still the highlight of this island for me, with its lunar landscapes and imposing Mount Teide. You'd be mad to miss the chance to come here - and it's much better to drive yourself and take your time than go on an organised trip.
Los Gigantes - massive cliffs that drop sheer to the sea - always impress and it's a good place to stop for coffee. La Orotava is still well worth a visit with its graceful old houses, some with beautifully carved wooden balconies. There's a fine craft centre here, too. Driving the one-way system here can be a bit confusing, though.
All in all, Tenerife still has plenty to recommend it - not least the great year-round weather.
Travel Guide: Spain
On top of the world
From the Daily Mail
This is it: I'm going to meet a horrible end. The car lurches around hairpin bends, its wheels inches from the edge. The sky and sea revolve like a three-dimensional Cubist painting, whirling and dizzying. If I'd have been doing anything other than driving, I'd have closed my eyes and prayed.
When, 20 agonising minutes later, I reach the village of Taganana and the road levels out, I gaze up in disbelief. It had been like driving down a 1,000ft-high vertical wall.
Getting off the beaten track on the Canary Island of Tenerife requires, above all else, a good head for heights. Other essentials include a decent map, a sense of adventure and a desire to escape the crowds. The last is understandable. A sizeable chunk of the Canary Islands' eight million annual visitors spend their holidays on Tenerife, and the majority of them squeeze into the twin towns of Playa de las Americas and Los Cristianos on the south-west coast.
These custom-built resorts are oft-maligned. But once you accept that there is virtually nothing Spanish about them - in Playa de las Americas, it's easier to find a pint of bitter than a plate of paella - then you can appreciate their advantages.
The gently sloping beaches are great for children. There's a staggering range of bars and restaurants, and prices are low. There is entertainment for everyone, too: from ultra-cool clubs, cabaret shows, British and Irish theme pubs, to sports bars and aquatic parks.
But out of town, behind the massed white cubes of apartment blocks and hotels, lies the extraordinary volcanic landscape that gives Tenerife its special character and its name. In ancient island dialect, Tenerife means 'snow-capped mountain'.
In the centre of the holiday island is the volcano of Mount Teide - at 12,198ft it is the highest point in Spain and a national park. A winding road leads up from the coast, passing tiny villages of whitewashed houses, with wild flowers forming splashes of colour on the bare brown landscape. In the distance, the high-rise apartments of Playa de las Americas look as though they have fallen out of a child's toy box.
Travel Guide: Spain
Tar-ific, if you like it breezy
The wind is the first thing that strikes you about Tarifa, a tiny city a few miles west of Gibraltar. It never seems to stop blowing. Day or night, rain or shine, the wind howls across the city like a banshee.
The reason is simple. Tarifa is the point at which the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic, the southernmost point of the Iberian peninsula - less than 10 miles across the straits from the coast of Africa.
From the crumbling ramparts of the city's tenth-century walls, you feel as if you can lean out and touch the Rif Mountains of Morocco.
Its geography means it is the very point at which the poniente - as the Spaniards and the Moroccans call it - the harsh west wind, blows in off the Atlantic to clash head on with its opponent, the east wind from the Mediterranean, the levante.
Sometimes one wins, sometimes the other, but the battle never ceases. In the past, the raging air brought this unaffected, proud little port at the tip of Europe an unenviable reputation - it had the highest suicide rate in Spain. The winds blew so fiercely that some inhabitants simply couldn't bear it. But that was before windsurfing.
Now the very winds that sometimes intimidated the local population have attracted thousands of young people, making Tarifa Europe's premier windsurfing site, and acknowledged as one of the three best in the world.
You have only to walk down the Batalla del Salado towards the gate of the castellated Moorish city to see the impact the sport has made. There are no designer boutiques, but there is X-Trem and White Surf, Hot Stick and Wild Wind, Pirates and Big Fish - all designed to sell you the wetsuit of your dreams and the sail to go with it.
The bars and hostels are packed, summer and winter, with young people drawn to the intense delights of the big waves on the Playa de los Lances to the west.
Many of the surfers fly into Gibraltar, walk across the border and take a taxi along the coast to Tarifa, perfectly happy to use a borrowed board when they get there.
No matter how you get there, however, the talk in the most of the local bars is about wind speeds, and the rougher the weather the better.
Travel Guide: Spain
Your very own castle
State-owned hotel chain. Four words guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of any holidaymaker. With good reason, too.
Those images of mile-long concrete bunkers on the Baltic coastline and cockroach-ridden tower blocks in downtown Tirana are enough to make you cancel that trip abroad and head for the safety of the Cornish Riviera.
Communist prison - sorry holiday - camps are a thing of the past, of course, but one state-run operation which pre-dated Eastern Europe's highly-organised leisure facilities is still going strong.
Spain's chain of Parador hotels celebrates its 75th anniversary this year. Founded by a king and developed under a Fascist dictator, the Paradors have boomed in recent years by cashing in on a reputation for good food and service, great prices and unbeatable locations.
Alfonso XIII knew what he liked and clearly didn't worry about what it cost to get it.
He was also the 20th century's most regal hotelier. Before his subjects kicked him out and formed their short-lived republic in 1931, he built the magnificent luxury hotel in Seville which bears his name.
More importantly, he was the force behind a new type of hotel, the Parador, which loosely translates from the Spanish as 'stopover'.
Alfonso's love of hunting was decisive in siting the first one in the Gredos mountains west of Madrid. The king wanted a hunting lodge - and he got a 30-room hotel where his pals could join him in the thrill of the chase.
Alfonso packed his bags for good only three years later, but his ethos lived on to develop tourism in areas of natural beauty or in ancient cities, using old and historic buildings or new ones erected in distinctive regional style.
As a state-run enterprise, Paradors were heavily subsidised. With money no object, centuries-old and new buildings were stuffed full of antique furniture and paintings and their doors thrown open to the public.
Travel Guide: Spain
Vino? Si señor, but not on its own
Cruzcampo, San Miguel, Estrella Damm. It's not a long list, but it's as far as many people get in a Spanish bar. More's the pity, because whatever the merits of a cold beer on a hot summer's day, Spain's range of drinks - alcoholic or otherwise - is varied and worthy of exploration.
The language barrier and a tendency to stick to what they know are two reasons why many visitors look no further. But anyone who hankers after a pint of bitter or a glass of chardonnay is missing the point.
Spanish drinking culture is complex - and very different from that of Britain. Spaniards don't leave the house with the intention of having a skinful.
In Spain, drinking is a social adjunct; you go out to meet people, to eat and talk, and liquid refreshment is just a part of that process.
Consequently, different types of drink 'belong' to different times of day.
In a country where the smallest, scruffiest bar serves coffee which makes Starbucks' best seem like dishwater, there's only one drink for the morning.
How you take it is another matter: with milk; without; with a little milk; with brandy; even with a strong spirit (aguardiente) on the side.
Beer isn't considered alcohol in Spain. You'll find it listed with the refrescos (fizzy soft drinks). And though Spanish drink-driving laws are now in line with the rest of Europe, half the customers at motorway services happily nestle a bottle of beer, even if they're sitting beside a police officer.
Most Spaniards prefer draught beer to the bottled variety. It's cheaper and you can select your quantity - anything from a cañita (around a third of a pint) to a tubo litro (a big, big glass).
Lunch is the most important meal of the day, and can last for hours, even during the working week. The vermut culture involves meeting for a pre-lunch drink.
The choice isn't limited to vermouth though. Vermut can mean a sherry, a gin and tonic, a beer, or an orange juice. It exists mainly as a way to ease yourself into the food marathon which will dominate your day.
Travel Guide: Spain
Sweet Jerez
From the Daily Mail
What a difference 1,000 miles makes. I was sitting in a flamenco bar in Spain crowded with young people, all drinking ... sherry.
Behind the bar bottles of Croft and Sandeman, Domecq and Harveys, Tio Pepe and Gonzalez Byass stretched as far as the eye could see. In England, nobody under 50 would be seen dead with sherry in a bar at 1am.
You cannot spend five minutes in Jerez, home of sherry, without realising it is not just extremely drinkable but extremely sexy.
In the hands of a dark-haired senorita a glass of sherry looks a lot more fetching than a half of lager.
Jerez de la Frontera is a medium-size town in Andalucia. Even without the lure of its famous product, the town would warrant a visit.
Battered buildings, the stone mellowed with age, betray Moorish and Christian influences.
The labyrinth of narrow streets is beguiling. Motorcyclists career past, disturbing cats, while quaint-looking shops exude exotic smells.
After dark there is a hint of Arabian Nights, with long shadows stretching across the plazas.
No visit to Jerez would be complete without a tour of one of the bodegas where the sherry is produced. Seeing the old wooden casks stacked floor to ceiling, scenting the rich aroma wafting through the bodega, is a true feast for the senses.
You also learn a lot. What, for example, is a catador? Not a moggy who fights bulls, but the man who tastes the sherry. Slurper in chief.
Vincente, the catador at Sandeman, has been slurping sherry or 40 years. Watching that learned nose hover over a glass was an education.
Travel Guide: Spain
Sun, sea and San Sebastian
The notice in my hotel room was a little disconcerting. 'In San Sebastian it's more than likely you will need an umbrella,' it read. 'Ask for one at the reception desk.'
I knew from previous visits to the Basque country that the weather - cold, wet and grey one day, clear, bright and sunny the next - could be unpredictable.
As it turned out, I was lucky. The next morning the sun was beating down from a cloudless blue sky as I walked along the promenade overlooking La Concha beach, an expanse of golden sand set in a stunning natural bay.
Behind the beach, the creamy white Belle Epoque cafes line the Paseo de la Concha.
It's easy to see why San Sebastian has been a favourite holiday destination for the Spanish ever since Queen Isabel II decided to establish her summer court and government here in the 1850s to escape the stifling heat of Madrid.
I wandered past the small harbour, filled with fishing boats painted in the green, white and red colours of the Basque flag, and into the narrow, traffic-free streets of the old town, la parte vieja.
Here, tiny, old-fashioned shops selling shoes, leather goods, books and mouthwatering cakes jostled for space with dark bars, their counters groaning under the weight of bite-sized snacks of fish, meat and tortilla speared with toothpicks onto thin slices of crispy bread.
These pinchos are a speciality in the Basque country and in San Sebastian there is a keenly contested annual award for the best one.
A good place to kick off a pinchos-trail is the Plaza de la Constitucion in the centre of the parte vieja.
The square used to double as the city's bullring and balconies are hung with flowers and the occasional banner demanding the release of ETA prisoners held in jails around Spain.
