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,...
Top-rated attractions in every Spanish province
11/07/2021
ONCE again, 'staycations' are set to make up the bulk of Spain's tourism this summer, especially as Spanish residents themselves are not planning on heading abroad just yet – a study shows that 91% of those intending to take a holiday before the start of the school term will be going somewhere within their home country.
But within it, most expressed a desire to see another part of it: The latest report by the National Tourism Output Observatory (ObservaTUR) claims 71% are seriously thinking of visiting a different region to the one they live in.
It is likely many have not yet decided exactly where – although the coasts and islands are likely to be popular, as are any places where the travellers have friends or family – and could be seeking inspiration.
Wherever they end up, there's at least one major attraction in every single province worth the trip on its own; and all provinces have plenty of sights to see, so it's not always easy to pick out the ones you really don't want to miss if your time there is short.
Luckily, to help us along, holiday excursions organiser Musement has created a handy little map where we can see at a glance which have been given the most top ratings on Google by those visiting.
Compiling the map meant narrowing it down from 4,500 popular sites – not even including lesser-known ones that might be just as popular if they were discovered – to a mere 52, or one for every province.
Favourite attractions you could probably guess at
Some were the obvious choice for their province. Granada was always going to be the Alhambra Palace – although its other huge attraction, the Sierra Nevada National Park, also a key skiing resort, is shared with the province of Almería, and was the top-rated for here. For Huelva, it was clearly going to be the Doñana National Park, whilst for Barcelona, the Sagrada Família cathedral was one of several of these that would probably make up the main, or even only, initial reason for a visit there, such as the sublimely-beautiful cathedral in Burgos, Castilla y León, widely thought to be one of the most attractive in the world, and its rival for the crown, that of Santiago de Compostela in the province of A Coruña, Galicia.
For Segovia, the mammoth Roman aqueduct and in its neighbour, Ávila, the city wall, are what everyone would have expected to be chosen, and probably the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, too – no surprises there.
Madrid could have earned the most five-star ratings for any of its 'Big Three' art museums, the Reina Sofía, El Prado and Thyssen-Bornemizsa, or for its Royal Palace, although nobody will be amazed to find it was the massive, green Retiro Park, a 'rural' haven in the urban sprawl with boating lakes and tree-lined avenues, which turned out to be the favourite.
Provinces not so well known to international, or even national, travellers are marked on the map by the visitor site which, if you've been there, you would have expected to come out on top – like León cathedral, and for the Extremadura province of Badajoz, it would clearly have to be one of the key features of Mérida's stunning Roman city; the one rated highest was the theatre, a structure which has no need for any inferiority complex provoked by world-famous wonders like Ephesus in Turkey or the Forum in Rome itself.
Roman structures typically earn great ratings, as you can imagine: Along with Mérida, and the one in Sagunto just north of Valencia, probably the best-preserved, most spectacular and, evidently, most-loved in Spain is the amphitheatre or colisseum in Cartagena, in the south-eastern single-province region of Murcia.
In a number of provinces, hazarding a guess at the top attraction would mean deciding from a fairly obvious shortlist, but the results still might have surprised you.
Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences (Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias) might not; its futuristic design is so captivating you might forget to go inside the buildings themselves, which include the Prince Felipe Science Museum and the Oceanogràfic, Europe's largest aquarium and marine veterinary centre, along with the Umbracle semi-covered gardens, the Ágora stadium and the opera house, the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. Complexes and buildings of similar or even inferior beauty draw in tourists from both hemispheres and every continent, so this amazing site ought to be way more high-profile than it actually is.
In the same region, packed with attractions ranging from nature reserves to historical heritage, the province of Alicante's highest-rated, the Santa Bárbara castle in its capital city, was not necessarily a given, but would not shock anyone familiar with the area; likewise in the province of Castellón, where Peñíscola castle – right on the beach, and one that is rarely crowded as northern European tourists largely have not yet discovered it – got the most five-star reviews.
Two of these three were chosen, for its 'regional day' on October 9, as the best-loved visitor venues and views in the Comunidad Valenciana according to social media influencers – they made some excellent choices, which you can read about here.
Just across the water, the top-ranked attraction in the Balearic Islands – a province as well as a region – is Palma cathedral in Mallorca; again, not the obvious star of the show above any others (it should have been at least level-pegging with the Coves del Drach caves), but one which would not surprise anyone. The same can be said of Sevilla, where the enormous Plaza de España was the favourite out of several very likely candidates.
