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Spain

Spain

Continent

Europe

Best States to Visit

  • Barcelona
  • Valencia
  • Biscay
  • Seville
  • Alicante

Best Cities to Visit

  • Ronda
  • Galera
  • Burgos
  • Malaga
  • Madrid

Size

505,990 KM2

Population

47,329,981

GDP

$1,314,314,164,402

Spending Budget

$953 - $3,663

Famous For

  • Spain is famous for it's good food, great people, it's scenic beauty and it's vast coastline.

Best Time to Visit

  • January
  • April
  • May
  • September
  • October

History

The history of Spain dates back to the Antiquity when the pre-Roman peoples of the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula made contact with the Greeks and Phoenicians and the first writing systems known as Paleohispanic scripts were developed. In 1516, Habsburg Spain unified a number of disparate predecessor kingdoms; its modern form of a constitutional monarchy was introduced in 1813, and the current democratic constitution dates to 1978. After the completion of the Reconquista, the Crown of Castile began to explore across the Atlantic Ocean in 1492, expanding into the New World and marking the beginning of the Golden Age under the Spanish Empire. The kingdoms of Spain were united under Habsburg rule in 1516, that unified the Crown of Castile, the Crown of Aragon and smaller kingdoms under the same rule. Until the 1650s, Habsburg Spain was the most powerful state in the world and remained among the most powerful until early 19th century. During this period, Spain was involved in all major European wars, including the Italian Wars, the Eighty Years' War, and the Thirty Years' War. Spanish power declined in the latter part of the 17th century. In the early part of the 19th century, most of the former Spanish Empire overseas disintegrated with the Spanish American wars of independence. Only Cuba and the Philippines and a number of small islands left; they revolted near the end of what had been a century of great instability for Spain, and the United States acquired ownership (or control, in the case of Cuba) after the Spanish–American War of 1898. A tenuous balance between liberal and conservative forces was struck in the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in Spain during the Borbonic restoration; this period began in 1874 and ended in 1931. The Restoration began with Alfonso XII and the Regency of Maria Christina (1874–1898). Alfonso XII died aged 27 in 1885, and was succeeded by his unborn son, who became Alfonso XIII (1902-1923). Then came the dictatorship of General Primo de Rivera (1923-1930). Opposition to his regime was so great that Alfonso XIII stopped supporting him and forced him to resign in January 1930.[1] In 1931, following a victory by the left, the Popular Front, in municipal elections, Alfonso XIII left Spain and the democratic republic was proclaimed in Spain. The Conservative Party disappeared shortly after the proclamation of the Republic in 1931. The country experienced rapid economic growth in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Present Day

Spain, formally the Kingdom of Spain, is a country in Southwestern Europe with some pockets of territory across the Strait of Gibraltar and the Atlantic Ocean. Spain is the largest country in Southern Europe, the second-largest country in Western Europe and the European Union, and the fourth-largest country by area on the European continent. With a population exceeding 47.3 million, Spain is the sixth-most populous country in Europe, and the fourth-most populous country in the European Union. Spain's capital and largest city is Madrid; other major urban areas include Barcelona, Valencia, Seville, Zaragoza, Málaga, Murcia, Palma, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and Bilbao. Its continental European territory is situated on the Iberian Peninsula. Spain is a storied country of stone castles, snowcapped mountains, vast monuments, and sophisticated cities, all of which have made it a favoured travel destination. The country is geographically and culturally diverse. Its heartland is the Meseta, a broad central plateau half a mile above sea level. Much of the region is traditionally given over to cattle ranching and grain production; it was in this rural setting that Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote tilted at the tall windmills that still dot the landscape in several places. Spain's capitalist mixed economy is the 14th largest worldwide and the 4th largest in the European Union, as well as the Eurozone's 4th largest.

Future

Spain’s national energy and climate plan (NECP) sets a target of 23% greenhouse gas emissions cuts by the end of the decade, compared with 1990 levels. The strategy insists that will put it on the right path to going carbon neutral by 2050. The virus outbreak may yet derail climate policy further, as its effects will significantly alter factors like GDP and energy demand for 2020, which could open up the impact assessment to criticism. It is still due to be published in September. Spain decided in 2018 to aim for a 100% renewables-powered electricity system by 2050 and to get the country on the right track, clean energy sources will supply 74% of demand by 2030. Current levels of hydroelectric power will be maintained but solar and wind capacity will quadruple and double, respectively. Biomass capacity will also increase twofold. The head of industry group WindEurope, Giles Dickson, said that “Spain has long been a leader in renewables: wind is 20% of their electricity and they create more export revenues from wind energy than from wine.”Ocean tidal power and geothermal energy will also be deployed more, according to the NECP, which predicts reduced costs for the as-yet fledgeling technologies.
Must Visit Places ------------

