EVEN people who struggle to stifle a yawn at the mention of the word 'history' shouldn't rule out visiting museums on trips to Spain – unless they also hate chocolate, toys, beer, arts and crafts, space,...
Which is the most popular town in each of Spain's provinces, and why?
06/02/2021
SHOWN a map of Spain and asked to name the most popular town or village in each province for day-trippers or weekends away, most of us would already have several candidates in our heads for the parts of the country we know reasonably well.
But there's a strong chance we'd get it wrong – a recent study has thrown up names that have even taken full-time residents of a given province or region by surprise.
Not, perhaps, because they struggle to think of anything particularly interesting about the locations named, but more because they rarely hear them mentioned.
And yet, the figures can't lie: The 'popularity' rating comes from search engine data, or how often and to what extent they are googled.
Tourism activity and excursion site Musement looked uniquely at towns and villages of 20,000 inhabitants or fewer, but even then, the results turned out to be largely unpredictable.
In some cases, they are not surprising, especially if you know what's in them. For the Balearic Islands, Valldemossa (Mallorca) came out top – a quaint little village with a spectacular Cartuja monastery where French novelist George Sand and Polish composer Frédéric Chopin famously spent a winter together, and which is replete with souvenir shops selling copies of the former's A Winter in Mallorca in several languages and CDs of the latter's music.
The most popular of the most popular
Of the most popular per province, the most popular overall was Peñíscola (Castellón), famous for its stunning Mediaeval castle overlooking a beach which is an ideal summer hang-out without being overly touristy.
Next is Llanes (Asturias), replete with Mediaeval heritage and home to the world's smallest (and most unusual) beach, and Hondarribia (Guipúzcoa), about 20 kilometres from the seaside city of San Sebastián in the Basque Country, an absolute stunner with its multi-coloured balconies and shutters.
In miniature: Fewer than 750 residents
The smallest locations that turned out to be the favourites in their provinces include Guadalest (Alicante), just a few kilometres inland from Benidorm but a world away in every other sense and one of social media influencers' favourite sites in the Comunidad Valenciana and probably one of its most unusual and unforgettable; Miravet (Tarragona), a short drive from the Costa Daurada and built at the foot of a hill topped by a Mediaeval castle and surrounded by the river Ebro delta, which is literally in its back garden; Pedraza (Segovia), in Castilla y León, which looks as though you're in the middle of a set for a period film, with its Mediaeval cobbled square, low-slung stone houses, aged wooden beams and columns; and, also in Castilla y León, Medinaceli (Soria), with its Roman Arc-de-Triomphe-style arch, stone-fronted convent, and its archaeological themed activity centre, and which is widely held to be one of the most beautiful villages in the region.
All of these have fewer than 750 inhabitants; Guadalest only has 209.
Cultural history
Literature-lovers will not be surprised to hear why Consuegra is the most popular town in the province of Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha, just south of Madrid; it's right on the route Don Quijote de la Mancha took in his epic adventures documented by his creator Miguel de Cervantes, author of the best-selling novel in Spain's history.
As you'd expect, it's full of those iconic white windmills so intrinsically linked to the hapless wannabe knight and his long-suffering fat companion Sancho Panza.
Also on the cultural history side, Trujillo (Cáceres) in Extremadura is where you can follow the route of the original colonists: The Coria Museum showcases the centuries-old ties between Spain and its new world, Latin America, and the Pizarro House Museum, originally the home of Francisco Pizarro, details the life of the man who 'conquered', or rather invaded, the Inca Empire in Perú. Also, close to the Costa Brava, Cadaqués (Girona), a beautiful whitewashed fishing village, was famously a source of major inspiration for artists of world renown such as Dalí, Picasso, Ramón Pichot, Eliseu Meifren and Marcel Duchamp, whose works and traces are found everywhere and whose names have, understandably, been milked by the local tourism authorities.
Picturesque
Some towns and villages have made the 'popular' list just because they're pretty. Comillas (Cantabria), very green and coastal, is one of the few places you can see Gaudí's whacky, psychedelic architecture outside of Barcelona.
Along with more famous hotspots like the Sagrada Família cathedral and the giant mosaïc Parc Güell, a restaurant in the centre of Comillas is instantly recognisable as one of the celebrated building designer's works: Green and red, tiled on the outside, with a spire; worth popping in for a meal just to say you've been there and, as a bonus, is not as expensive as you'd imagine.