Cantabria, too, could have had a few sites neck and neck for the honour of naming on the map – such as the Cabárceno open-air mountain safari park, the lighthouse at Santander, the Picos de Europa National Park, or the whole town of Santillana del Mar, with its solid Baroque structures, overflowing wooden balconies and quaint, cobbled streets – but it would not produce widespread amazement to learn that it was the El Capricho restaurant building in Comillas, a green-and-red mosaïc tower designed by Antoni Gaudí, the brains behind the Sagrada Família and Barcelona's colourful Parc Güell, which came out smiling.
San Sebastián's La Concha beach in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa – so named because it is shaped like a shell, or concha – was a probable all along; the region is so proud of it that winners at the city's film festival get golden or silver conchas.
And among the vast countryside of the province of Cuenca, between Valencia and Madrid, with its hidden natural pools that make up for its lack of a beach (Minglanilla comes highly recommended for these), anyone who knows the area would suspect straight away that the famous 'hanging houses' in the capital would win hands-down.
We did not see that coming
In other provinces, though, the top-ranked visitor hotspot was far from what one would expect. Who would have thought that, in Córdoba, it wouldn't be the Great Mosque, that must-see optical illusion of arches layered upon arches that lead people to travel right across the country to experience it in the flesh? Or even its explosion of balcony bloom in the city's patios during the annual flower festivals? Turns out it was the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, or the fortress of the Catholic monarchs, that took the red rosette.
And in the province of Málaga, the stunning beaches of the Costa del Sol and a whole host of other obligatory tourist magnets took a back seat to the Puente Nuevo bridge in one of the area's most-visited towns, the historic gem of Ronda.
Although we can't argue with either choice, because they're both beautiful.
Likewise the province of Teruel, where the crumbling, ancient villages dotted among vast expanses of countryside and mountains that seem to change shape and colour at every turn in the road, might have yielded more obvious choices such as the Gúdar nature reserve in Camarena de la Sierra (a ski resort in winter and walker's paradise in spring, summer and autumn), or Teruel Mudéjar cathedral with the sculptures of its famous 'lovers', Diego and Isabel, Aragón's answer to Romeo and Juliet, or even the Dinópolis dinosaur dig and theme park, has as its star-rated attraction the Plaza del Torico in the capital. But it's definitely worth the five-out-of-five internet-users gave it.
And in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands – made up of Tenerife itself, La Gomera, El Hierro and La Palma – hands up who thought it would be the Teide National Park, where you can walk right into the crater of an active volcano? No – it was the safari centre Loro Parque. In truth, though, animals are always worth the maximum ranking, especially where you can see them up close in environments designed to mirror their natural habitats, and where you can see they're happy and well cared-for, and that's certainly the case here. To this end, the provinces of Alicante, Valencia and Málaga respectively might have easily gained top ratings for Terra Natura in Benidorm, BioParc Valencia, and BioParc Fuengirola.
In the other Canarian province, of Las Palmas – made up of Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and La Graciosa – we might have chosen the dramatic, desert-like Timanfaya National Park or the sunset-reflecting Janubio salt flats in Lanzarote, but the winner deserves the honour: Los Jameos del Agua, a volcanic cave-tunnel housing a brilliant-blue salt-water lake, and even a theatre and a restaurant.
Read more about incredible, once-in-a-lifetime sights in Tenerife and Lanzarote, and in the Balearic Islands, too, in our article here, and see if it inspires you to book a trip.
Cathedrals, mainly
Another province where a theme park rather than a nature reserve, monument or similar structure came out on top was Tarragona, the most southerly in Catalunya, where the globally-acclaimed Portaventura World was ranked highest – likewise in Guadalajara, Castilla-La Mancha, to the north-east of Madrid, where its zoo was number one – although in the rest of Catalunya, other than the 155,000 five-star ratings the whacky, unique Sagrada Família netted, the most popular visitor magnets were the Dalí museum in the province of Girona, and in that of Lleida, the capital city's Romanesque cathedral, known as La Seu Vella.
