Spain on your own
A western-movie desert two hours from 3,000 m summits, whitewashed villages hanging off cliff edges and gloriously empty back roads: Spain is Europe's great driving playground.
When to go
Spring (April-June) and autumn (September-October) rule everywhere: a mild, flowering Andalusia, clear mountains, reasonable crowds. Summer crushes the south (45 °C is possible in Seville in July-August — flee to the green north, Picos and Galicia, then at their finest). Winter is an Andalusian gem: 18 °C in Seville in January, the Alhambra beneath the snows of the Sierra Nevada, and the Bardenas in their best light.
What it costs
One of Western Europe's cheapest road trips: a city car or compact at €25-45/day (dropping to €15-20 off season from Málaga or Alicante — watch the excess on discount rentals), petrol around €1.55-1.75/L, hostales and casas rurales at €55-90 for a double, paradors at €120-200 to sleep in a monastery or a castle. Budget €1,800-2,800 for two over 12-15 days excluding flights, with the €12-15 menú del día thrown in.
Driving & transport
Right-hand driving, a superb network. The local traps: tell autovía (A-, free) from autopista (AP-, toll — many became free from 2021, Waze knows); the ZBE low-emission zones, now compulsory in every city over 50,000 inhabitants (Madrid and Barcelona fine by camera; Spanish rental cars carry the sticker — check yours if you drive in from France); historic centres closed except to residents and watched by cameras — one 'pedestrian' street crossed in Seville costs €90-200. Default 30 km/h limit in town, plenty of speed cameras and little tolerance; zero stress, on the other hand, on the empty national roads of the interior.
You think you know Spain and you discover a continent: in the south, Andalusia unrolls its Moorish palaces, its whitewashed villages and the coastal desert of Cabo de Gata; in the north, the Picos de Europa raise limestone walls above dairy pastures, Galicia ends the world at Fisterra, and the Ordesa canyons carve into the Aragonese Pyrenees. In between, the Bardenas Reales play Arizona in Navarre. No other European country packs so many different worlds into a single driving loop.
And it is a country built for driving: free, immaculate autovías, back roads that are often deserted (the interior is emptying out, the landscapes remain), and some of Western Europe's cheapest fuel. The one real discipline concerns the cities: historic centres are closed to cars (bollards, cameras, low-emission zones), and the right reflex is always the same — underground or edge-of-town car park, then everything on foot.
The destinations that matter
6
No. 013 to 4 nightsSeville and the white villagesA Moorish capital scented with orange blossom, then a ridge road where every bend reveals a whitewashed village clinging to its cliff: the south's finest city-to-country sequence.No. 024 nights (2 in Granada, 2 at Cabo de Gata)Granada and Cabo de GataThe Arab world's most beautiful palace set against the snows of the Sierra Nevada, then two hours' drive to Europe's only desert falling into a turquoise sea: eastern Andalusia deals in absolute contrasts.No. 033 nightsPicos de EuropaLimestone walls of 2,600 m planted 20 km from the sea, cows on the roads and the country's best blue cheese ripened in caves: green Spain starts here, and it looks like nothing else.No. 043 to 4 nightsGaliciaAtlantic-battered capes, coves that pilgrims took for the end of the world and Spain's best octopus served on a wooden board: Galicia is a Celtiberian Brittany that stayed secret.No. 053 nightsAragonese PyreneesA canyon with thousand-metre walls crowned by a 3,355 m summit, golden-stone villages and vultures by the hundred: the Spanish side of the Pyrenees is drier, wilder — and emptier.No. 061 to 2 nightsBardenas RealesBadlands striped in ochre and grey, a fairy chimney turned icon and gravel tracks open to ordinary cars: Arizona exists in Europe, it sits in Navarre, and entry is free.
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Guide available“Spain on Your Own Terms”, the complete edition, is out
10 chapters: day-by-day itineraries, driving and transport, a costed budget and checklists — the same method as our Namibia guide.
The guide is currently written in French — an English edition is in the works.
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