And for jaw-dropping mountain scenery, green and vast most of the year and snow-covered in winter, are Jaca (Huesca), in the Pyrénées of Aragón, Albarracín (Teruel) at the southern end of Aragón – sitting 1,182 metres above sea-level and, like many of this province's beautiful villages, rustic, crumbling, ancient and still with one foot firmly entrenched in a life that ended elsewhere centuries ago – Cervera de Pisuerga (Palencia), in Castilla y León, right in the heart of a gorse-coated, verdant mountain nature reserve with grazing Jersey cows seen through your window, the classically-elegant Mediaeval town of Lerma (Burgos), also in Castilla y León, and the whitewashed village of Cazorla (Jaén), in inland Andalucía, nestled into the mountain range of the same name with its caves, woodlands, wild deer and gushing mineral streams whose contents are bottled and sold in supermarkets and restaurants nationwide.
In the south and east
Another whitewashed town just as popular with 'mainstream' holidaymakers – those seeking sun, sea and sand – is Mojácar (Almería), the main hub of which is reached via winding lanes up a hill, as is Guadix (Granada), famous for its 'cave houses', which are surprisingly warm in winter, not at all lacking in natural light or suffering from damp, and many of which are renovated inside and exceptionally modern in décor and facilities.
Guadix, along with Osuna (Sevilla), are the only two on the 'most popular' list with 17,000 or more inhabitants – yet another whitewashed village, with narrow streets, ornate balconies, countryside views at every turn, very neat and clean-looking, and right on the nationally-famous 'Washington Irving Route', which follows the trail of the author through the provinces of Granada and Sevilla.
In the north-west of the province of Huelva – the last one to the left on Spain's southern coast before you hit Portugal – a hilltop castle overlooks the cluster of white houses with terracotta-coloured roofs that is Aracena, within which is the Gruta de las Maravillas (literally, the 'cave of wonders', and that's not a description you'll argue with once you get inside it) and the Ham Museum (Museo del Jamón) which tells you all about one of Spain's tapas-menu staples, jamón Serrano.
The next province along to the east, Cádiz, contains a village that will cause you to do a double-take when you first clap eyes on it: Setenil de las Bodegas (photos seven and eight) looks, for all the world, as though the side of the mountain has 'melted' over the top of the houses, creating a natural roof, and along part of the main street, even looks as though a giant meteor had plopped into the middle and got stuck between the two facing rows of buildings.
Up a bit, the province of Córdoba needs little introduction for Spainophiles, with its spectacular UNESCO-heritage Great Mosque, an enormous indoor optical illusion, in the capital city of the same name; here, and elsewhere in the province, the world-renowned 'floral balconies' competition keeps things colourful year-round. One of the most regular winners and a UNESCO site in itself is the Patio con Duende ('Patio with Imp') in the village of Rute, which is also one of the country's biggest producers of Anís, or aniseed liqueur; you can visit the distillery and the museum, and should make sure you get a photo of the 'Anís monument' in the town centre – and of the country's biggest chocolate nativity scene, the Belén de Chocolate.
White, quaint, with car-free cobbled streets, surrounded by mountains and greenery and watched over by a Mediaeval Arab castle, Frigiliana (Málaga), in the first picture above, is widely held to be one of Andalucía's most beautiful towns – it doesn't have lots of monuments and attractions, locals say, because the village itself is a monument and an attraction.
Adventure tourism, like canoeing, white-water rafting and mountain-hiking, are some of the pulls of the 12th-century town of Moratalla (Murcia) in Spain's south-east, but so are its numerous Roman, Mediaeval and prehistoric Iberian settlements, unearthed by archaeologists and now open to visitors, and its fascinating cave art.
Tucked away in the Sierra Mariola mountain range, close to the river Clariano and the source of the Vinalopó which runs to the south of the next province, Bocairent (Valencia) is popular for hikers and nature-lovers, famed for its Moors and Christians festival – which takes place across most of the former Moorish-occupied territories every year, but which some towns really go in for in a big way in terms of size, creativity, choreography and general mise en scène – and as it's literally carved into the side of a mountain, is not short of caves or stone edifices. Everything about its centre seems to be ancient, rock-hewn, solid, and its scenery quite dramatic, and its historic quarter (or should that be even more historic quarter, given that it's pretty much all historic) is a myriad of cobbled streets, aged wooden doorways, hilltop house clusters, and balconies overflowing with greenery.
In the Canary Islands
Stepping off the mainland, the most popular town in the Canary Island province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (made up of the islands of Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro) is Garachico, in Tenerife itself, overlooking a rock out to sea of the same name, and which was completely rebuilt after the Trevejo volcano destroyed it in 1706. Its banana farms, fishing port, natural bathing pools in the El Caletón area, and its landscape – over 50% of which is covered in pine forest and volcanic rock, with the old and newer parts of the town separated by a huge cliff – make it a regular day-trip destination for holidaymakers of all nationalities in Tenerife.