Cathedrals feature fairly regularly on the map. As well as the two in Catalunya and the famous ones in Santiago de Compostela, León, Palma and Burgos are the highly-unusual and beautiful Santuario de Covadonga ('Covadonga Sanctuary') in Asturias – a basilica and church literally set inside a cave up a mountain – Zaragoza's stunning Nuestra Señora del Pilar Basilica, Cádiz cathedral (right on the Costa de la Luz), the Santa María de la Redonda Co-Cathedral in Logroño, La Rioja (a Mecca for fans of wine-region tours, but not Spain's only one), and Toledo cathedral, often referred to as La Primada and another one said to be among the most stunning on earth. Read more about what to see in Toledo – and also Sevilla – and see some splendid photos of both in our article here.
Unchartered waters you won't regret navigating
Provinces international travellers, at least, may not be familiar with include Navarra – also a region – whose Olite castle and Royal Palace are straight out of a fairytale or Disney scene, with their pointed spires and turrets; if you can't get to Neuschwanstein in Germany any time soon, Olite is a great substitute nearer home – Lugo, in Galicia, where the Roman city wall is worth its five stars; Soria, in Castilla y León, where the huge, ornamental greenery of the capital city's Alameda de Cervantes park and botanical garden gets rave reviews; Ciudad Real, in the central part of the mainland, where the four-square, solid, turreted riverside Peñarroya castle in the town of Argamasilla de Alba is tourists' favourite (and in a province with Don Quijote windmills, volcanoes and geysers, it must really be worth the detour); Valladolid, in Castilla y León, a province where the purest received Spanish is reportedly spoken and another where a city park is rated best of all – the Campo Grande, with its ornate fountains, ponds and even peacocks wandering freely among the public (unfortunately, for this reason, dogs are not allowed in) – Pontevedra, in Galicia, where the ancient, ornate Hórreos, or fishermen's shacks, along the beach in Combarro are oozing with everyday history; and Cáceres, in Extremadura, where the elaborate Renaissance central square in the town of Trujillo has notched up 9,241 ratings.
Also for urban parks, La Florida in Vitoria – a city voted as National Geographic's 'Best of the World 2021' destination – is the most-rated for the inland province of Álava, in the Basque Country.
And one other central square chosen as top site in its province, along with those of Trujillo and Teruel, and which anyone who has visited would entirely approve of, is the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca in Castilla y León – huge, classical, stately and in keeping with the élite, erudite air of the 'Oxford of Spain', the city where the nation's first-ever university was founded.
Rural wonders
For nature-lovers, along with Spain's network of 16 National Parks – and we haven't yet mentioned the Ordesa y Monte Perdido in the Pyrénées, among the most sublime parts of the Spanish countryside and the most-rated visitor site in the province of Huesca – there are more major nature reserves or areas of outstanding natural beauty, officially catalogued as 'Natural Parks', than you can shake a stick at. In fact, wherever you live or are staying in Spain, there'll be at least one of these within about a 20-minute drive from you, possibly within walking distance, and not farther away than the next town or village.
They range from salt flats to inland and marine marshes through to mountain ranges or even just one mountain and its surrounding fields, to open greenery, to forests or woodlands, and sometimes encompass parts of the coast. Special conservation orders mean they can never be built upon, their flora and fauna enjoy extra protection, and of course, guided trips to them – boat rides, in some cases – are usually easy to find to help you get the best out of them.
In fact, along with the City of Arts and Sciences, the best-rated site in the province of Valencia could have been the huge Albufera salt marshes, and for Alicante, the Pego-Oliva rice fields and marshes or the Montgó mountain, among many others.
The river Sil Canyon, in Galicia's only land-locked province – that of Ourense, just above Portugal – has 6,755 reviews on Google and you can explore it from above, look out across it from the numerous viewing points, or even take a cruise down it.
In the far-western province of Zamora, in Castilla y León, bordering northern Portugal, the Lake Sanabria and Segundera and Porto mountains in Galende are among the most breathtaking views you'll ever experience (and you can go on a guided kayak trip through it, too). And in the same region, in the province of Palencia, the Palentina Mountains are often snow-capped even at the warmest times of the year with their peaks swimming in the clouds; unsurprisingly, they're also a popular ski resort.
The province of Albacete in Castilla-La Mancha, just to the west of that of Alicante, is home to dramatic mountains and huge waterfalls in the Los Calares del Mundo y de la Sima 'Natural Park' in Riópar, part of which is the majestic-looking Sierra de Segura, a mind-blowing photo of which you can find in our article on where to find Spain's brightest autumn colours.