I made my way across the palm-fringed square to Bar Astelena for a pre-lunch drink. Shouting above the din created by a crowd of young Basques at the bar I ordered a pincho of hake covered in onions and a glass of txakoli, a young 'green' wine traditionally poured into wide tumblers from a height of 3ft or so to generate a refreshing fizz.
Travel Guide: Spain
Summer fun for all the family
The idea of taking 14 families who have never met, and putting them together in a group of apartments that share the same swimming pool, tennis court and play area for a week sounds like a potential recipe for disaster.
My husband and I usually try to get as far away as possible from other people, particularly other Brit tourists, while on holiday.
The idea of being cooped up in close proximity in a Spanish 'holiday hamlet', which operator Brittany Ferries describes as being 'popular' with the English, filled us with foreboding.
Not only would we be cheek by jowl with strangers, but our boisterous children, Tom, six, and Olivia, three, would need to be on best behaviour if we were to avoid being tagged the 'neighbours from hell' by the other guests.
On arrival, my husband John muttered 'This is going to be ghastly' as he counted the number of sun-loungers and realised there were not enough for us.
A purple-faced grandfather was resting his gouty left foot on the only spare lounger and we didn't have the courage to ask him for it.
'Things can only get better,' I whispered as, going to bed that night, we listened to the sounds of neighbours arguing and yet another family apparently disco-dancing on the wooden floor above our heads.
We were lulled to sleep by the whimpers of an insomniac Spanish toddler in yet another apartment but who seemed to be in the same room as us.
But things did get better. After breakfast the next day, there was a knock on the door and in came two little Scottish girls holding a football. 'Can Tom and Livvy come and play?' asked the older girl, Flora.
Husband John and I looked at each other. The grounds were safe; not even our two could escape over the 10ft-high stone walls which the night before had seemed like a prison, and now offered freedom.
Travel Guide: Spain
Savour the flavour
From the Daily Mail
Tapas are those little plates of edible goodies, to be enjoyed along with a glass of wine or an ice-cold beer.
Together with the siesta and Penelope Cruz, they are are possibly Spain's greatest contribution to human happiness.
The word tapa comes from the Spanish for 'lid', referring to the saucer placed on top of your wine glass on which was traditionally served a complimentary morsel of ham or cheese.
Over the years the saucer has been replaced by a small flat terracotta dish.
The simple offering has developed into a miniature plateful of deep-fried calamares, prawns with garlic and chilli, ham croquettes, kidneys in sherry, and a hundred other variations on the theme of savoury snacking.
The tapa has become a respectable branch of Spanish cuisine, practically an art form. Along with paella, serrano ham and seafood, this is what every foreign visitor to Spain wants to get their hands on and their teeth into.
Yet the genuine tapas experience is not always easy to come by. As with a lot of deeply-rooted foreign customs, it helps to know the lie of the land.
Why? The idea of nibbling on something savoury along with your drink is as old as the hills. Because, as every drinker knows, a little something salty helps the booze go down and also stops you getting tipsy quite so quickly.
The tapas habit is a perfect expression of the relaxed Mediterranean lifestyle. For those who enjoy the pleasures of casual grazing rather than sitting down at 8pm for a serious three-courser, this may be the ideal food.
Travel Guide: Spain
Stinging nettle diet
From the Mail on Sunday
Nettle and sphagnum moss soup?' asked Manuel. I gave him a vaguely affirmative prehistorical grunt and took a sip. It was almost edible . . . if you had no sense of smell and pretended that your taste buds hadn't evolved yet.
I had another mouthful of boiled-up Spanish sedge and river silt. I coughed and spluttered and went 'Uggh!' Manuel smiled from beneath a thick, vivid green moustache. 'Spoken like a true Neanderthal!'
Manuel Luque is a professional archaeologist and director of Paleorama, which offers the world's first fly-drive 'Stone Age' holidays.
Anatomically modern time travellers blessed with moderately impressive cranial cargo can now enjoy prehistoric breaks and very uncivilised full-board facilities as well as the most basic amenities imaginable in a riverside field near Burgos in northern Spain.
They have to make their own meals and because it is illegal to hunt in Rioja, the menu is predominately vegetarian. Our ancestors might have been expert hunters but they also had enough brain power to realise that lichen and moss are far easier to catch than game.
But before you can cook your Palaeolithic lunch, you must make a fire. So for about half an hour I collected laurel leaves and fallen fir needles before being shown, for another hour, how to ignite them by rubbing two twigs together and swearing a lot.
The dress code was relaxed. Fox has never been my favourite fabric. Deerskin has never suited me, either. I have always found it difficult to achieve a smart but casual 'professional' look in a rancid pelt. So my host let me cover myself in modern leisurewear. He explained the rationale as I stirred our churned mud entree.
'Everything must be validated by archaeological data. That's why we don't insist on animal skins. No clothing has ever been found. We can only guess what our ancestors ate.
'We try to reconstruct the past from what we have found. We reproduce the prehistoric experience according to received archaeological truth. We don't run around with big, bushy beards bashing animals with clubs. We want to look beyond that stereotype.' He pronounced his chicken hedgerow casserole ready.
'This is hands-on archaeology,' he said, ladling the Pleistocene glop into a home-made animal hide bowl. 'I want people to relate to their ancestors, their lifestyles and their achievements.
'Far from being a beast, Palaeolithic man was innovative and highly adaptive to his environment. Stinging nettles were an important part of his staple diet. He made soup as well as soap out of them.
Travel Guide: Spain
Holiday fun for the family
From the Daily Mail
The fact that Spain remains by far the most popular destination for British holidaymakers is not surprising: it has the coast, character and climate, it's excellent value, and is only a couple of hours away by plane. In fact, the main problem with Spain is that it is such a familiar destination that it's sometimes too easy to fall back on the obvious choices - the Majorcan resorts, Benidorm or the Costa del Sol.
But there are plenty of alternatives which have just as much going for them in terms of sun, sand and value for money, but which don't dominate the pages of the tour operators' brochures. Here's my selection:
Hot tips
The up-and-coming Costa to watch out for is the Costa de la Luz - the stretch of coast to the west of Gibraltar, facing out towards the Atlantic. It has some of the best, sandiest and least developed of all the country's beaches, and is popular with the Spanish themselves, though more British and German tourists are discovering its scattering of relaxed resorts.
Among the best are Conil de la Frontera, Los Canos de Meca and Zahara de los Atunes. Be aware, though, that because most of the beaches face into the prevailing wind, it can be blustery, and you need to be careful of the surf which rolls in from the ocean.
The other summer destination growing rapidly in popularity is the Canary Islands. For years, they have been thought of as ideal islands for winter sun or an early/late season break. But they are just as good in summer - hotter, of course, but the temperatures are kept in check by cool Atlantic breezes.
Tenerife and Gran Canaria are now too developed for many people's tastes. Lanzarote is a perennial and reliable recommendation because of its good beaches and low-rise resorts, but even here development work continues apace. So if you want to escape a little, try an alternative island - especially Fuerteventura, and the smaller island of La Gomera.
Travel Guide: Spain
Classic charms of Spain
Spain is a classic holiday destination - with good reason. Paul Richardson comes up with some suggestions for your type of holiday.
BEST FOR FAMILY BEACH HOLIDAYS: MINORCA
For years, the island of Minorca was the Cinderella of the Balearics. While earning its living mostly from tourism, it has never sold itself as hard as its neighbours.
Building has been kept under control, with low-rise developments the norm. Binibeca Vell, an imitation of a traditional fishing village, is a brilliant example.
Minorca has some of the best and least spoiled coastline in the Med. Those on the south coast - such as Son Bou and Punta Prima - are sheltered and civilised. Cala Galdana, in particular, is a glorious arc of sand with calm, shallow water.
Beaches in the north are a little more exposed and breezier, but even more unspoiled. Son Saura Nord has shallow water and beautiful dunes; Arenal d'en Castell is popular and lively; and Cala Morella, though only a little way off the beaten track, is virtually unvisited.
Almost all, apart from the most inaccessible coves, are family-friendly. Even the more developed Cala Galdana and Cala n Porter keep things on a human scale.
And unlike the Costas, if the adults have a craving for culture, there is plenty to see in the delightful towns of Mahon and Ciutadella.
BEST FOR WALKING HOLIDAYS: ASTURIAS
The Principality is not that well-known to the British, but is destined to become popular as back-to-nature tourism hits the big time.
Asturias is rainy, rugged and beautiful. The coast is a little like Cornwall: all fishing villages and stormy seas. Inland is one of the Iberian peninsula's major mountain ranges, the Picos de Europa, home to wolves, bears and eagles.
Best places to stay are the network of Casas de Aldea (village houses), often found in picturesque mountain hamlets where the clocks seem to have stopped somewhere around the 18th century. The locals are friendly and hospitable, though their sense of humour is famously gruff.
The local food is as far from the typically Spanish norm as you can imagine. Cider is a speciality, as is the powerful blue cheese Cabrales. After a trek through the mountains, fabada (bean stew with meat and sausages) will set you up for a mega-siesta
Winter is not the best time to walk in this wilderness - the rain and snow may get you down. Asturias is at its best in late spring.
Travel Guide: Spain
Beyond the Costas
Guaranteed sunshine and good value - these are the things that prompt British holidaymakers to charge off in such huge numbers to Spain every year.
Last year 13 million of us went, mainly to soak up the sun, but also to make the most of the food and wine, stunning scenery and culture of this most passionate of Mediterranean countries.
Our old rival for colonial power has, in many places, become colonised itself; not least by the British, who have retired to sunny apartments on the Costa Brava and Costa del Sol.
Spain's monumental cathedrals, architecture - and art produced by masters Goya and Picasso - rival the finest in Europe.
But, as a result of eight centuries of rule by the Moors, Spain also became the meeting ground of Latin and North African cultures.
Here, we focus on the five Mediterranean regions most popular with British summer visitors, starting with Andalucia and Valencia.
But while the Costas might look similar in holiday brochures, regional differences are strong, reflecting their roots in the old Spanish kingdoms through dialect, cuisine and cultural traditions.
Travel Guide: Spain
Beyond the beach
We live by the seaside, so our idea of a real holiday is somewhere well away from the cawing of gulls and the drone of waves.
At least once a year, we yearn for an invigorating whiff of exhaust fumes and the sheer luxury of pavements.
For most British holidaymakers, Spain tends to be a seaside destination: the Costa del Sol, the Costa Brava, Alicante, Benidorm, Marbella and so forth.
These may be just what the doctor ordered for sea-starved Britons (though I have given Marbella a wide berth since reading that Robert Kilroy-Silk has a house there), but I was always more drawn to Spain's interior, to those smaller cities that encircle Madrid - cities with romantic, swashbuckling names, jam-packed with vowels, like Salamanca and Segovia, Cordoba, Plasencia and Toledo.