In the province of Las Palmas (made up of the islands of Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and La Graciosa), the town of Teror is something of a pilgrim's route: It is home to the basilica of the Virgin of the Pine, patron saint of the Diocese of the Canaries and, of course, of the tree she is named after. The three natural springs, El Principal, the Agua Agria and the El Molino, along with the Doramas nature reserve and the Azuaje and Moya ravines, are also acclaimed visitor attractions in a town where wooden beams and balconies that would not look out of place in the north of the mainland jostle with pre-colonial architecture similar in structure to that of Latin American towns before the 'conquerors' got there make for a curiously attractive and eclectic streetscape.
Where haven't we mentioned?
In the north-western region of Galicia, the most popular towns are Betanzos (A Coruña), Ribadeo (Lugo), Cambados (Pontevedra), and, in the only one of the four provinces without a coast, Allariz (Ourense).
In Castilla y León, the most popular towns not yet listed here are Puebla de Sanabria (Zamora), Astorga (León), Tordesillas (Valladolid), Ciudad Rodrigo (Salamanca), and Arenas de San Pedro (Ávila).
Madrid's most popular town is Chinchón, and elsewhere in Castilla-La Mancha the top towns are Sigüenza (Guadalajara), Belmonte (Cuenca), Alcalá del Júcar (Albacete), and Almagro (Ciudad Real).
Extremadura's other province, Badajoz, is reportedly most-searched for the village of Zafra, whilst Tarazona in that of Zaragoza, Aragón, is listed as top.
The spectacular Mediaeval fairytale castle in Olite is the number one destination for day-trippers in Navarra, as is Haro in its neighbour, La Rioja and, in its neighbours on the opposite side, the Basque Country, Laguardia is the most popular town in the province of Álava, of which the capital is Vitoria, and Bermeo is in that of Vizcaya, the capital of which is Bilbao.
In Catalunya, where we've already mentioned Cadaqués and Miravet, the most-searched towns were Cardona (Barcelona) and Solsona, in the region's only land-locked province, Lleida, which borders the Pyrénées.
Related Topics
SHOWN a map of Spain and asked to name the most popular town or village in each province for day-trippers or weekends away, most of us would already have several candidates in our heads for the parts of the country we know reasonably well.
But there's a strong chance we'd get it wrong – a recent study has thrown up names that have even taken full-time residents of a given province or region by surprise.
Not, perhaps, because they struggle to think of anything particularly interesting about the locations named, but more because they rarely hear them mentioned.
And yet, the figures can't lie: The 'popularity' rating comes from search engine data, or how often and to what extent they are googled.
Tourism activity and excursion site Musement looked uniquely at towns and villages of 20,000 inhabitants or fewer, but even then, the results turned out to be largely unpredictable.
In some cases, they are not surprising, especially if you know what's in them. For the Balearic Islands, Valldemossa (Mallorca) came out top – a quaint little village with a spectacular Cartuja monastery where French novelist George Sand and Polish composer Frédéric Chopin famously spent a winter together, and which is replete with souvenir shops selling copies of the former's A Winter in Mallorca in several languages and CDs of the latter's music.
The most popular of the most popular
Of the most popular per province, the most popular overall was Peñíscola (Castellón), famous for its stunning Mediaeval castle overlooking a beach which is an ideal summer hang-out without being overly touristy.
Next is Llanes (Asturias), replete with Mediaeval heritage and home to the world's smallest (and most unusual) beach, and Hondarribia (Guipúzcoa), about 20 kilometres from the seaside city of San Sebastián in the Basque Country, an absolute stunner with its multi-coloured balconies and shutters.
In miniature: Fewer than 750 residents
The smallest locations that turned out to be the favourites in their provinces include Guadalest (Alicante), just a few kilometres inland from Benidorm but a world away in every other sense and one of social media influencers' favourite sites in the Comunidad Valenciana and probably one of its most unusual and unforgettable; Miravet (Tarragona), a short drive from the Costa Daurada and built at the foot of a hill topped by a Mediaeval castle and surrounded by the river Ebro delta, which is literally in its back garden; Pedraza (Segovia), in Castilla y León, which looks as though you're in the middle of a set for a period film, with its Mediaeval cobbled square, low-slung stone houses, aged wooden beams and columns; and, also in Castilla y León, Medinaceli (Soria), with its Roman Arc-de-Triomphe-style arch, stone-fronted convent, and its archaeological themed activity centre, and which is widely held to be one of the most beautiful villages in the region.
All of these have fewer than 750 inhabitants; Guadalest only has 209.