Finally, if you've ever bought a bottle of water from a supermarket or restaurant with the name 'Cazorla' on it, you now know that it comes from the mineral springs in the 'Natural Park' of the same name in the province of Jaén, inland Andalucía – mountains, pine forests, canyons and deep, bright-turquoise rivers, gushing waterfalls, valleys and ravines, it's no wonder, really, that the Sierra de Cazorla, which also shares the Sierra de Segura with Albacete and neighbouring Murcia, is the highest-ranked visitor site on the Musement map.
Offshore
We always hear that there are 17 autonomously-governed regions in Spain, but in reality, there are 19 – although two of them have a special classification as they are each made up of just one municipality, both a large town of around 85,000 to 90,000 inhabitants.
Ceuta sits just across the water from Gibraltar, on the northernmost tip of the western part of the African continent, and Melilla is directly due south of the Andalucía province of Almería, about 1,000 kilometres west of the Algerian border. Both are on the coast and land-bordered on three sides by Morocco.
Despite their location, the people, the architecture, the language, the culture, are every bit as 'Spanish' as the mainland and islands, although as is often the case when countries are next door to each other, some overspill of their neighbouring nation is seen in the backdrop and, of course, the natural scenery is Moroccan. Likewise, large parts of mainland Spain have a heavy North African feel to them, as a result of over seven centuries of the majority of the population being descendants of the Arab settlers known as the 'Moors'.
One example of this hybrid, in architecture, is Ceuta's top-rated attraction – although it has another somewhat exclusive twist to it. The Casa de los Dragones ('House of Dragons'), is precisely that: Gigantic sculptures of dragons in flight adorn the coronation and look, for all the world, as though they'd just landed. Very Harry Potter, or Terry Pratchett, and with intricately-carved arches in elaborate, painstaking detail to feast your eyes on.
Melilla's number one visitor site is its exotic, artistic and enormous Hernández Park – mosaïc-patterned tiled boulevards lined with dense palms, fascinating topiary or hedge sculptures, fountains, bright colours and botanical gardens, oceans of greenery and numerous species of flowers and shrubs, and with a children's playground in the middle, this is usually one of the first parts of Melilla visitors head to, especially if they're seeking a relaxing walk or a picnic.
Related Topics
ONCE again, 'staycations' are set to make up the bulk of Spain's tourism this summer, especially as Spanish residents themselves are not planning on heading abroad just yet – a study shows that 91% of those intending to take a holiday before the start of the school term will be going somewhere within their home country.
But within it, most expressed a desire to see another part of it: The latest report by the National Tourism Output Observatory (ObservaTUR) claims 71% are seriously thinking of visiting a different region to the one they live in.
It is likely many have not yet decided exactly where – although the coasts and islands are likely to be popular, as are any places where the travellers have friends or family – and could be seeking inspiration.
Wherever they end up, there's at least one major attraction in every single province worth the trip on its own; and all provinces have plenty of sights to see, so it's not always easy to pick out the ones you really don't want to miss if your time there is short.
Luckily, to help us along, holiday excursions organiser Musement has created a handy little map where we can see at a glance which have been given the most top ratings on Google by those visiting.
Compiling the map meant narrowing it down from 4,500 popular sites – not even including lesser-known ones that might be just as popular if they were discovered – to a mere 52, or one for every province.
Favourite attractions you could probably guess at
Some were the obvious choice for their province. Granada was always going to be the Alhambra Palace – although its other huge attraction, the Sierra Nevada National Park, also a key skiing resort, is shared with the province of Almería, and was the top-rated for here. For Huelva, it was clearly going to be the Doñana National Park, whilst for Barcelona, the Sagrada Família cathedral was one of several of these that would probably make up the main, or even only, initial reason for a visit there, such as the sublimely-beautiful cathedral in Burgos, Castilla y León, widely thought to be one of the most attractive in the world, and its rival for the crown, that of Santiago de Compostela in the province of A Coruña, Galicia.
For Segovia, the mammoth Roman aqueduct and in its neighbour, Ávila, the city wall, are what everyone would have expected to be chosen, and probably the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, too – no surprises there.
Madrid could have earned the most five-star ratings for any of its 'Big Three' art museums, the Reina Sofía, El Prado and Thyssen-Bornemizsa, or for its Royal Palace, although nobody will be amazed to find it was the massive, green Retiro Park, a 'rural' haven in the urban sprawl with boating lakes and tree-lined avenues, which turned out to be the favourite.