The reaction of most people when we told them that we were going to tour the interior of Spain with our children in a car which has no air-conditioning was to throw up their hands in horror.
But there is much to be said for open windows, not least that the noise of the wind acts as an effective sound-block against the complaints of the children in the back.
And even in the height of summer, Spain is only really blisteringly hot from around noon to 5pm, a period anyway much more suited to having lunch, swimming in a pool or lying in the shade.
Outside these times, motoring around the countryside can be a real joy, not least because, compared with Britain, the roads are so empty.
We crossed with our car from Portsmouth to Bilbao - a crossing of roughly 34 hours - and, quite unexpectedly, a complete delight.
Everyone is allotted a cabin, so at breakfast-time you don't have to climb over hungover backpackers surrounded by fag ends and beer cans when going to the cafe.
Travel Guide: Spain
Barcelona's sunny back yard
From the Daily Mail
Lola, a Spanish, sooty-eyed seven-year-old, adjusted her acid green feather boa and gyrated self-consciously through the main square in the pretty Spanish seaside town of Sitges, just south of Barcelona. Behind her marched a troupe of pre-school 'devils', red horns stitched into black berets, the youngest happily prodding Lola's behind with his felt-covered pitchfork.
Pancake Tuesday in Sitges and everyone was in carnival mood. Even the formidable assistant in Fontanals charcuterie had transformed herself into a dancing queen. Beneath a canopy of cured ham joints, Maria's glittery eyebrows and star-studded cheeks sat at odds with her white overalls - but then, she reasoned, only glitter would outlast a night of hard clubbing.
The children's parade, a charming prelude to the libidinous troupes who were later to sashay along the Carrer de Parellades - Sitges's main drag - was drawing to a close. By midnight the town would be packed, its cobbled streets an impromptu dance floor, the music non-stop until dawn.
During carnival, Sitges wakes from its winter slumber with a vengeance. Barcelona night owls join the locals for an uninhibited and mammoth party - though nobody quite matches the excesses reputedly enjoyed by Casanova, a guest of the town's carnival back in 1769. Not even Salvador Dali, it seems, though he, too, clearly favoured Sitges's fun-loving atmosphere.
Photographs of the mustachioed surrealist enjoying a swim in the sea line the walls of L'Estrella, a 19th-century patisserie in the narrow Carrer Major, though it is hard to imagine this larger-than-life Spaniard sitting in such dainty surroundings. There, beneath painted cherubs flitting across a tiny domed ceiling, locals linger in one of two raspberry-pink salons over chocolate cake and cortado, the Spanish equivalent of an espresso with a shot of milk.
Travel Guide: Spain
Wonderful atmosphere
We passed through Seville on our way back from Portugal, by which time it was too late to stay any longer than a single night. What bad planning!
Had we known, we'd have arranged to spend more time there. The atmosphere in the evening was absolutely terrific.
I can't remember all their names, but there are squares, or plazas, dotted all over Seville, with cafes and restaurants spilling out on to the streets. There are many churches that we would have liked time to explore and some really beautiful architecture, exhibiting a strong Moslem influence.
The bullring is fantastic to look at. Seville is well known for its bullfighting history.
We didn't have anything booked but, after eating on the patio of one of the little restaurants, we found an old hotel in the centre of town. We were a few floors up, and the tall windows in our room looked out over a small plaza.
Being August, it was pretty hot, even late at night, so we had the windows open wide all night, but the shutters pulled to. What a wonderful experience!
We fell asleep to the muffled sounds of late-night conversations out in the square, charming rather than irritating.
Travel Guide: Spain
Seville got to her
My girlfriend, a woman of principle, would come to Seville only on one condition. 'You promise not to take me to a bullfight,' she said.
I have never made an easier promise. It was like taking a pledge not to strangle puppies.
Ah, the fickleness of women! Just three hours after getting off the plane, she was plucking winsomely at my sleeve. 'Darling, how do you feel about going to the bullfight tonight?'
Seville had got to her. It was all I could do to stop her buying a flamenco dress and singing arias from Carmen.
You cannot move in the city without reminders of its most infamous pastime.
Bullfighting posters adorn every tapas bar. Shop windows bulge with matador costumes. Middle-aged men corner you in bars and try to show you the scar they got running with the bulls at Pamplona. You sit down to a meal in a restaurant and a waiter recommends the 'bull's tail'. It is like a disease.
But five minutes of bullfighting on television, X-rated and nauseating, ensured that we would not contract it. We did visit the museum of bullfighting at the handsome 18th-century Plaza de Toros. It was simultaneously gruesome and hilarious.
Having spurned the bullfight, we had dinner in a lively restaurant near the cathedral. There was no English menu and the staff spoke only Spanish but I thought I knew enough, just, to get by.
Wrong! Having ordered, we thought, squid with garlic, artichokes, spicy lamb casserole and a jug of sangria, we got meatballs, salted cod, grilled chicken and a bottle of mineral water. Very nice, too - though I did send the water back.
Travel Guide: Spain
Exploring Seville
Giggling, deep male voices were coming up fast behind me. I turned to see a gang of twenty-something Spanish men wearing polka-dotted, flamenco-frilled aprons over jeans and T-shirts.
After filing through a cobbled square past amused diners at La Cueva in the old Jewish quarter of Santa Cruz, they ducked silently into a quiet, dimly-lit bar.
This was a stag night, Seville-style, with the groom identifiable from the others only by his mantilla and a slash of red lipstick.
Their restraint was impressive; it may have been early evening but somehow I couldn't see them whipping out handcuffs, downing pint after pint or emulating their rambunctious British counterparts.
Like its inhabitants, Seville is a mature, gracious city.
Earlier that day, on a two-and-a-half hour flight from London, my travelling companions were rather different from those one might traditionally associate with southern Spain.
A sedate bunch boarded the plane: retired couples in panamas, bankers carrying golf clubs, honeymooners and trendy families with offspring answering to Noah, Nancy, Pandora and the like.
Yet the serenity of Seville is thanks, in part, to these cultural tourists who wield their cameras respectfully and leave, while the sun, sex and sangria masses descend on the Costas.
Apart from the soothing sound of cicadas, sparrows, and guitar music in tapas bars, noise levels are disarmingly low.
Ten minutes from the airport, Santa Cruz houses the most treasured monuments, such as the Hospital de Los Venerables, a 17th-century home for elderly priests, which has a restored baroque church.
Travel Guide: Spain
Pilgrim's process
From the Mail on Sunday
My heart skipped a beat as the ambulance pulled up alongside our motorhome on the desolate road to Portomarin in northern Spain. And my worst fears were confirmed as the driver lifted out the bicycle on which my wife had ridden away minutes earlier. Oh no, she had had an accident.
I gasped as she emerged unharmed but drenched, seconds after the bike. Just down the road it had poured. It was a repeat of a student holiday in the Orkneys when, similarly soaked, she and two friends had been rescued by a mobile library.
There were times when we really appreciated having a hot shower, cooker, heater and loo with us out in the wilds. This was one of them.
We were following the El Camino de Santiago, the way of the apostle St James, which has taken pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela since 813 AD, when it was the most important shrine in the Christian world after Jerusalem and Rome. In the 11th and 12th centuries, half a million pilgrims a year walked the 1,000-mile route, marked by scallop shell symbols. An Order of Knights was created to guard them.
Today's pilgrims set out mainly from Paris, Vezelay, Arles or Le Puy. Our first point of contact with it was to be Roncesvalles in the Pyrenees. Having taken the overnight ferry from Portsmouth, we drove out straight into the Bilbao rush hour. In glorious sunshine I ached for a sports car on the four-hour journey to Roncesvalles. A sensible motorhome virgin would have tried a UK weekend, not driven across two Michelin maps-worth of Spain.
At the La Posada inn, where old photographs show pilgrims in the snow carrying crosses on their backs, duck with apple, red peppers and prunes was just over £5. No pilgrim ever ate better.
Travel Guide: Spain
Great for families
I went to Salou in September last year and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I was staying in the centre of Salou and the beach was a 10-minute walk from my apartment and the theme park Port Aventura was about 15 minutes by bus. I would highly recommend this resort to families.
Travel Guide: Spain
Quixotic Spain
For very many years I used to indulge myself in a Walter Mitty dream that one day I would take a year off to go to Salamanca University, to read Don Quixote and perfect my Spanish.
As time passed, I held its dreaming spires in my mind's eye, came to Spain many times, but somehow never made it to Salamanca.
It is, of course, out on something of a limb - 130 miles across an exposed plateau westwards from Madrid.
This spring I finally made it. Auspiciously, my wife and I started with a night at the Ritz in Madrid. It was in redemption of a promise of 10 years ago when I was thrown out for not wearing a tie at lunch.
Things have moved on, and ties are no longer mandatory in the Ritz. With this relaxation possibly something of its original cachet has gone too.
Nevertheless, the Ritz remains one of the great hotels of Europe. Its position is unbeatable, on the edge of the verdant Retiro Park with the Prado and the new Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum on either side.
That exhilarating Castilian zing in the air, the chestnuts all in blossom, mid-April was the perfect time to be there. After a morning gazing at the El Grecos, Velasquez and sinister Goyas in the Prado, we set off with a carefully prepared route card for lunch at Avila, midway to Salamanca.
But disaster struck. Because of some visiting potentate, the police had set up their desviaciones and we became horribly lost.
After an hour of wandering we ended up in a park full of scantily-clad and podgy tarts, uninterested in setting a lost Ingles on the right road.
At last a saintly young motorcyclist led us, with true Castilian gallantry, well out of his way to set us on the road to Salamanca.
Travel Guide: Spain
Luxury on the Costner del Sol
From the Daily Mail
Get this. My sister Steph and I were lounging by the hotel pool and I was just remarking that the guy strolling on the rose terrace looked like Kevin Costner and - oh, my God! - it was Kevin Costner - We whipped off our nose shields, switched on our brightest smiles and for the next three hours held our stomachs in and our chests out in the hope he'd glance our way. He didn't.
Our hotel, the fabulous Son Net, was full of surprises. For a start, it's only half an hour by taxi from Palma airport, lying up in the terraced lower slopes of the Galatzo Mountains, overlooking the village of Puigpunyent.
It is so grand, elegant and tasteful we could hardly believe it actually was in Majorca, an island we'd always associated with boozed-up Brits who wear Union Flag swimwear and sing The Birdie Song. In fact, my impression, as I travelled about the island, is that Majorca, in general, has 'poshed' itself up most impressively, probably in a deliberate effort to deter holiday hooligans.