Cultural history
Literature-lovers will not be surprised to hear why Consuegra is the most popular town in the province of Toledo, Castilla-La Mancha, just south of Madrid; it's right on the route Don Quijote de la Mancha took in his epic adventures documented by his creator Miguel de Cervantes, author of the best-selling novel in Spain's history.
As you'd expect, it's full of those iconic white windmills so intrinsically linked to the hapless wannabe knight and his long-suffering fat companion Sancho Panza.
Also on the cultural history side, Trujillo (Cáceres) in Extremadura is where you can follow the route of the original colonists: The Coria Museum showcases the centuries-old ties between Spain and its new world, Latin America, and the Pizarro House Museum, originally the home of Francisco Pizarro, details the life of the man who 'conquered', or rather invaded, the Inca Empire in Perú. Also, close to the Costa Brava, Cadaqués (Girona), a beautiful whitewashed fishing village, was famously a source of major inspiration for artists of world renown such as Dalí, Picasso, Ramón Pichot, Eliseu Meifren and Marcel Duchamp, whose works and traces are found everywhere and whose names have, understandably, been milked by the local tourism authorities.
Picturesque
Some towns and villages have made the 'popular' list just because they're pretty. Comillas (Cantabria), very green and coastal, is one of the few places you can see Gaudí's whacky, psychedelic architecture outside of Barcelona.
Along with more famous hotspots like the Sagrada Família cathedral and the giant mosaïc Parc Güell, a restaurant in the centre of Comillas is instantly recognisable as one of the celebrated building designer's works: Green and red, tiled on the outside, with a spire; worth popping in for a meal just to say you've been there and, as a bonus, is not as expensive as you'd imagine.
And for jaw-dropping mountain scenery, green and vast most of the year and snow-covered in winter, are Jaca (Huesca), in the Pyrénées of Aragón, Albarracín (Teruel) at the southern end of Aragón – sitting 1,182 metres above sea-level and, like many of this province's beautiful villages, rustic, crumbling, ancient and still with one foot firmly entrenched in a life that ended elsewhere centuries ago – Cervera de Pisuerga (Palencia), in Castilla y León, right in the heart of a gorse-coated, verdant mountain nature reserve with grazing Jersey cows seen through your window, the classically-elegant Mediaeval town of Lerma (Burgos), also in Castilla y León, and the whitewashed village of Cazorla (Jaén), in inland Andalucía, nestled into the mountain range of the same name with its caves, woodlands, wild deer and gushing mineral streams whose contents are bottled and sold in supermarkets and restaurants nationwide.
In the south and east
Another whitewashed town just as popular with 'mainstream' holidaymakers – those seeking sun, sea and sand – is Mojácar (Almería), the main hub of which is reached via winding lanes up a hill, as is Guadix (Granada), famous for its 'cave houses', which are surprisingly warm in winter, not at all lacking in natural light or suffering from damp, and many of which are renovated inside and exceptionally modern in décor and facilities.
Guadix, along with Osuna (Sevilla), are the only two on the 'most popular' list with 17,000 or more inhabitants – yet another whitewashed village, with narrow streets, ornate balconies, countryside views at every turn, very neat and clean-looking, and right on the nationally-famous 'Washington Irving Route', which follows the trail of the author through the provinces of Granada and Sevilla.
In the north-west of the province of Huelva – the last one to the left on Spain's southern coast before you hit Portugal – a hilltop castle overlooks the cluster of white houses with terracotta-coloured roofs that is Aracena, within which is the Gruta de las Maravillas (literally, the 'cave of wonders', and that's not a description you'll argue with once you get inside it) and the Ham Museum (Museo del Jamón) which tells you all about one of Spain's tapas-menu staples, jamón Serrano.
The next province along to the east, Cádiz, contains a village that will cause you to do a double-take when you first clap eyes on it: Setenil de las Bodegas (photos seven and eight) looks, for all the world, as though the side of the mountain has 'melted' over the top of the houses, creating a natural roof, and along part of the main street, even looks as though a giant meteor had plopped into the middle and got stuck between the two facing rows of buildings.
Up a bit, the province of Córdoba needs little introduction for Spainophiles, with its spectacular UNESCO-heritage Great Mosque, an enormous indoor optical illusion, in the capital city of the same name; here, and elsewhere in the province, the world-renowned 'floral balconies' competition keeps things colourful year-round. One of the most regular winners and a UNESCO site in itself is the Patio con Duende ('Patio with Imp') in the village of Rute, which is also one of the country's biggest producers of Anís, or aniseed liqueur; you can visit the distillery and the museum, and should make sure you get a photo of the 'Anís monument' in the town centre – and of the country's biggest chocolate nativity scene, the Belén de Chocolate.