Siam Park

Siam Park is a water park in Costa Adeje, a coastal suburb in Tenerife, Canary Islands. Siam Park features a Siamese theme and claims to be the maximum dazzling water appeal in Europe. Some of the rides of Siam Park – The Dragon: A ProSlide Tornado with a 20-meter extensive funnel and a huge dragon version overlooking the drop. The Giant: Dual ProSlide Cannon Bowls, one transferring clockwise and one transferring counterclockwise relying on whether you're a double or a single rider. Tower of Power: A vertical, obvious ProSlide Freefall which sends riders via a place with sharks, stingrays and fish. Jungle Snakes: 4 twisting ProSlide slides which follow the park's terrain. Kinnaree: A new four-person 200-meter (660 ft) long ProSlide Tornado24 going into a TornadoWave opened in 2012. Singha: A ProSlide Water Coaster opened in 2015, which sends riders upwards and via more than one Flying Saucer capabilities. Coco Beach Wave Pool: Completed in November 2018 the newly hooked up specific shallow water wave pool with the aid of using Murphys Waves Ltd has been mainly designed for kids and more youthful family members.

As Catedrais Beach

As Catedrais seaside is situated on the northwest coast of Spain. The stunning seaside is positioned within the Ribadeo municipality, inside the province of Lugo (Galicia), at the Cantabric coast, and it lies approximately 10 kilometers to the west from the city of Ribadeo. It has been declared as a Natural Monument with the aid of using the local Ministry for the Environment of the Xunta de Galicia.

Museo del Prado

The Prado Museum, formally referred to as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the Spanish national artwork museum, positioned in the central Madrid. It is extensively taken into consideration to have one of the world's best collections of European artwork, relationship from the twelfth century to the early twentieth century, primarily based totally on the previous Spanish Royal Collection, and the single pleasant series of Spanish artwork. Founded as a museum of artwork and sculpture in 1819, it additionally incorporates vital collections of different kinds of works. The Prado Museum is one of the maximum visited sites within the world, and it's far taken into consideration one of the best artwork museums within the world. Several works via way of means of Francisco Goya, the single maximum significantly represented artist, in addition to via way of means of Hieronymus Bosch, El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, and Diego Velázquez, are a number of the highlights of the collection. The collection presently incorporates around 8200 drawings, 7,600 paintings, 4,800 prints, and 1,000 sculptures, in addition to many different works of art and historical documents.

The Alhambra and Generalife Gardens

No matter how much you have read or how many pictures you have seen of Granada's Alhambra palaces, this Moorish pleasure palace will still take your breath away. The Nasrid dynasty's royal palace is the artistic highlight of Spain's Islamic period, when Al-Andalus — as they called Andalucía — represented the epitome of culture and civilization in Europe's Middle Ages. The Alhambra complex includes several buildings, towers, walls, gardens, and a mosque, but it's the indescribably intricate stone carvings, the delicate filigrees, the magnificent tile-lined ceilings, the graceful arches, and serene courtyards of the Nasrid palace that will haunt your dreams. That said, the adjoining palace built for the Emperor Charles V, even in its unfinished state is the finest example of High Renaissance architecture in Spain. And Generalife's terraced gardens offer a peaceful respite from the grandeur, and splendid views back at the rest of the Alhambra.

Barcelona's Sagrada Familia and Gaudi Sites

Antoni Gaudi took the architectural style known as Art Nouveau a step further, even, some have argued, into absurdity. The fanciful and outrageous buildings he created in Barcelona have become landmarks, the signature attractions of this Catalan city. Foremost is The Sagrada Família church, officially the Temple Expiatori de la Sagrada Família or the Holy Family Church of the Atonement. One of Europe's most unconventional churches, it is also unfinished, so as you look down from its tower, you can see the work in progress below. Be sure to ascend to its roof — the chimneys are said to have inspired the image of Darth Vader from Star Wars.

The Great Mosque of Cordoba (Mezquita)

Once the principal mosque of western Islam and still known as the Mezquita, Cordoba's mosque is one of the largest in the world and the finest achievement of Moorish architecture in Spain. In spite of later alterations that carved out its center to build a Catholic cathedral at its heart, the Great Mosque ranks with the Alhambra in Granada as one of the two most splendid examples of Islamic art and architecture in western Europe. Building materials from Roman and Visigothic buildings were used in the construction, which began in 785, and by 1000, it had grown to its present dimensions, its prayer hall with no fewer than nineteen aisles. No matter where you stand or which direction you look, its rows of columns and rounded Moorish arches line up in symmetrical patterns.