Provinces not so well known to international, or even national, travellers are marked on the map by the visitor site which, if you've been there, you would have expected to come out on top – like León cathedral, and for the Extremadura province of Badajoz, it would clearly have to be one of the key features of Mérida's stunning Roman city; the one rated highest was the theatre, a structure which has no need for any inferiority complex provoked by world-famous wonders like Ephesus in Turkey or the Forum in Rome itself.
Roman structures typically earn great ratings, as you can imagine: Along with Mérida, and the one in Sagunto just north of Valencia, probably the best-preserved, most spectacular and, evidently, most-loved in Spain is the amphitheatre or colisseum in Cartagena, in the south-eastern single-province region of Murcia.
In a number of provinces, hazarding a guess at the top attraction would mean deciding from a fairly obvious shortlist, but the results still might have surprised you.
Valencia's City of Arts and Sciences (Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias) might not; its futuristic design is so captivating you might forget to go inside the buildings themselves, which include the Prince Felipe Science Museum and the Oceanogràfic, Europe's largest aquarium and marine veterinary centre, along with the Umbracle semi-covered gardens, the Ágora stadium and the opera house, the Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. Complexes and buildings of similar or even inferior beauty draw in tourists from both hemispheres and every continent, so this amazing site ought to be way more high-profile than it actually is.
In the same region, packed with attractions ranging from nature reserves to historical heritage, the province of Alicante's highest-rated, the Santa Bárbara castle in its capital city, was not necessarily a given, but would not shock anyone familiar with the area; likewise in the province of Castellón, where Peñíscola castle – right on the beach, and one that is rarely crowded as northern European tourists largely have not yet discovered it – got the most five-star reviews.
Two of these three were chosen, for its 'regional day' on October 9, as the best-loved visitor venues and views in the Comunidad Valenciana according to social media influencers – they made some excellent choices, which you can read about here.
Just across the water, the top-ranked attraction in the Balearic Islands – a province as well as a region – is Palma cathedral in Mallorca; again, not the obvious star of the show above any others (it should have been at least level-pegging with the Coves del Drach caves), but one which would not surprise anyone. The same can be said of Sevilla, where the enormous Plaza de España was the favourite out of several very likely candidates.
Cantabria, too, could have had a few sites neck and neck for the honour of naming on the map – such as the Cabárceno open-air mountain safari park, the lighthouse at Santander, the Picos de Europa National Park, or the whole town of Santillana del Mar, with its solid Baroque structures, overflowing wooden balconies and quaint, cobbled streets – but it would not produce widespread amazement to learn that it was the El Capricho restaurant building in Comillas, a green-and-red mosaïc tower designed by Antoni Gaudí, the brains behind the Sagrada Família and Barcelona's colourful Parc Güell, which came out smiling.
San Sebastián's La Concha beach in the Basque province of Guipúzcoa – so named because it is shaped like a shell, or concha – was a probable all along; the region is so proud of it that winners at the city's film festival get golden or silver conchas.
And among the vast countryside of the province of Cuenca, between Valencia and Madrid, with its hidden natural pools that make up for its lack of a beach (Minglanilla comes highly recommended for these), anyone who knows the area would suspect straight away that the famous 'hanging houses' in the capital would win hands-down.
We did not see that coming
In other provinces, though, the top-ranked visitor hotspot was far from what one would expect. Who would have thought that, in Córdoba, it wouldn't be the Great Mosque, that must-see optical illusion of arches layered upon arches that lead people to travel right across the country to experience it in the flesh? Or even its explosion of balcony bloom in the city's patios during the annual flower festivals? Turns out it was the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos, or the fortress of the Catholic monarchs, that took the red rosette.
And in the province of Málaga, the stunning beaches of the Costa del Sol and a whole host of other obligatory tourist magnets took a back seat to the Puente Nuevo bridge in one of the area's most-visited towns, the historic gem of Ronda.
Although we can't argue with either choice, because they're both beautiful.
Likewise the province of Teruel, where the crumbling, ancient villages dotted among vast expanses of countryside and mountains that seem to change shape and colour at every turn in the road, might have yielded more obvious choices such as the Gúdar nature reserve in Camarena de la Sierra (a ski resort in winter and walker's paradise in spring, summer and autumn), or Teruel Mudéjar cathedral with the sculptures of its famous 'lovers', Diego and Isabel, Aragón's answer to Romeo and Juliet, or even the Dinópolis dinosaur dig and theme park, has as its star-rated attraction the Plaza del Torico in the capital. But it's definitely worth the five-out-of-five internet-users gave it.