White, quaint, with car-free cobbled streets, surrounded by mountains and greenery and watched over by a Mediaeval Arab castle, Frigiliana (Málaga), in the first picture above, is widely held to be one of Andalucía's most beautiful towns – it doesn't have lots of monuments and attractions, locals say, because the village itself is a monument and an attraction.
Adventure tourism, like canoeing, white-water rafting and mountain-hiking, are some of the pulls of the 12th-century town of Moratalla (Murcia) in Spain's south-east, but so are its numerous Roman, Mediaeval and prehistoric Iberian settlements, unearthed by archaeologists and now open to visitors, and its fascinating cave art.
Tucked away in the Sierra Mariola mountain range, close to the river Clariano and the source of the Vinalopó which runs to the south of the next province, Bocairent (Valencia) is popular for hikers and nature-lovers, famed for its Moors and Christians festival – which takes place across most of the former Moorish-occupied territories every year, but which some towns really go in for in a big way in terms of size, creativity, choreography and general mise en scène – and as it's literally carved into the side of a mountain, is not short of caves or stone edifices. Everything about its centre seems to be ancient, rock-hewn, solid, and its scenery quite dramatic, and its historic quarter (or should that be even more historic quarter, given that it's pretty much all historic) is a myriad of cobbled streets, aged wooden doorways, hilltop house clusters, and balconies overflowing with greenery.
In the Canary Islands
Stepping off the mainland, the most popular town in the Canary Island province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (made up of the islands of Tenerife, La Gomera, La Palma and El Hierro) is Garachico, in Tenerife itself, overlooking a rock out to sea of the same name, and which was completely rebuilt after the Trevejo volcano destroyed it in 1706. Its banana farms, fishing port, natural bathing pools in the El Caletón area, and its landscape – over 50% of which is covered in pine forest and volcanic rock, with the old and newer parts of the town separated by a huge cliff – make it a regular day-trip destination for holidaymakers of all nationalities in Tenerife.
In the province of Las Palmas (made up of the islands of Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, Fuerteventura and La Graciosa), the town of Teror is something of a pilgrim's route: It is home to the basilica of the Virgin of the Pine, patron saint of the Diocese of the Canaries and, of course, of the tree she is named after. The three natural springs, El Principal, the Agua Agria and the El Molino, along with the Doramas nature reserve and the Azuaje and Moya ravines, are also acclaimed visitor attractions in a town where wooden beams and balconies that would not look out of place in the north of the mainland jostle with pre-colonial architecture similar in structure to that of Latin American towns before the 'conquerors' got there make for a curiously attractive and eclectic streetscape.
Where haven't we mentioned?
In the north-western region of Galicia, the most popular towns are Betanzos (A Coruña), Ribadeo (Lugo), Cambados (Pontevedra), and, in the only one of the four provinces without a coast, Allariz (Ourense).
In Castilla y León, the most popular towns not yet listed here are Puebla de Sanabria (Zamora), Astorga (León), Tordesillas (Valladolid), Ciudad Rodrigo (Salamanca), and Arenas de San Pedro (Ávila).
Madrid's most popular town is Chinchón, and elsewhere in Castilla-La Mancha the top towns are Sigüenza (Guadalajara), Belmonte (Cuenca), Alcalá del Júcar (Albacete), and Almagro (Ciudad Real).
Extremadura's other province, Badajoz, is reportedly most-searched for the village of Zafra, whilst Tarazona in that of Zaragoza, Aragón, is listed as top.
The spectacular Mediaeval fairytale castle in Olite is the number one destination for day-trippers in Navarra, as is Haro in its neighbour, La Rioja and, in its neighbours on the opposite side, the Basque Country, Laguardia is the most popular town in the province of Álava, of which the capital is Vitoria, and Bermeo is in that of Vizcaya, the capital of which is Bilbao.
In Catalunya, where we've already mentioned Cadaqués and Miravet, the most-searched towns were Cardona (Barcelona) and Solsona, in the region's only land-locked province, Lleida, which borders the Pyrénées.
Related Topics
More News & Information
SEEING the world through the proverbial rose-tinted spectacles is fairly typical when you're on holiday, and for newly-settled expats once they get the practical hurdles of a move abroad out of the way. Of course,...
VALENCIA'S world-famous 'Gulliver Park' is undergoing a massive overhaul, meaning it will be shut until late next year – but the city council promises it will be worth the wait.
EACH region in Spain has its own day of the year where it celebrates itself, rather like a birthday but without the age increase involved. Sometimes, a 'regional day' just involves a public holiday, a day off...