Son Net, for example, is all rustic beams, stone-flagged floors, vaulted ceilings and restored interiors of stunning opulence. The walls are hung with Hockney, Chagall and Warhol originals. There are pure linen sheets on the antique beds. The marble bathrooms are so sumptuous that I could happily have stayed in mine all day, pampering myself with fluffy white towels and exotic bubble baths.
Then there's the pool - 100ft long, very deep and overlooking the olive and orange terraces of Puigpunyent. Swifts and swallows swoop squeaking over the glittering surface. As we lazed on our deluxe sunbeds we witnessed the latest in poolside cool. A German couple were sunbathing at opposite ends. Her mobile phone rang - and it was him, phoning to ask her to bring him the Factor 30 because he was too hot to move. (Another revelation ... these days, Germans use mobiles, not towels, to bag their sunbeds.)
It's the cool thing at Son Net to wander about wearing your white towelling hotel bathrobe, which made us feel as if we were in some sort of exclusive sanatorium. And at any moment, a nurse might pounce.
Travel Guide: Spain
White knuckle, without the ride
From the Mail on Sunday
You don't actually ride anywhere on the new Temple of Fire ride at the Port Aventura theme park. But in this custom-made Spanish resort you do get quality for your cash.
Following the new fashion, the Temple of Fire attempts to terrify the socks off you not by flinging you around in a rollercoaster but by a series of stunning special effects. Visitors fall foul of an ancient curse and are plunged into an impressive fire storm complete with corpses suddenly rising from murky depths. Everyone is suitably terrified.
I tried it out last week, but I first visited Port Aventura six years ago, a week or so before the place opened. Planned by Anheuser-Busch, Port Aventura, some 60 miles south of Barcelona, had some wild white-knuckle rides, especially the ferocious Dragon Khan roller-coaster. But also impressive was the elaborate theming and the attractive landscaping.
Now part of Universal Studios, Port Aventura looks even better than it did six years ago. It is efficiently managed and spotlessly maintained with an imaginative selection of restaurants and shops.
Business is booming, proving the old adage that it pays to invest - in travel, quality is everything. And with admission priced at £16.30 for a day ticket for adults and £12.24 for children aged five to 13, it certainly offers excellent value for money.
The smart style of Port Aventura stands in contrast to the sadly down-at-heel feel of the nearby resort of Salou, wherein recent years apartment blocks have predominated. From a distance it looks pleasant enough - the resort's main feature is a wide, palm-tree lined promenade that leads to a lovely sandy beach.
But on second glance, the promenade, like the resort itself, with its 'traditional English' pubs and boisterous Dutch bars, is rather shabby.
I stayed at the Blaumar hotel - the rooms are like mini-apartments with cooking facilities and fridges. It was a perfectly fine three-star hotel, and yet - And yet, the essence of a good holiday is to stay in an attractive resort where you feel comfortable and relaxed - and Salou felt a mite too tacky.
This isn't Salou's fault. It's been badly used by the package holiday business, created at a time when we wanted one thing - but now we want another.
Nearby Cambrils, however, has largely been spared the worst excesses of tourist development. Now, however, it has hooked the attention of the major tour operators, who will be keen on more construction. In other words, Cambrils may soon go the way of Salou.
Travel Guide: Spain
Majorca turns the other cheek to reveal its charm
From the Daily Mail
Say you're off to Majorca and most people imagine packed beaches, roasting bodies and late-night congas round the streets of some of the liveliest resorts in the Mediterranean. But you don't have to travel far inland to find a different side to Europe's most popular holiday destination. A few miles from some of the biggest resorts is a tranquil landscape of twisted olive groves, centuries-old pine forest and dramatic mountains.
There is great variety, too: Majorca is a large island and those heading for the peace and quiet of the interior have many options. Where to base yourself, and what sort of accommodation to book depends on what you want from a holiday.
But there's little to challenge the region around Pollensa town in the north of the island. It's best to avoid the area between the town and coast, which becomes flatter and more developed the nearer you get to the resort. Instead, head to the south-west of the town, where old stone farmhouses have been carefully restored and converted into comfortable self-catering villas, often with swimming pools.
Prickly pears, orange and almond trees grow in the gardens. The Sierra de Tramuntana foothills which run along the north-west coast of Majorca, rising to more than 4,000ft in places, make a stunning backdrop.
From this area, the coast is still easily accessible for beach trips. A few miles away lie the small sandy coves at Puerto de Pollensa, Cala San Vicente and the vast sweep of sand at Alcudia Bay. It's also an easy day trip to explore the dramatic headlands or travel north to the Formentor Peninsula.
Another advantage of staying here is that you are within a short distance of Pollensa town with its delicious bakeries, bustling market and cobbled streets. It's a great place to visit at night when the main square comes alive with outdoor bars and cafes full of families enjoying the cool, evening air.
Travel Guide: Spain
If my son can try to balloon around the world, then I'll walk across Spain's highest mountain range
From the Mail on Sunday
The telephone pealed on my 75th birthday. A friend was ringing to invite me on a walking holiday. 'Me, walk?' I exploded. 'Where?' 'The Picos de Europa,' she replied, 'a long rugged range of mountains in northern Spain.' These dramatic mountains, with their deep river canyons, rise steeply from the Atlantic coast, where we would end the walk.
Well, I may still play the odd round of golf, even tennis, but mountain walking? Somehow it had never seemed an option. However, if my son Richard can fly a balloon from Maine to Ireland and from Japan to Canada - crossing three quarters of the world - it would seem somewhat feeble to turn down this invitation.
But a spot of advice was needed, so who better to ask than my 21-year-old grandson, Ned. After all, he has completed a triathlon and the London Marathon and just been awarded the Duke of Edinburgh gold award. 'Gran, you'll need Gore-Tex walking shoes, Second Skin and by the way, don't give up for a blister or two - remember they're only skin deep!' Am I crazy? I leave my cosy home at 6.30am on a cold and blustery morning.
The two-hour flight from London to Bilbao went all too quickly. The sun was beating down as we climbed into our taxi. It drove us west for two-and-a-half hours from industrial Bilbao to the Picos National Park where, with its lush pastureland, meadows and woodland, the Picos Mountains were forever looming in the distance.
Cows and sheep grazed either side; there weren't any other cars or tourists. We were staying mostly in Asturian casonas - village inns with traditional cooking. What joy to have found this truly natural paradise without having travelled too far.
But the following day was to be one of serious walking for me: four-and-a-half hours. Nervously I donned my boots. With haversack slung and walking stick held firmly, my walking companion, Julia, and I set off from the village of Besnes. In the hot sunshine we climbed from 250metres to 400metres where we looked down the Garganta (throat) del Cares, a seven-mile gorge with craggy ridges and jagged limestone summits either side.
Enviously I watched four white-wing-tipped eagles and two griffin vultures soaring on the thermals while the Cares River gushed below. After two hours we came across an old brick shed selling cold drinks - a welcome stop! In my enthusiasm I retied my new boots too tight and the left one rubbed on the ankle for the next two-and-a-half hours.
Each bend in this narrow track offered a spectacular view with the river flowing on through the canyon and not another soul in sight, other than three mountain bikers struggling below. I was limping now, thanks to my boots. Even Ned's Second Skin did not help, but, remembering his instruction not to give up, I trekked on.
Travel Guide: Spain
What a dazzler
Minorca makes Majorca and Ibiza look like Blackpool on a dreary day, A brilliant place for a holiday!
Travel Guide: Spain
Peace and quiet
If you like peace and quiet, this is for you. Lovely beaches. We went in August and this is our third time. We've stayed in the north and the south, both are nice, but maybe the south has a slight edge as it's nearer to places, but that's all. It's easy to drive on the island, too.
The people are lovely and friendly and I wish I could afford to buy out there. Family-wise, it's a little too quiet for older teenagers, maybe.
Travel Guide: Spain
Marbellous!
Until recently, Marbella came pretty near the top of my list of places to avoid, along with pubs boasting giant-screen TV, restaurants where the owners harass you at your table, nightclubs with red rope barriers and so-called 'boutique' hotels.
I'd been to Marbella once in the mid-Seventies and again in the early Nineties and - so I thought - had seen more than enough of Spain's answer to Monte Carlo.
Unless I wished to spend my retirement playing golf in a striped shell suit, or was on the run from some major crime, I couldn't imagine ever returning.
I changed my snobbish mind-set about Marbella three years ago, after desperately seeking a short break for wife, nine-year- old daughter and self to escape the bleakness of Britain just after Christmas.
The best available was at a hotel in Estepona - not quite the dreaded M-word, but a few kilometres along the coast. To our surprise, we all loved it.
The January sun was hot enough for us to sit on the beach, even swim in the hotel pool. Despite their long exposure to the British character, all the people who looked after us were utterly charming.
And, as we found with Monte Carlo, it was possible to have a low-key, not-that-expensive family holiday while the super-rich and mega-paranoid pursued their own affairs on a higher, or lower, level.
Perhaps the nicest moment was seeing in the New Year in Marbella's pretty (yes, really) and unspoilt (I kid you not) town square.
We joined a crowd of locals to drink sweet Spanish Cava and watch fireworks burst beyond the orange trees.
Though regarded as a British enclave, especially favoured by those fleeing the consequences of bank robbery or international fraud, Marbella is a polyglot community.
Travel Guide: Spain
Mallorcan holidays fit for stars
In our celebrity-obsessed world it's only natural to ask: What have Boris Becker and Elle MacPherson got in common? Both seek peace in Mallorca.
Yes, Mallorca (or Majorca to use the more common spelling). The Balearic bliss-out is on offer to the south and west of the island, not in the fabled high-rise resorts to the north.
These breaks are not cheap but afford a chance to holiday like a star.
For a sample of the Mallorcan idyll you could always start with La Reserva Rotana, a 17th-century country manor house hotel, 45 minutes from Palma.
As you would expect of a haven that lodges stars and the very well off, it requires some clever map-reading to find, along dusty and rutted roads.
The reward: a home-from-home set in 500 acres of a working farm - and an 18-hole golf course.
One of the delights of La Reserva Rotana is its slightly roguish, septuagenarian owner, Juan R Theler.
The hotel's drawing-room is adorned with heads from his big game shoots. And once dismounted from his motorbike, he'll tell you how he left Switzerland at 40 to find freedom in Mallorca.
His well-stocked bodega with its clarets and Spanish reservas perfectly complement the long, warm dusks.
To contrast with the rural paradise of La Reserva Rotana, there's the Cala d'Or Hotel set on the south-west coast.
It boasts its own little beach cove overlooked by a tree-shaded terrace - a great place for the family.