The Prado and Paseo del Artes

The Prado alone ranks with the world's top art museums for the riches of its collections. But add the Reina Sofia National Art Museum, the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, and the CaixaForum, all along Madrid's mile-long, tree-shaded boulevard, and you have what may be the world's highest concentration of priceless art treasures. It's no wonder this is known as El Paseo del Arte — Boulevard of the Arts. After a 2007 expansion that doubled its exhibition space, the Prado added another 12 galleries in 2009 to house a collection of works by Goya and other late 19th-century artists. The Prado has the world's largest collection of Spanish art, an impressive continuum from 12th-century medieval works through the avante-garde movement of the early 20th century, and is especially noted for its works from Spain's golden age by El Greco, Velazquez, and Goya.

San Lorenzo de El Escorial

San Lorenzo de El Escorial, about 45 kilometers northwest of Madrid, was the summer home of Spain's kings, and in 1563, work was begun here on a huge complex, which would include a monastery, church, royal palace, mausoleum, library, and museum, all conceived as a monument to Philip II and his reign. The result is a staggering collection of attractions, built around 16 courtyards, its rooms and structures connected by 16 kilometers of corridors. At its core is the church, the highlight of which is Herrera's 30-meter-high retablo, made of jasper and red marble and approached by a flight of 17 steps. Along with the vaulted and frescoed ceilings by Tibaldi in the rooms off the lower cloister, highlights of the monastery are the Panteón de los Reyes (the Baroque burial vault of the Spanish kings) and the library, a grand room also decorated by Tibaldi frescoes.

Guggenheim Museum

You really have to see this building to believe it — no photograph has ever done justice to this symphony of shapes, so alive that they seem ready to take wing. American architect Frank Gehry used blocks of limestone and undulating sheets of titanium to turn the notion of modern architecture on its ear. So thoroughly did he succeed that two new terms were born from it: "The Bilbao Effect" — the ability of a city to turn its fortunes around by constructing a single world-class building — and "architourism," a whole segment of the travel industry revolving around landmarks of contemporary architecture. Inside the museum are traveling exhibitions and rotating displays of its own collections of modern art.

Seville Cathedral and Alcazar

La Giralda tower, Seville Cathedral, and the Alcazar combine to form a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The tower is a minaret, a "masterpiece of Almohad architecture," according to UNESCO. The cathedral has more interior space than St. Peter's in Rome and a 37-meter main altar of carved statues completely covered in gold. The monumental tomb of Christopher Columbus is held aloft by a quartet of larger-than-life figures. La Giralda, the emblem of Seville, began life as a minaret and is all that's left of the city's Great Mosque, destroyed to build the cathedral. The Alcazar opposite was begun by the Moors in 712 and continued after the Christian re-conquest by King Pedro in the 1300s in the ornate neo-Moorish style called Mudejar. The rooms and salons are breathtaking, and the gardens a joy to stroll in, shaded by fragrant orange and lemon trees.

Santiago de Compostela Cathedral

The magnificent cathedral of Santiago (St. James) was built to house and honor the relics of the saint, and it has been the goal of pilgrims since the Middle Ages, the culmination of their completing the famed Camino de Santiago. One of the outstanding monuments of Early Romanesque architecture, the cathedral was built between 1060 and 1211, and despite the Baroque transformation of the exterior in the 16th to 18th centuries, the interior is still in the purest Early Romanesque style. You'll see both of these periods at play as you enter the west front, through one of Spain's most impressive church facades. Step inside to face the Pórtico de la Gloria, part of the old west front now concealed by the 18th-century facade. This triple doorway is one of the largest and most magnificent collections of Romanesque sculpture in the world.

Plaza Mayor

The throbbing heartbeat of Spain's vibrant capital city, Plaza Mayor has played an important part in Madrid life since the 16th century, when Philip II entrusted the task of designing it to his favorite architect Juan de Herrera, builder of the Escorial. It has served as the stage for ceremonial events — the proclamation of a new king, the canonization of saints, the burning of heretics — and public entertainment such as chivalric tournaments and bullfights. The cafes reaching out onto its pedestrian-only stone pavement, and the restaurants shaded under its arcades are Madrid's living room, popular meeting places for Madrileños and tourists alike.

Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias

When Valencia diverted the course of the river that had repeatedly flooded the city, it was left with a broad, flat riverbed spanned by bridges. It was upon this clean palette that the brilliant Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava created a breathtaking ensemble of structures that have become a magnet for aficionados of contemporary architecture. Not only the buildings, but the museums, arts venues, and aquarium (by Félix Candela and the only building not designed by Calatrava) form a series of tourist attractions that rank among Spain's most popular. Europe's largest oceanographic aquarium, L'Oceanogràfic, was built in the shape of a water lily with buildings dedicated to different aquatic environments from the tropics to the poles.

