Most people’s knowledge of Pamplona begins and ends with those eight minutes of chaos each July when bulls and runners tear through cobbled streets. Which is a shame, because there’s considerably more to this elegant Navarrese capital than its famous encierro. The city sits at the foot of the Pyrenees …
Salamanca catches people off guard. Most visitors know it has one of Spain’s oldest universities and some impressive architecture, but few expect how the city glows golden at sunset or how the student population shapes its atmosphere. The nickname “La Ciudad Dorada” (Golden City) isn’t marketing hyperbole – the Villamayor …
Granada does something no other Spanish city quite manages – it makes you feel like you’ve stumbled into somewhere that shouldn’t exist anymore. Here’s this Moorish palace sitting on a hill, surrounded by Islamic gardens and medieval Arabic quarters, with the Sierra Nevada providing snow-capped backdrop most of the year. …
The Mezquita-Cathedral of Córdoba stops most visitors mid-stride the first time they step inside. You think you’re prepared – you’ve seen photographs of those famous red-and-white striped arches, read descriptions of the forest of columns, maybe watched a video or two. Then you actually walk in and the scale, the …
Gijón doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t, which makes it rather refreshing after Spain’s more self-consciously picturesque destinations. This is a working port city on Asturias’ Atlantic coast that’s been shaped by industry, maritime trade and coal mining as much as tourism. The beaches are genuinely excellent, the Roman …
Santander operates in the shadow of its better-known Basque neighbours, and frankly, that’s worked rather well for it. Whilst San Sebastián deals with international food pilgrims and Bilbao manages Guggenheim crowds, this elegant Cantabrian capital gets on with being a proper functioning city that happens to sit on one of …
San Sebastián has been pulling off this remarkable balancing act for over a century – maintaining Belle Époque elegance whilst remaining genuinely Basque, functioning as a sophisticated resort town without losing its soul, achieving world-class culinary status without becoming insufferable about it. The city sits on Spain’s northern coast just …
Valencia has spent decades playing third fiddle to Barcelona and Madrid, and honestly, that’s worked rather well for it. Whilst those two cities deal with overtourism and eye-watering prices, Spain’s third-largest city has quietly got on with being brilliant – developing one of Europe’s most audacious architectural projects, maintaining proper …
The decision to build the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao was, by any measure, audacious. Spend hundreds of millions on a contemporary art museum in a declining industrial city that most Europeans couldn’t locate on a map? The opposition was fierce and entirely reasonable. Why not spend that money on schools, …