Travel Guide: Spain
In search of Real Mallorca
From the Mail on Sunday
As a little treat for myself, I fancied a few days in the sun. Not too far away. A couple of days in a nice quiet hotel by the seaside, followed by a couple of days in a town, ending up with the treat itself. I was going on my own, so I could be totally self-indulgent.
Guess what I did first? Find the hotels? Book the plane? Nope. I got out the fixture list for the Primera Liga, Spain's top soccer league.
Spain enjoys the best football in Europe at the moment, so all its teams are worth watching. And several good clubs are based in popular holiday resorts, places more associated in British minds with sun and sea than soccer.
Three in particular - Las Palmas in the Canaries, Malaga and Mallorca - are very handy for Brits who want a holiday and also to take in a game.
For about 30 years, it's been the other way round. Everybody who goes to Arsenal or Spurs knows that each week hundreds of Scandinavian fans come over on special trips for a long weekend, to do the shops, the shows and the footer.
You see them clambering out of coaches, watch them buy shirts from the club shops, then hear them shouting in unison. If sometimes not very well. It was Norwegian fans shouting 'Gooners' for Gunners which made the native Arsenal supporters adopt it.
I opted for Mallorca. They've recently been doing the best of the holiday resorts (they finished last season in third position, ahead of Barcelona, and earlier this month beat Arsenal in the European Champions League).
Mallorca is also pretty easy to get to. If you go charter it can be hell. Palma airport has the worst record for delayed planes. But I went by scheduled service on British Midland. Well, it was a treat.
Even better, I found myself sitting behind Claudia Schiffer. I recognised her at once, as someone I recognised, but wasn't absolutely sure of her name. Then I saw her picture next day in Mallorca's Daily Bulletin with Boris Becker. No, not coming out of a cupboard. She was kicking off a charity football match.
On arrival at Palma Airport, I caught Michael Douglas and Catherine Thingy-Jones leaving. They have a home on Mallorca, as do many other celebs, such as Richard Branson. In his case he has a posh hotel, La Residencia, and some posh villas.
Travel Guide: Spain
I say Madge-orca
From the Mail on Sunday
You say My-orca, and he says M e e -y o r c a. Meanwhile, I must be the last man alive to still insist on calling it Madge-orca.
I persist in this pronunciation partly in memory of an adorable great aunt of mine who lived on the island of Mallorca, or Majorca.
We used to stay with her every summer and I never heard her pronounce it any other way. 'After all, one doesn't call Paris Par-reey, or Florence Firenzay or Spain Espagna does one?' she would say, and I have never seen any reason to disagree.
But sticking to it tends to undo any conversation, because no one likes to correct you. This leaves a black hole where the subject of the conversation should be. 'We're going abroad for a week,' I would say before we set off.
'Anywhere nice?' 'Madge-orca.' 'Oh . . . yes. We went to My-. We went to, er, there the year before last.'
'Where? Madge-orca?' 'Yes, My-. Yes, that sort of thing.'
And so on. Anyway, my pronunciation seemed doubly appropriate, as we had chosen Majorca for very English reasons: we wanted to slob out in the sun, with a tennis court and a swimming pool and a restaurant all within arm's reach.
The island of Majorca offers, needless to say, much more than just a sunny slobfest: from the air, it is clear that the tourist developments of the past 40 years have really affected only the 19-mile stretch of the Bay of Palma, leaving most of the rest of the island as hilly and green - or verdant, as they say in the travel brochures - as ever.
And it would be perfectly possible to visit Majorca only for its history: Chopin and Sand lived in the monastery at Valldemossa and Robert Graves spent most of his adult life in Deia; meanwhile, beyond the lager'n'chips zone, the old part of Palma is full of elaborate and beautiful architecture, including the huge hilltop cathedral, 500 years in the making, with interior decoration by the young Gaudi.
Travel Guide: Spain
Waxing lyrical in spa heaven
My history with Mallorca goes back a long way. I used to go there to visit Lynne Franks, the Empress of PR.
No, Absolutely Fabulous is not all about her - but there were elements of her behaviour when I went to see her there that would certainly have indicated that it was.
Each summer Lynne used to hold a pagan moon dance at her villa in the village of Deya - gatherings of old, heathen hippies with huge, frizzy hair and those wide, inane grins they all have.
I recall much drumming and Lynne naked in the Jacuzzi with her very young fakir boyfriend. He wore the nappy and had the turban on his head and he would lie down and make us cover him with heavy stones. Then a volunteer would hack at the rocks, breaking them but not him.
He ate fire, walked on broken glass and, I imagine, was great in bed. Lynne would dance naked, swim naked and I always thought: 'How brave.'
Near her villa stood the La Residencia hotel and I fell in love with the place the moment I saw it. It lies in a lush valley with jaggedly dramatic mountains on all sides, which you gaze at from a pear-shaped, turquoise pool, surrounded by white umbrellas.
The rooms are on all levels of the hotel, with balconies that give you a view you can only gasp at. The rooms are modern and cool, with tiled floors, hand-carved, four-poster beds and bathrooms so big you can jog in them.
The hotel, rather than being intrusive, makes the landscape even more beautiful. Behind it are olive groves where you hear the constant tinkling of goat bells. On the other side, a cluster of earth-coloured haciendas lines Deya's tiny streets that wind up and up the hill to the church on top.
It really is the stuff of fantasy, as are the nearby beaches, lined with cliffs and dotted with open-air seafood restaurants.
The village inspired the English poet Robert Graves, who moved here to write and surround himself with his band of muses. Isadora Duncan was one, and a whole tribe of intellectual Bohemians followed her to this tiny paradise. Something of this atmosphere remains.
Travel Guide: Spain
Spain without a plane
From the Daily Mail
Birds do it, bees do it, I'm not sure about educated fleas, but one thing is certain - my sister won't do it. Fly, that is. Trying for years to persuade her that air travel is safer than driving to Safeways has been useless. She's still a one-woman no-fly zone.
But the time had come. . . she had to see Majorca. As far as my family is concerned, it's the most beautiful island in the Med, so if we were to get Diane there, it would have to be the old-fashioned way. After all, train and boat had been good enough for Majorca's most celebrated British resident, the poet Robert Graves, who went to live there in the Thirties and stayed for the rest of his life.
We set out to prove that even aerophobics can make it to the island that has since then become today's most popular holiday destination. My wife, Angela, and daughter, Kate, refusing to join in the spirit of adventure, insisted on flying. My sister Diane and I booked the train from London to Barcelona, and the ferry to Palma.
It takes a day-and-a-half by rail, with some spare time to look around Paris or Barcelona. If you're going to do it this way, you can't hurry. One of the delights is to see the country you're passing through, talk to its people, eat its food and not be sealed up in a flying cigar tube with a plastic tray of limp salad and tons of duty-free booze. So here's how to get to Majorca without wings.
STAGE 1, LONDON-PARIS: Robert Graves never had the advantage of Eurostar, of course, which whisks us from Waterloo to Paris's Gare du Nord, swooping headily through northern France. A perfect run. Arrive 7pm, in plenty of time to cross to Gare d'Austerlitz by Metro, a short-enough journey with no changes.
Travel Guide: Spain
How to enjoy this jewel of the Med with a tacky reputation
From the Mail on Sunday
The British love affair with this Balearic island shows no sign of wilting- more than a million of us will holiday there this summer. Yet for many who visit - and for plenty who decline to do so - Majorca means little more than crowded beaches and English bars. TONY KELLY has been visiting the island in summer and winter for several years and has written or contributed to several guidebooks to Majorca (which the Spanish call Mallorca). Here he shares with us some of his personal recommendations for how to get the best out of a Majorcan holiday.
Best hotels
Majorca has witnessed an explosion of 'country house' hotels in recent years, offering five-star luxury in spectacular settings. Richard Branson's La Residen-cia in Deia led the way but it has now been challenged by Son Net, a 17th century manor house above the mountain village of Puigpunyent. The lavish rooms are all marble and hand-carved furniture, and the poolside terrace looks out over orange groves. In Palma, Palacio Ca Sa Galesa is a delightful British-run hotel in a renovated palace near the cathedral. Guests help themselves to afternoon tea and homemade cakes, and in the evening free sherry is put out in the lounge.
Best restaurants
Sa Tafona, in the Son Net hotel, features expensive new Mediterranean cuisine, such as monkfish with pig's ears, in the tasteful setting of a restored olive press. For something more down-to-earth, seek out Majorca's cellers, traditional restaurants offering hearty portions of old-style Majorcan dishes. Celler Es Port, in the resort of Port de Soller, does a wonderful dish of stuffed aubergines and roast shoulder of lamb. For real Majorcan atmosphere, try Celler Sa Premsa in the back streets of Palma, where the wine comes out of a tap in the wall. Go after 10pm to see it at its best.
Best family resort
Port de Pollenca, in the northeast of the island, attracts a wide mix of ages and nationalities and is perfect for families. Set in a bay surrounded by mountains, it is big enough to have a good choice of restaurants and bars but small enough to have avoided the high-rise developments elsewhere. Pine trees lean into the sea along the beachfront promenade, a great place for an early evening drink. Beyond the harbour, the main beach stretches into the distance and is big enough never to get too crowded.
Quiet beaches
In summer you're never going to be alone, but it's not that difficult to escape the crowds- especially if you hire a car. Skinny-dippers should head for Es Trenc on the south coast, an idyllic beach backed by sand dunes which has long been popular with nudists. The lack of restaurants and facilities here means that it rarely gets crowded, except at weekends. Other peaceful spots are the small coves along the east coast, such as Cala Mondrago near the resort of Cala d'Or, and Portals Vells, reached by a drive through the pine woods from Magaluf.
Biggest surprise
Palma is one of the most civilised cities in Spain, with a fine Gothic cathedral, an atmospheric old quarter, and pedestrian shopping streets hiding all manner of treats, from hanging hams and sausages to hand-carved olive wood and handmade shoes. Most people take one look at Palma on the bus from airport to hotel and never return. But you are really missing out if you don't spend a day here.
Travel Guide: Spain
Deliciously lazy days
From the Daily Mail
As I sat on our villa terrace on the outskirts of town, there didn't appear to be any other houses, just hills stacked up behind me. And yet, from nowhere, children's voices echoed, one squealing more excitedly than the rest, as if riding a rollercoaster. I looked out over the citrus orchard and opened another bottle of Cava.
For four summers, my wife, two children and I had adventurously holidayed beyond Europe - the U.S., the Caribbean, Kenya and Mexico. But my wife had had enough. 'I want somewhere no more than a two-hour flight away, that isn't muggy, and where their night isn't our day,' she said. That sounded like Majorca to me.
Driving through the countryside from Palma airport, it felt like coming home. My first foreign holiday was to Spain, and I can't imagine tiring of the place.