And in the province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands – made up of Tenerife itself, La Gomera, El Hierro and La Palma – hands up who thought it would be the Teide National Park, where you can walk right into the crater of an active volcano? No – it was the safari centre Loro Parque. In truth, though, animals are always worth the maximum ranking, especially where you can see them up close in environments designed to mirror their natural habitats, and where you can see they're happy and well cared-for, and that's certainly the case here. To this end, the provinces of Alicante, Valencia and Málaga respectively might have easily gained top ratings for Terra Natura in Benidorm, BioParc Valencia, and BioParc Fuengirola.
In the other Canarian province, of Las Palmas – made up of Gran Canaria, Fuerteventura, Lanzarote and La Graciosa – we might have chosen the dramatic, desert-like Timanfaya National Park or the sunset-reflecting Janubio salt flats in Lanzarote, but the winner deserves the honour: Los Jameos del Agua, a volcanic cave-tunnel housing a brilliant-blue salt-water lake, and even a theatre and a restaurant.
Read more about incredible, once-in-a-lifetime sights in Tenerife and Lanzarote, and in the Balearic Islands, too, in our article here, and see if it inspires you to book a trip.
Cathedrals, mainly
Another province where a theme park rather than a nature reserve, monument or similar structure came out on top was Tarragona, the most southerly in Catalunya, where the globally-acclaimed Portaventura World was ranked highest – likewise in Guadalajara, Castilla-La Mancha, to the north-east of Madrid, where its zoo was number one – although in the rest of Catalunya, other than the 155,000 five-star ratings the whacky, unique Sagrada Família netted, the most popular visitor magnets were the Dalí museum in the province of Girona, and in that of Lleida, the capital city's Romanesque cathedral, known as La Seu Vella.
Cathedrals feature fairly regularly on the map. As well as the two in Catalunya and the famous ones in Santiago de Compostela, León, Palma and Burgos are the highly-unusual and beautiful Santuario de Covadonga ('Covadonga Sanctuary') in Asturias – a basilica and church literally set inside a cave up a mountain – Zaragoza's stunning Nuestra Señora del Pilar Basilica, Cádiz cathedral (right on the Costa de la Luz), the Santa María de la Redonda Co-Cathedral in Logroño, La Rioja (a Mecca for fans of wine-region tours, but not Spain's only one), and Toledo cathedral, often referred to as La Primada and another one said to be among the most stunning on earth. Read more about what to see in Toledo – and also Sevilla – and see some splendid photos of both in our article here.
Unchartered waters you won't regret navigating
Provinces international travellers, at least, may not be familiar with include Navarra – also a region – whose Olite castle and Royal Palace are straight out of a fairytale or Disney scene, with their pointed spires and turrets; if you can't get to Neuschwanstein in Germany any time soon, Olite is a great substitute nearer home – Lugo, in Galicia, where the Roman city wall is worth its five stars; Soria, in Castilla y León, where the huge, ornamental greenery of the capital city's Alameda de Cervantes park and botanical garden gets rave reviews; Ciudad Real, in the central part of the mainland, where the four-square, solid, turreted riverside Peñarroya castle in the town of Argamasilla de Alba is tourists' favourite (and in a province with Don Quijote windmills, volcanoes and geysers, it must really be worth the detour); Valladolid, in Castilla y León, a province where the purest received Spanish is reportedly spoken and another where a city park is rated best of all – the Campo Grande, with its ornate fountains, ponds and even peacocks wandering freely among the public (unfortunately, for this reason, dogs are not allowed in) – Pontevedra, in Galicia, where the ancient, ornate Hórreos, or fishermen's shacks, along the beach in Combarro are oozing with everyday history; and Cáceres, in Extremadura, where the elaborate Renaissance central square in the town of Trujillo has notched up 9,241 ratings.
Also for urban parks, La Florida in Vitoria – a city voted as National Geographic's 'Best of the World 2021' destination – is the most-rated for the inland province of Álava, in the Basque Country.
And one other central square chosen as top site in its province, along with those of Trujillo and Teruel, and which anyone who has visited would entirely approve of, is the Plaza Mayor in Salamanca in Castilla y León – huge, classical, stately and in keeping with the élite, erudite air of the 'Oxford of Spain', the city where the nation's first-ever university was founded.
