Soubin Nath
Here is the list of 18 best spots in Spain which you have to visit before you die. Spain is the land of cultural diversities and traditions.
It’s impossible to lay eyes on stunning San Sebastián (Basque: Donostia) and not fall madly in love. This city is cool and happening by night, charming and well mannered by day. It's a city filled with people that love to indulge – and with Michelin stars apparently falling from the heavens onto its restaurants, not to mention pintxo (tapas) culture almost unmatched anywhere else in Spain.
Barcelona is an enchanting seaside city with boundless culture, fabled architecture and a world-class drinking and dining scene.
No city on earth is more alive than Madrid, a beguiling place whose sheer energy carries a simple message: this city really knows how to live.
Some cities have looks, other cities have personality. The sevillanos – lucky devils – get both, courtesy of their flamboyant, charismatic, ever-evolving Andalucian metropolis founded, according to myth, 3000 years ago by the Greek god Hercules. Drenched for most of the year in spirit-enriching sunlight, this is a city of feelings as much as sights, with different seasons prompting vastly contrasting moods.
Bilbao isn't the kind of city that knocks you out with its physical beauty – head on over to San Sebastián for that particular pleasure – but it's a city that slowly wins you over. Bilbao, after all, has had a tough upbringing. Surrounded for years by an environment of heavy industry and industrial wastelands.
The scent of orange blossom, the thrash of a flamenco guitar, the glimpse of a white village perched spectacularly atop a crag.
Awash in greens and often concealed in mists, the rolling hills, ribboned cliffs, clammy forests and snow-plastered mountains that make up the Navarran Pyrenees are a playground for outdoor enthusiasts and pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago. Despite being firmly Basque in history, culture and outlook, there is something of a different feeling to the tiny towns and villages that hug these slopes.
Stretching north to the French border, the Costa Brava, or 'rugged coast', is by far the prettiest of Spain's three principal holiday coasts. Though you'll find plenty of tourism development and English breakfasts, there are also unspoiled coves, charming seaside towns with quality restaurants, spectacular scenery, and some of Spain's best diving around the protected Illes Medes.
Whether floodlit by night or bathed in late afternoon light, there's something magical about Salamanca. This is a city of rare beauty, awash with golden sandstone overlaid with ochre-tinted Latin inscriptions – an extraordinary virtuosity of plateresque and Renaissance styles.
Granada’s dramatic alpine backdrop is the Sierra Nevada range, which extends about 75km from west to east and into Almería province. Its wild snow-capped peaks include the highest point in mainland Spain, while the lower reaches of the range, known as Las Alpujarras (sometimes just La Alpujarra), are dotted with tiny scenic villages.
The jagged, deeply fissured Picos de Europa mountains straddle southeast Asturias, southwest Cantabria and northern Castilla y León, and amount to some of the finest walking country, and some of the most spectacular country of any kind, in Spain.
The jagged, deeply fissured Picos de Europa mountains straddle southeast Asturias, southwest Cantabria and northern Castilla y León, and amount to some of the finest walking country, and some of the most spectacular country of any kind, in Spain.
From the Plaza de la Cibeles in the north, the buildings arrayed along the Paseo del Prado read like a roll-call of Madrid’s most popular attractions. Temples to high culture include the Museo del Prado, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza and Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, which rank among the world’s most prestigious art galleries.
‘Ser español es un orgullo’, the saying goes, ‘ser asturiano es un título.’ ‘If being Spanish is a matter of pride, to be Asturian is a title' – or so most asturianos believe. Asturias, the sole patch of Spain never conquered by the Muslims, they claim, is the real Spain; the rest is simply tierra de reconquista (reconquered land).
Arrive on the sun-bleached shores of Menorca after a spell on Mallorca or Ibiza and notice the drop in volume – here it's more birdsong than Pete Tong. The easternmost Balearic island moves to its own mellow beat. Its twinset of sea-splashed cities, Anglo-Spanish Maó and medina-like Ciutadella, are delightfully low-key, and the white-sand bays that stud its 216km coastline are among the loveliest in the Med.
Locals say the arcaded, stone streets of Santiago de Compostela – the final stop on the epic Camino de Santiago pilgrimage trail – are at their most beautiful in the rain, when the Old Town glistens. Most would agree, however, that it's hard to catch Santiago in a bad pose.
Unesco World Heritage–listed Segovia has always had a whiff of legend about it, not least in the myths that the city was founded by Hercules or by the son of Noah. It may also have something to do with the fact that nowhere else in Spain has such a stunning monument to Roman grandeur (the soaring aqueduct) surviving in the heart of a vibrant modern city.
You could write several weighty tomes about Cádiz and still fall miles short of nailing its essence. Old age accounts for much of the complexity. Cádiz is generally considered to be the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in Europe, founded as Gadir by the Phoenicians in about 1100 BC.
Born and brought up in Kerala, India. Now in Mumbai, India doing first year of my Masters in Film Studies (M.A)..