That first evening, we strolled along the promenade at Port de Pollenca. At eight o'clock the nightly paseo was already in full flow, and restaurants and cafes vied for business. By day, those Britons whose migratory path leads them back here each summer can simply stake a claim to a spot along Pollenca's endless beachfront. Or take a short pine-clad drive east or west to smaller bays.
Our neighbours from home were staying ten minutes away in Cala Molina. This was their fifth summer in the same villa, a five-minute walk from the beach. Why do they keep going back? 'Because we're never disappointed,' was the answer.
Though the beach was crowded, there were rocks to jump off, fish to poke faces at through snorkles, and a bar for the parents to sit in the shade while ordering Cuba Libres. 'Simple pleasures!' - was how my neighbour summed up the addiction.
Travel Guide: Spain
Taste of Tapas dancing
From the Daily Mail
Madrid is the highest, greenest and sunniest capital city in Europe. If that's not temptation enough for a long weekend, it also boasts a greater concentration of bars than any other city in Spain.
But where do you start? Ideally, with someone in the know. In my case, Carmen, a friend and Madrilena (resident of Madrid) who has refined the tapas bar crawl to an art form.
She says the key to Spain's capital lies not in its looks - a fascinating fusion of medieval alleyways, Germanic spires and Baroque follies - but in its bars and cafes. These have been the pulse of Madrid's intellectual and social life since the 19th century.
My tour begins on a Thursday night in the first bar we see. It doesn't look promising. A pig's haunch, trotter intact, sits on the counter. Undeterred, Carmen asks for pan y tomate con jamon.
Slices of barely-toasted bread come rubbed in tomato and olive oil and topped with rough- cut, sweet ham. It dissolves in the mouth.
'This,' Carmen announces, 'is ordinary. Now we go in search of extraordinary.'
Tapas in Madrid has undergone a renaissance thanks to some imaginative chefs and attractive venues.
La Taberna de los Cien Vinos is one such new-wave bar. The big, beamed room heaves with young Madrilenos clustered around plates of colourful little pinchos - bread with toppings.
We ask for a selection and get a platter bearing a sumptuous mosaic of salt cod, foie gras, smoked salmon, roast lamb, smoked cheese, black pudding, guacamole and prawns. At midnight, we head to our beds, fit to burst.
Outside, Madrid gears up for the evening ahead.
Travel Guide: Spain
Is this the cultural capital?
Madrid is more probably the cultural capital of Spain than Seville, if there is such a thing.
It has the Prado and the Reina Sofia for art (pictures include Las Meninas and Guernica - probably the most famous paintings in the world after the Mona Lisa). There are also a number of lesser-known museums, the Sorolla, for example, and a thriving opera, contemporary art and concert life. It has the only cathedral completed in the 20th century.
Within an hour of Madrid you have: El Escorial - the palace as tomb, Toledo - which has El Grecos lying all over the place, Segovia - huge Roman viaduct, Aranjuez, er, concierto de Aranjuez, Alcala de Henares, birthplace of Cervantes, and Chinchon with its statue of the woman who gave us the G&T,
Seville has even less in terms of culture than Granada or Cordoba, although superficially it is more attractive. It's also full of pickpockets.
Travel Guide: Spain
Party the night away
Myself and five other friends aged between 17 and 21 partied the nights away in the main holiday resort of Puerto Del Carmen and it was the best two weeks of holidays I have every experienced.
I would recommend this resort to anyone because the resort has hundreds of bars and night.
Although Lanzarote may be portrayed as a family island I can definitely say that there were places there for everyone and the night clubs were excellent!!!!!
Travel Guide: Spain
Dark land of the winter sun-seeker
From the Daily Mail
For good-value winter sun it's hard to beat the Canaries, and harder still to beat Lanzarote. It might not have quite the nightlife of Tenerife or Gran Canaria, and there's no doubt the harsh volcanic landscape is not to everyone's taste, but Lanzarote's beaches, resorts and atmosphere make it my pick of the Canary Islands.
It has attractive, low-rise, whitewashed developments and the beaches are good, with soft sand and plenty of space in the bigger resorts. There are some wonderfully unspoilt strands in the south of the island, and spectacular, wave-battered bays in the north-west. Inland is just as pretty - with a handful of traditional villages, and in the north some impressive mountains and caves. Here's my island guide . . .
Puerto del Carmen is the largest resort on the island, stretching for several miles behind a wide expanse of soft (though rather greyish) sand which has plenty of room for all-comers. With by far the liveliest nightlife on the island, it appeals mostly to younger people and families with teenagers.
In the evenings it fairly hums, and the atmosphere is young and loud. The Centro Atlantico, right in the middle of the promenade, is where most nightspots are clustered. If you like a bit of life, but don't want to risk being kept awake into the early hours, look for accommodation around the old port at the southern end of the resort and on the cliffs beyond that. There is a more restrained atmosphere here, and some good fish restaurants.
Playa Blanca has long been my top choice for a family holiday in the Canaries. The resort has three sandy bays backed by an attractive seafront of cafes, restaurants and shops. It's particularly appealing to young families - baby buggies are a common sight. A big choice of self-catering accommodation stretches back from the beaches.
But note that Playa Blanca might be becoming too popular for its own good. To meet demand, building work continues on its outskirts so it's worth checking with your tour operator that there is no work going on near where you'll be staying.
If you are feeling adventurous, about a half-hour's drive down rough tracks from Playa Blanca are the wonderful sandy bays at Papagayo. They are sheltered, unspoilt and uncrowded (although more and more people are getting to know about them). Take your own food and water.
Costa Teguise is to the north of Puerto del Carmen, and more exposed to the wind. This is another extensive resort. Overall, the standard of accommodation is very good, but I don't rate the beach as highly as others on the island, and some parts of the resort, especially those a little inland, can seem soulless. However the windsurfing is excellent so it's popular with the surfing and sailing crowd.
Travel Guide: Spain
Victory sealed at last with a kiss
From the Daily Mail
This was more of an experiment than a holiday. Taking a sulky teenage daughter away with her demanding four-year-old brother would be difficult enough. But for this family, the tensions resulting from our daughter Maria's four-year battle with anorexia have been known to go off the dial. Where could we go for a relaxing, safe, family break? The island of La Palma in the Canaries provided the answer.
Living day-to-day with the illness places impossible demands on any family. Holidays are not a rest, but an extended endurance test. I would not have taken the risk if Maria had not recently made a good recovery. Her twin sister Katy, also once a sufferer but now well, had given us hope. Going on holiday again with Maria seemed worth a try.
Our son, Joseph, seemed blissfully unaware of my anxieties as he helped me pack for our week-long trip to the smallest, and least-known, of the Canary Islands. 'Is Mawea coming with us?' he asked delightedly. It seemed a good omen for family bonding.
I could not have chosen a better location. Although all our family (except Joe) had been to Tenerife before, La Palma was completely different, and, from a parent's point of view, more enticing. Not only was it extremely wild and beautiful, but there was a distinct lack of high-rise hotels and trashy souvenir shops that have so marred the rest of the Canaries. But what would Maria make of it?
We had come at just the right time of year, with vivid purple, fuchsia, and red flowers filling the terraces. The parador itself, complete with pool, gymnasium and sauna, was a cool and stylish traditional Spanish building, with stunning views of the harbour and the island's capital, Santa Cruz de la Palma. I liked it, and so did Maria. 'It's great - like a posh retirement home,' she said.
We decided that the formality and public glare of the dining room was probably not the best idea for our first night, and chose the mix-and-match of room service instead. This turned out to be a lot of fun, with Joseph running wild in his pyjamas as a procession of friendly waiters arrived bearing plates of smoked ham, salads and local fish.
The bread was newly-baked, with a slightly sweet taste that was absolutely delicious. We all sat in our twin-bedded room happily picnicking off the floor. Afterwards I realised that, for once, food had been a pleasure and not an ordeal. Everyone had eaten what they wanted with relish. I went to bed wishing every day could be like that.
Travel Guide: Spain
The man from the Ministry
From the Mail on Sunday
Night-clubbing is a risky business. You spend years hunting the 'it' place of 'now', only to find afterwards that you paid a fortune getting into 'that' dump of 'then'.
So what good news for clubbers to hear that the disco organisation Ministry of Sound has tracked down the elusive 'it', fortuitously to a hotel it owns.
Ministry has opened the Bahia in San Antonio, Ibiza, the first 'clubbers' hotel' with 'non-stop action'. I've witnessed many hotels becoming clubbers' hotels with non-stop action, but in the old days they called the police.
But now, with clubbers a market force - 1.5 million of them alone buy holidays to Ibiza each year - the Bahia could become the hotel of the future.
Already it is one of the world's first digital audio hotels with MP3 music players in every room, its own Internet radio station and more sci-fi experiments planned.
I had been expecting something that looked like a disco, with a neon bar, a light-up floor and a Japanese economics student dressed as Boy George passed out in the corner.
The Bahia looks like what it is - a converted German family hotel, more Moat House than Studio 54.
However, assuming that the vast pulling power of the Ministry does summon hordes of alarmingly dressed youngsters and the world's most overpaid disc jockeys to parties at its poolside bar, 'it' could happen here.
And if you have only to lean over your balcony to join in, that's luxury. As 'the hotel of the future', the Bahia is being used as a test site for futurist gadgets.
Travel Guide: Spain
My haven on isle of sin
From the Daily Mail
The announcement of my imminent departure to Ibiza engendered a number of responses. Most took the form of mild disdain. 'Why on earth do you want to go there? It's supposed to be awful.' Others cracked lame jokes about 'doing' drugs and dancing the night away in a trawl of the clubs that have made this island so notorious.
Hardly the sort of thing for a respectable 34-year-old with three children under seven. Only one person gave me encouragement - a friend who had lived on Ibiza for two years and for whom the very mention of the place conjured the fondest memories. She assured me that, for family holiday, her island would not let us down. And it didn't. In fact, I now have a six-year-old son whose vision of heaven on earth is a small beach on the rugged north-east coast of Ibiza.
For all its sins, Ibiza has countless saving graces. On the one hand, there's the tackiness of mass-market tourism - crude architectural 'holiday' developments, mile on mile of inflatable crocodiles and sleazy bars posing as Ye Olde English Pub. On the other hand, there is a gloriously serrated coastline, punctuated by small, generally sandy coves, and there is inland Ibiza - quite mountainous, yet with swathes of fertile, deep red soil, and pretty rural villages like Santa Gertrudis and San Carlos.
Our personal saving grace came in the form of 15 flower-filled acres, at the centre of which stood an elegantly rambling country house, known to most as Can Lluqui but, to my fickle children, quite simply as 'home'.