Costa del Sol Beaches

With the record as Europe's sunniest place, and mile after mile of white sands lapped by gentle seas, it's no wonder that the Costa del Sol beaches are the goal of sun-starved northern Europeans looking for sun-and-sand getaways. This popularity caused serious over-development initially, but the Andalucian government has not only put a stop to this, it has begun the process of tearing down the worst offenders and returning entire sections of coast to natural landscapes, clean beaches, and attractive new buildings that are more in harmony with their surroundings.

La Rambla

Strolling along La Rambla on a summer evening, you might think that every single one of Barcelona's inhabitants was there with you. It's definitely the place to be after work on a summer evening or on a weekend. This tree-lined boulevard cuts a green line — not a very straight one — through the city center, stretching northwest from the Columbus Memorial near the port. The section to the Plaça de Catalunya is lined with plane trees, its wide pedestrian zone flanked by a narrow road on each side. Along with its flower and bird markets, La Rambla has a number of book and newspaper stands, as well as restaurants and cafes with open-air tables. Pavement artists, street musicians, living statues, and impromptu performers all add to its lively atmosphere.

Toledo's Old City

Moorish, Gothic, and Renaissance architecture mingle and blend into a city that El Greco captured in one of his most famous paintings. High on a granite hill and surrounded on three sides by the deep gorge of the Tagus River, it presents a stunning profile; approaching it from below is an unforgettable sight. The layout of the town, with its irregular pattern of narrow streets and numerous blind alleys, reflects its Moorish past, and the architecture of the Christian period is represented by the numerous churches, convents, and hospices. This makes the old city a kind of open-air museum, illustrating the history of Spain, and it has been listed by UNESCO as part of mankind's cultural heritage. The Gothic cathedral is splendid, its interior richly decorated, and the two synagogues in the atmospheric old Juderia are ornate in the Moorish style. While in that quarter, be sure to see the church of San Tome for its El Greco masterpiece.

The White Towns of Andalucía

Poised like dabs of white frosting atop the steep crags of southern Andalucía, the White Towns are not just beautiful, they speak of this region's long and fascinating history. West of Gibraltar, mountains rise straight from the sea, and among them hide these White Towns, each on its hilltop. Most spectacular is Arcos de la Frontera, whose plaza beside the Gothic church ends vertiginously in a 137-meter cliff, affording views across a valley of olive, orange, and almond orchards. Its maze of winding cobbled streets lead past cafes and craft shops selling ceramics and pottery to a Moorish castle.

El Teide

The highest peak in Spain, this ancient — but still simmering — volcano is also one of Europe's top natural wonders. The Pico de Teide and the Caldera de las Cañadas, a gigantic volcanic crater, together form the Parque Nacional del Teide, at the center of the island of Tenerife. In listing the park in 2007, UNESCO cited its natural beauty and "its importance in providing evidence of the geological processes that underpin the evolution of oceanic islands." You can explore El Teide in several ways. You can drive or hike across the inside of the caldera — the crater floor — 12 miles in diameter and a barren moonscape of colored rock formations that's like driving into the center of the earth. You can climb El Teide's cone, but an easier way to get close to the top is by an eight-minute cable car ride. On a clear day, views cover the entire archipelago and can extend to North Africa — the nearest land mass to the Canary Islands.

Costa Brava

Costa Brava is one of the perfect Spanish tourist attractions. If beaches, landscapes, and tranquil villages are your love, Costa Brava shouldn’t be missed. Come here any time of the year to enjoy the pleasing weather. With various activities and games to enjoy, you’ll never feel bored or lost at Costa Brava.

The Canary Islands

The Canary Islands must be on your checklist of best places to visit in Spain. The beaches and the historic monuments along with a trip to the volcanic mountain will make your visit worthwhile. The museums and archaeological park will be best to explore while visiting The Canary Islands.

La Rioja Vineyards

If you are a connoisseur of wine, then you’ll get to taste some of the finest wines of the region here. Other than the wine, the region has beautiful landscapes and is a great place to enjoy scenic vistas. Whenever you visit Spain next, include the Spanish wine tours in your itinerary and enjoy these beautiful Spanish regions.

El Retiro Park

One of the largest parks in the city, El Retiro Park is one of the most visited places in Spain. Once under the Spanish monarchy, the public could finally access it in the 19th century when it became a public park. Stroll around in the park, take a walk, or just relax and unwind here. The park has beautiful sculptures, monuments, and a lake that add on to its beauty.