Rural wonders
For nature-lovers, along with Spain's network of 16 National Parks – and we haven't yet mentioned the Ordesa y Monte Perdido in the Pyrénées, among the most sublime parts of the Spanish countryside and the most-rated visitor site in the province of Huesca – there are more major nature reserves or areas of outstanding natural beauty, officially catalogued as 'Natural Parks', than you can shake a stick at. In fact, wherever you live or are staying in Spain, there'll be at least one of these within about a 20-minute drive from you, possibly within walking distance, and not farther away than the next town or village.
They range from salt flats to inland and marine marshes through to mountain ranges or even just one mountain and its surrounding fields, to open greenery, to forests or woodlands, and sometimes encompass parts of the coast. Special conservation orders mean they can never be built upon, their flora and fauna enjoy extra protection, and of course, guided trips to them – boat rides, in some cases – are usually easy to find to help you get the best out of them.
In fact, along with the City of Arts and Sciences, the best-rated site in the province of Valencia could have been the huge Albufera salt marshes, and for Alicante, the Pego-Oliva rice fields and marshes or the Montgó mountain, among many others.
The river Sil Canyon, in Galicia's only land-locked province – that of Ourense, just above Portugal – has 6,755 reviews on Google and you can explore it from above, look out across it from the numerous viewing points, or even take a cruise down it.
In the far-western province of Zamora, in Castilla y León, bordering northern Portugal, the Lake Sanabria and Segundera and Porto mountains in Galende are among the most breathtaking views you'll ever experience (and you can go on a guided kayak trip through it, too). And in the same region, in the province of Palencia, the Palentina Mountains are often snow-capped even at the warmest times of the year with their peaks swimming in the clouds; unsurprisingly, they're also a popular ski resort.
The province of Albacete in Castilla-La Mancha, just to the west of that of Alicante, is home to dramatic mountains and huge waterfalls in the Los Calares del Mundo y de la Sima 'Natural Park' in Riópar, part of which is the majestic-looking Sierra de Segura, a mind-blowing photo of which you can find in our article on where to find Spain's brightest autumn colours.
Finally, if you've ever bought a bottle of water from a supermarket or restaurant with the name 'Cazorla' on it, you now know that it comes from the mineral springs in the 'Natural Park' of the same name in the province of Jaén, inland Andalucía – mountains, pine forests, canyons and deep, bright-turquoise rivers, gushing waterfalls, valleys and ravines, it's no wonder, really, that the Sierra de Cazorla, which also shares the Sierra de Segura with Albacete and neighbouring Murcia, is the highest-ranked visitor site on the Musement map.
Offshore
We always hear that there are 17 autonomously-governed regions in Spain, but in reality, there are 19 – although two of them have a special classification as they are each made up of just one municipality, both a large town of around 85,000 to 90,000 inhabitants.
Ceuta sits just across the water from Gibraltar, on the northernmost tip of the western part of the African continent, and Melilla is directly due south of the Andalucía province of Almería, about 1,000 kilometres west of the Algerian border. Both are on the coast and land-bordered on three sides by Morocco.
Despite their location, the people, the architecture, the language, the culture, are every bit as 'Spanish' as the mainland and islands, although as is often the case when countries are next door to each other, some overspill of their neighbouring nation is seen in the backdrop and, of course, the natural scenery is Moroccan. Likewise, large parts of mainland Spain have a heavy North African feel to them, as a result of over seven centuries of the majority of the population being descendants of the Arab settlers known as the 'Moors'.
One example of this hybrid, in architecture, is Ceuta's top-rated attraction – although it has another somewhat exclusive twist to it. The Casa de los Dragones ('House of Dragons'), is precisely that: Gigantic sculptures of dragons in flight adorn the coronation and look, for all the world, as though they'd just landed. Very Harry Potter, or Terry Pratchett, and with intricately-carved arches in elaborate, painstaking detail to feast your eyes on.
Melilla's number one visitor site is its exotic, artistic and enormous Hernández Park – mosaïc-patterned tiled boulevards lined with dense palms, fascinating topiary or hedge sculptures, fountains, bright colours and botanical gardens, oceans of greenery and numerous species of flowers and shrubs, and with a children's playground in the middle, this is usually one of the first parts of Melilla visitors head to, especially if they're seeking a relaxing walk or a picnic.
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...