We had taken the villa option for a number of reasons, primarily for space and privacy. I was tired of worrying whether noisy children were ruining someone else's holiday and loath to spend another week with one, if not all, of them in my bedroom. How many times, too, have I ordered costly children's meals, only to see them shunted away, untouched?
Supermarket shopping in Europe is infinitely more exciting than a trip to your local Sainsbury's and it is by far the cheapest way to keep your children adequately fed and watered. In Ibiza, the main supermarket is so technologically advanced that you can pay for your shopping in your own national currency, and even in those strange things called euros.
'Home' was larger than we needed - parts of the garden remained undiscovered and we never quite got to grips with the outdoor bar or barbecue. But the hammock, slung beneath a natural canopy of bougainvillea and hibiscus, and the swimming pool became the focus of our attentions. Our days fell into a fixed pattern of mornings at 'home' by the pool, and afternoons on the beach - a different one each day, of course.
And therein we discovered that the real joy of Ibiza is its size - no journey took longer than 45 minutes in the car. In the south-west of the island, not far from 'home', we enjoyed our afternoon at Cala Vadella, regretted our trip to the overcrowded Cala Tarida and were delighted by, though not entranced with, Cala d'Horte - hailed incorrectly, in my view, as the loveliest beach on Ibiza.
My advice is to head north, where the landscape mutates from parched, rocky insignificance to sensuous, pine-clad loveliness. The drive to the picturesque cove at Cala Xaracca gave us our first taste of northern pleasures and although the beach was stony there were shells aplenty to keep the children occupied for hours.
Travel Guide: Spain
Fantastic family fun
Our apartments in Playa d'en Bossa were fantastic value for money - the location for the family perfect, set right on the beach. Lots of activities for the kids and adults alike - beach volley ball, jet skis etc. Lovely clean pools and, although within close location to the shops and bars, it wasn't noisy at night. The small town has lots going on at night, fun bars for the kids - street artists and spray painters like you've never seen before.
Hair braiding and local jewellery are also on offer and lots of very reasonable restaurants - my firm favourite is La Paloma, who do fantastic breakfasts and meals. On our last evening we went the full hog and had starters, mains and huge ice creams with sparklers - the lot for my family of five came to about £50 with drinks, free lollies and vodka liqueurs. I would fully recommend the location to anyone looking for a good-value holiday with children in mind.
Travel Guide: Spain
Hot-foot through secret Spain
From the Mail on Sunday
Spanish tinned food is not something you would want to write home about. Nor Spanish beds. Nor Spanish road signs, for that matter. But we did have a good walk, my wife and I - about 60 miles in all through the Andalucian mountains.
What with El Nino doing the decent thing by way of keeping the sierra still verdant in June and the holiday organisers having our luggage sent on from hotel to hotel to await us at the end of each day, it seemed as civilised as route marching over rugged mountains gets.
But it had its hairy moments. We got lost on a mountain for about an hour. It would have to happen when my wife had just slipped on a rock and pulled a muscle. I was reading The English Patient and my mind was racing. Ahead we could see a big black cave.
I thought: 'This is it. Wife stays in cave with sprained ankle watching the enormous eagles circling overhead while I stumble on for help.' Wife thought that because she had the only anorak I would probably expect to stay in the cave while she stumbled on for help.
But most of the time it was hay fever wot did me in. I followed my wife on her ten-mile-a-day treks, blinded by stinging eyes and sneezing that stopped and started according to the pollen count of the wild flowers.
We were in Grazalema National Park, a mountainous chunk of Andalucia an hour's train journey due north from Gibraltar. You should really go in March to early May before the countryside gets the leathery look of your dusty boots. We went in June and offered a prayer of thanks to El Nino and the unseasonal rain and cool weather that had kept in bloom the flowers and plants which by rights should have died a month before.
Reds, soft yellows, gold, purple, blue, white and cream all spread across the meadows and up the hillsides. I cannot name the plants. That is for my wife, the planter and gardener. I know daisies and poppies and there were lots of them, but much more besides.
Sierra de Grazalema is in that part of Spain known for its white hillside villages where the Moors lived. It radiates out from Ronda, a cliche of an Andalucian hill town the charabancs visit from Torremolinos, Fuengirola, Marbella and Estepona on the coast.
We didn't see any tourists in the mountains. There were plenty of goats, several head of cattle, a few pigs, far too many barking dogs, lots of singing birds and once or twice a fellow human being. We liked it that way.
Travel Guide: Spain
Beyond the Alhambra
No sooner had I pointed out the Plaza de Toros than a uniformed man on a moped pulled alongside the car, flipped up his helmet visor and gesticulated for us to wind down the window.
'Are you lost?' he asked. We nodded. 'Pull over,' he ordered. 'I'll help you.' I know, I know. If the uniform had been bogus and he'd pulled a knife, it would have served us right. Except that pinned to his breast pocket was a Tourist Information badge - which thankfully was genuine.
As he pored over a map, indicating the pedestrian-only zone encircling the city centre, he explained that in Granada a fleet of information officers scour the streets for tourists to assist.
The Alhambra was our principal reason to visit Granada. The red fortress, which stands atop Sabika Hill in the Sierra Nevada, is recognised as the most important medieval citadel in the Western world.
There is no 'must-do' tourist agenda here, so visits to the Sacromonte and the Federico Garcia Lorca Museum (he was executed during the Spanish Civil War), and the chance to potter about ancient chapels and convents, were an added treat.
What our helpful information officer omitted to tell us was that while the Alhambra appears to be a breezy stroll from the central Plaza del Carmen, it isn't. There are plenty of buses and taxis going up there, but we zig-zagged up the road to the summit.
Once inside, the maze of fortresses is mightily impressive, looming over Granada to the south and the Sierra Nevada to the east. Centuries of fortifying, intricate masonry, sculptures and ornate paintings meant meandering in and out of the complex took most of the day.
The chance to study Granada from a height draws most tourists to the outer walls of the Alcazaba. Below sits the cathedral and to the west is the Albayzin, the whitewashed old gipsy quarter, where residents still talk of going 'down' to Granada, so precarious is the descent.
Looking down on a jumble of Seventies blocks alongside monuments such as the Cuarto Real (a 13th-century royal retreat), the city is an architectural shambles - which isn't surprising: the Romans, Iberians, Barbarians, Berbers and Moors all left their cultural marks.
Granada has an unpretentious, careworn appearance, and its half-hearted infiltration by tourists has yet to make any real impact on its centre. Perhaps the relaxed atmosphere is due to its thriving student population of 60,000.
Travel Guide: Spain
Hot but not much more
It's mid-December in Europe. When you get off the plane you brace yourself for that chill wind, and the best bit is... it doesn't hit you.
Gran Canaria is, undeniably, a safe bet for winter sun, and you can see the attraction in that.
It's just a pity that its best feature is really its only one, and obsessed as Brits are with it, it's not really enough to entertain most people for a week.
Gran Canaria is described as a continent in miniature because of its varied landscape. Really, it's more like two nations; the fertile north - in which the Canarians live and work - and the arid, concrete-covered south where the tourists holiday without a drop of Spanish food, culture, language or passion.
If sun and sand are your only drives, then you can happily spend a week lazing on a sun lounger.
Indeed, families are well-catered for - with a number of fun attractions and plenty of activities. For the independent traveller, it's a complete disaster.
We struggled to keep ourselves entertained, and our only rescue, the mountains, were frustratingly inaccessible. It's worth hiring a car and climbing the snaking passes through the stunning mountains to find where the Canarians are hiding.
But, be warned, the roads are not for those with faint hearts and low fuel.
Certainly worth a visit are Teror in the north, Puerto de Mogan on the southern coast, and the Maspalomas dunes. The rest of the southern coast is charmless and under construction.
Cheap package bargain, yes. Satisfying holiday, no.
Travel Guide: Spain
Where we are forever young
From the Daily Mail
There is a white Andalucian village in the Ronda hills where our four children will be forever teenagers. It has no disco, no nightclub or even a piano bar.
There is nowhere to buy CDs or hire a Vespa, and no internet cafe.
The closest beach is nearly an hour away. If a girl were to walk along one of its steep little streets in a bikini, old men would goggle and old women in black would spit in the gutter.
Describe this place to your average 16-year-old and tell him this was where the family planned to spend the summer holidays and he would look at you aghast, as if you were sentencing him to a fortnight in a retirement home.
The idea of a family holiday in itself is pretty off-putting at that age.
Yet mention the name of this village to our son, now 18, and his three older sisters and their faces light up, as they have done for the past dozen years or so, ever since our first holiday in Gaucin.
It was partly to do with the house we rented, a few miles outside the village. It had ceiling fans and an ice-making machine.
The Sevillan tiles, the miniature Alhambra patio and the giant oak front door made it feel as though Casa Gandolfo had been there for a hundred years, though it was actually the same age as our eldest daughter.
It was partly to do with the pool, which was not blue and rectangular but greenish and irregular and surrounded by rocks, like a mountain lagoon. There were underwater lights for night-time skinny-dipping.
Maybe even the views down the valley to the old town of Jimena de la Frontera and its ruined Moorish castle contributed to the romance.
Travel Guide: Spain
Don't tell the others
The beach I'm standing on is somewhere on the wild, wave-bashed Costa da Morte.
Quietly, I'm gloating over the fact that I've got here first. Even the Germans don't seem to have discovered this one.
Traba beach - hidden away off the main road between the idyllic Gallego fishing villages of Laxe and Camelle - is a reminder of what Spain was like before mass tourism arrived.
It boasts an unbroken one-and-a-quarter mile curve of fine white sand, set after perfect set of translucent turquoise-tinted breakers, and a backdrop of rolling green hills unblemished by holiday condos and cheap paella joints.
Welcome to the costa the tour companies forgot about.
OK, to tell the truth I am not totally alone. Behind me, sitting on the dunes eating their lunch - protective white overalls unzipped to reveal combat jackets - about 50 young Spanish army recruits are taking a break from a task they never envisaged.
For the past three months they have been helping clear up the damage caused by the 14,000 tonnes of highly toxic crude oil that spilled out of the tanker Prestige last November.
The spotless state of Traba today, less than eight months after the first slicks came ashore, says a huge amount about the tireless work of the Spanish army and the thousands of volunteers who came here from all over Spain to clean up the mess.
The Costa da Morte, the Coast of Death, extends in a heavily indented curve between the Galician cities of La Coruna and Santiago de Compostela.
In ancient times this most westerly corner of Europe was known as Dutika Mere - the region of misfortune.
Pilgrims once trekked here to see what was then considered to be the end of the world - Finis terrae in Latin or Fisterra in the local dialect - and the entire area is littered with the remains of Swabian and Visigoth backpackers.
Unfortunately, Columbus's discoveries rather killed off the 'World's End' T-shirt trade and Spain's most rugged coastline simply became renowned for its lighthouses and the ships that failed to be warned by them.
Travel Guide: Spain
Finding culture on the Costa Blanca
If you thought the Costa Blanca offers nothing more than tawdry towerblock hotels and egg and chips culture, think again.
Because Xabia (pronounced Havea) and the surrounding areas, with their Moorish influences and moreish cuisine, could not be further from the stereotype in style and substance.
Staying at the resort's four-star El Rodat hotel, the beauty of Spain's Valencia district is on your doorstep and waiting to be explored.
If you crave the quiet life, the hotel has its own pool and being within a mile of the beach is far enough to escape the throng but close enough to walk.
Its chefs cater for all tastes and the H'anoa, the hotel's signature restaurant, serves a blend of refined European and traditional Spanish cuisine.
Xabia, on the Costa Blanca's south-east tip, is the perfect base from which to explore the region.
The town boasts a wide range of restaurants, bars and local markets serving traditional Spanish food and beaches to rival many on the Mediterranean.
A trip to the mountain town of Guadalest provides a great visual introduction to the Valencia region's history.
The site was chosen as a strongpoint to fend off Moorish raiders in the middle ages and many of buildings have been preserved in their original state.
Higher areas are accessible through a cutting in the rock, highlighting how the town was able to fend off raiders.
The church area and look-out posts at the top of the mountain provide stunning panoramic views of the surrounding countryside and coast.
The historic beauty spot offers a wide selection of shops and restaurants serving authentic Spanish food.
Returning down the hillside affords the opportunity to taste a host of dishes at the Nou Salat, including the chef's speciality traditional paella with garlic mayonnaise.
The Costa Blanca's expansive coastline of beaches and beauty spots extends along and beyond the town of Xabia.
Travel Guide: Spain
Lively lava landscape
From the Daily Mail
When you first land at Lanzarote airport, you could be forgiven for thinking the pilot got rather ambitious, and diverted to the moon. The landscape of this Canary Island is unique, a skyline stuffed with volcanoes.
There are vast seas of black rock and lava, of scrub and heathland dotted with whitewashed houses clustered against the severity of the surrounding countryside.
Lanzarote is the land where nature lost its temper, where volcanoes exploded and lava surged through the island for six long years, 250 years ago, and created a landscape little changed, even now.
None of this is what Lanzarote is known for, however. Lanzarote is burger bars, black beaches, bargain basement. It's cheap 'n' cheerful, chips 'n' chicken nuggets.
For heaven's sake, anywhere whose name rhymes with 'grotty', is doomed before it starts.
Yet this perception, both unfair and roughly accurate, is what makes Lanzarote fascinating. It mixes the incredibly stylish with the insufferably naff; sophisticated architecture and ambitious projects with downmarket, low-rent, high-return developments.
One of the best examples of this is in Costa Teguise, location of the Gran Melia Salinas hotel, one of the island's most luxurious.
This is the kind of hotel where chambermaids pop in to puff up your pillows and rearrange your towels every time you leave your room.
Five restaurants within the walls of Gran Melia Salinas and not a chicken nugget for love nor money. Two minutes away, though, you can't get anything but.
Travel Guide: Spain
The Costa del Solitude
There is something almost unbearably melancholy about the Costa del Sol in the winter, when the brilliant blue of the summer sky turns pewter and winter drizzle dampens the palm trees.
Call me idiosyncratic, but I prefer it in winter.
For me there's a heart-rending, wistful charm to the slick wet cobbles of the towns along the southern Spanish coast when the rain is pouring down and tables, covered with puddles, stand stacked up outside the cafes.
The local inhabitants may have to wrap themselves in their overcoats and brandish their umbrellas, but they also seem more relaxed, more themselves, when there aren't thousands of tourists swamping them.
Take Marbella, a town I've come to know and love over the years.
This month I sat in one of my favourite restaurants - the beach club of the excellent Hotel El Fuerte, on the Playa del Venus, the city centre's smartest beach - and watched the seagulls scavenge for bread on the dark sand as the drizzle swept in from the Mediterranean.
There may not have been any breathtakingly beautiful young women desporting themselves topless on the Playa's sun loungers, in fact the loungers were all stacked away.
But in their place were ladies walking their dogs, mothers taking their children to a cafe and elderly couples strolling arm-in-arm.
There was compassion in the air of the sort there never is during the furnace months of July and August.
In the Plaza de los Naranjos, a film of water coated the oranges already hanging from the branches, and the old ladies wore supermarket bags on their heads to protect their hair.
You get more of a sense of the town that Marbella really is, rather than the one that the tourists think they know.
For example, you'll find the pastry shops and cafes as full on a December day as they would be in the summer, but packed with locals rather than tourists, spending a wintry afternoon in animated conversation. They would never dream of going to such places in the summer.
Travel Guide: Spain
Roque star of the Costa
From the Mail on Sunday
As well as the 'Costa' (a strong pound has made property very affordable) and the 'Sol' (reputedly 350 days a year), the other big attraction of southern Spain for the Brits is now golf. The signs on the N340, which runs from Gibraltar to Malaga, have been amended accordingly: below Costa del Sol they have added Costa del Golf. This just in case you hadn't noticed the dozens of courses, which have become part of the landscape like remnants of green carpet thrown down in a desert.
Thousands of retired Brits now sip their sangria at the 19th hole and, if they are nostalgic for the UK, they can go and sit in a jam on the coastal freeway, which will remind them of the northbound M1 on a Friday night.
Given that no one in our family can tell a seven iron from a putter and resorts such as Estepona, San Pedro and Alcaidesa (spreading, mock-Moorish urbanisations with cranes standing around like grazing giraffes and gritty, unattractive beaches) hold little appeal, we came clean and owned up to the children that, along with buckets and spades, guidebooks had been packed and some sightseeing was on the agenda.
We drove north from San Roque, where we were staying, looping round the mountain roads until the Rock of Gibraltar and the coastline of North Africa were distant specks. At the point where the children had given up hope that there was anything at all to see, Ronda came into view, impossibly perched on the top of a cliff.
Ronda is one of the better known 'pueblo blancos', so named because they are whitewashed in Moorish style. It is probably the most spectacularly positioned town in Spain, split by a dramatic gorge, the Tajo, with the two parts of the town joined by an 18th-century bridge spanning the 300ft drop.
As we wandered down the main street, we caught glimpses of the pale yellow Andalusian landscape at the end of little alleyways. It was as if we had climbed to the 25th floor of a skyscraper and were looking down on the rest of the world.
Travel Guide: Spain
Nelson's Trafalgar is a triumph for Spain
From the Daily Mail
Well it's certainly nothing like Trafalgar Square,' muttered the stout lady from Sevenoaks. Joan and her husband Bill were looking out to Cape Trafalgar - the rocky headland that juts into the Atlantic Ocean off the southern coast of Spain.
This is where Nelson fought his last and greatest victory, in 1805. While Joan chatted to me about her holiday plans on this, the unspoilt Costa de la Luz, Bill scanned the lighthouse gates for a memorial to the great seafarer's triumph. He found none.
I peered at the restless sea, imagining the British admiral pacing the quarterdeck, giving orders to the captains of his four frigates to fire against French and Spanish fleets, and, as he lay dying, thinking loving thoughts of Emma, Lady Hamilton.
Were he alive today, Nelson would surely have recognised this stretch of sun-baked southern Spain. Endless arcs of fine, white sand, often backed by pillowy banks of dunes, tiny fishing villages with Moorish castle ruins and simple, bleached cottages can have changed little since the early 19th century.
Even the tuna fishing industry still plays a significant role. In neighbouring Zahara de los Atunes, the crumbling walls of the sea-facing Almadraba castle, built by the Dukes of Medina, was once a depot for tuna fishers.
Today's fishermen employ more modern methods for catching and canning, but the fish is not just exported; scan the menu at the Grand Sol, the pretty two-star hotel opposite, and tuna figures prominently.
And many of the cars parked beneath the orange trees on Calle Sanchez Rodriguez bore the Malaga registration plate - evidence that the Costa de la Luz remains primarily a Spanish secret. It is easy to see why.
Here are untouched beaches and superb sands - at Zahara, a broad, talcum powder-soft strand stretching for 12km - and all within an hour's drive from the crowded resorts of the Costa del Sol. But tranquility comes at a price. This is the Atlantic, and so the sea is cooler, and the winds can be rough.
For Tarifa, at the tip of Spain and the first stop on the 100km coastal stretch that runs as far as Cadiz, these winds are a positive boon.
This is wind-surfers' paradise: a dusty, dreary town which hosts year-round competitions. On a clear day you can look across the Atlantic swell and the wind-surfers' colourful sails, all the way to Africa - a short boat ride south.
Travel Guide: Spain
The Costa del Dali
From the Daily Mail
Long derided as the spiritual home of the straw donkey and bucket-and-spade brigade, the Costa Brava, that stretch of fading resorts between Barcelona and the French border, is in danger of becoming fashionable again.
Part of the reason is Salvador Dali.
The eccentric Spanish surrealist artist, who was born and lived most of his life in the region, bequeathed his memorial museum to the town of Figueres.
It's now the second most-visited museum in Spain.
Along with Cadaques, a former fishing village where Dali lived most of his life, Figueres has been quick to cash in on the connection with the area's most famous native son.
There are touches of Dali everywhere: Dali cafes and bars; a Dali statue overlooking the seafront in Cadaques; a Dali sundial on the façade of a local hotel; even a 'Dalicattessen' in Figueres.
Dali's mystique has given Figueres and the northern Costa Brava a new cachet. It's not just about sun and sand any more; it's about art, too.
Figueres entertains tourists by the coachload to visit the surreal Teatre-Museu Dali, a fantastic fortress-like, reddish-ochre building topped with rows of the artist's trademark eggs.
Many then make the pilgrimage to Cadaques, 30km away on the coast.
Just outside the town, in the village of Port Lligat, is the Casa-Museu Dali, where the artist and his equally eccentric wife Gala lived from 1948 until her death in 1982.
The house, built over the remains of a pair of fishermen's cottages, is topped with yet more eggs.
Travel Guide: Spain
Pining for the hills of the Costa Brava
From the Daily Mail
At 9pm, the Costa Brava's Tamariu beach was still busy with children playing volleyball or careering after each other into the sea.
A huddle of five middle-aged male Catalans flexed their mahogany bodies attempting to stiffen flagging pecs. Old friends, they prodded each other and laughed at their age-ravaged decline.
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