This is the kind of tourism Spain wants you to do
Reflections on Spain’s new tourism campaign launch, travel tips for two favourite spots in Andalucía, and some Spain-themed reads, music and TV.
Hola from London, where we’re currently in between heat waves in a city that is completely ill-prepared to deal with them (hello, climate change 😓). I long for the persianas (blackout blinds) that are ubiquitous in Spain, and that help make the furnace-like temperatures of high summer bearable.
Some personal news…
Before we dive into this month’s round-up of travel news and tips, a quick explanation as to why I’m writing this from London and not Málaga.
After spending the past five years in Spain, I’ve relocated back to the UK for the time being, for a combination of work and family reasons. But fear not - the Senses of Spain project isn’t going anywhere. I’ll still be writing this Substack, adding to my website and posting Spain content on social media. I’m not breaking up with Spain - we’re just entering a long-distance phase of the relationship.
As well as travelling to Spain whenever feasible, I’ll also be working my way through the large backlog of content that I haven’t yet published from trips and experiences over the last year.
Plus, I’ll be leaning into the “armchair travel” side of the project, with some deep dives into Spanish history, culture, art, music, and food. I’m hoping to finally have time for some collaborations with experts in these areas that have been on my wishlist for a while. Stay tuned!
My biggest challenge will be continuing to improve my Spanish without hearing and speaking it every day. I’m determined not to let it slide, and in a future newsletter I’ll be sharing my journey of learning the language from scratch as an adult, plus the tactics I’m using to stay on track.
Spain travel news:
🧳 Sustainable travel in the spotlight
A couple of weeks ago I was invited to the launch of the new international publicity campaign by Turespaña, Spain’s national tourist board, in Madrid. I managed to combine it with a flying visit to Málaga for work stuff (Spain’s high-speed rail network makes this kind of thing possible).
The tagline for the campaign is “Think You Know Spain? Think Again”. We heard speeches from Turespaña’s director and head of marketing, plus the Minister of Industry and Tourism and the Secretary of State for Tourism.
The overall message was clear: Spain wants to be a world leader in sustainable tourism, and not just in an environmental sense. A key theme that came up repeatedly was the importance of economic and social sustainability and a tourism model that’s kinder and more beneficial to local communities.
With protests against overtourism repeatedly hitting the headlines, it feels like this kind of reframing is not only timely, it’s essential.
Tourism is a major driver of the Spanish economy, contributing to almost 16% of GDP and 3 million jobs, but tourist hotspots like Barcelona, Seville, and the Balearic and Canary Islands are bursting at the seams - and many residents have simply had enough of year after year of record-breaking visitor numbers.
So what’s the solution?
Turespaña’s campaign is all about nudging international visitors towards lesser-known destinations, particularly in the interior of the country. As the launch video shows, there’s also a focus on slow travel and immersive cultural experiences:
The images of falling rain and rolling green hills in the opening sequence are a world away from the sol y playa stereotype of Spanish holidays, and as someone who can count the number of beach days I’ve had in my life on one hand, this really resonated.
That said, not all of the places featured in the campaign are off the tourist trail. The village of Setenil de las Bodegas, with its gravity-defying rock-covered streets, is firmly on the Andalucían circuit of pueblos blancos. Córdoba (as mentioned in a previous newsletter) is having something of a moment, and gets extremely busy during peak season from May onwards. Galicia in the country’s green north might be lesser known to international visitors, but it’s very popular with domestic travellers fleeing the summer heat - and not everyone is happy about it.
Nonetheless, the focus on slow and thoughtful travel is something to bear in mind regardless of the location, and I’ve added a few more places to my (constantly growing) list of places to visit one day. It was also nice to recognise a few favourite spots that I’ve been to over the last few years, and would thoroughly recommend.
These include:
🏞️ The Ribeira Sacra
This biosphere reserve in Galicia is known for its dramatic landscape, the result of deep canyons carved by the Rivers Sil and Miño. It also has one of the world’s most notable examples of “heroic viticulture,” when grapes are grown in extreme conditions - in this case, clinging to the sides of the valleys.
One of the campaign’s most spectacular shots is of a swing with views over the Ribeira Sacra. After a bit of digging, it seems to belong to the Terra Brava winery. I’ll definitely be swinging by (sorry) next time I’m in this part of Galicia.
🍒 The Jerte Valley
I’d always associated the region of Extremadura with baking-hot plains and endless cork oak and olive groves, so the moment I first laid eyes on the Valle de Jerte was something of a revelation.
This lush green valley is best known for its cherry trees, which blanket the steep hillsides with white and pink blossoms in spring. I visited here in summer a few years back and ate my body weight in cherries. I missed the pools of Los Pilones, though, which feature in the campaign video - a dreamy wild swimming spot in the Garganta de los Infiernos (Gorge of Hell).
🦩Doñana National Park
Split between the Andalucian provinces of Huelva and Seville, this national park is one of Europe’s most important wetlands. It’s home to a vast array of birdlife, and even the elusive Iberian lynx.
Matalascañas Beach and the tiny hamlet of El Rocío, which feature in the campaign, are both adjacent to the national park. I visited El Rocío earlier this year, and there truly is nowhere else like it. The streets are made of sand, the main mode of travel is horseback and rising above it all is the shell-like apse of the Sanctuary of Nuestra Señora del Rocío, the shrine that’s the epicentre of an annual pilgrimage of around a million people.
It’s an otherworldly place that seems to have shimmered into being like a mirage out of the waters of Doñana. I’ll be covering this and some other highlights of Huelva in a forthcoming blog.
On my wishlist…
As for the locations in the campaign that I haven’t yet been to, high on my wishlist are the badlands-like Bardenas Reales in Navarre, the village of Alcalá del Júcar in Albacete (eastern Spain) with its cave houses and Andalusi fortress, the cities of Plasencia and Mérida in Extremadura, and the picturesque town of Cangas de Onís in Asturias.
On the blog:
⛰️ Mar y montaña: two gems of Málaga province
The latest articles on the Senses of Spain website are a two-part guide to visiting Ronda, including a round-up of its cultural and historic highlights, where to get the best views of the iconic bridge, and why it’s worth taking a more slow-travel approach and spending at least one night there.
I’ve also published a guide to Nerja in time for the summer holidays.
Finally, I’ve updated my guide to barrio Chamberí in Madrid, following a return visit a couple of months ago.
Exhibition review:
🪩 La Movida Madrileña (and an art nouveau palace)
Speaking of Madrid, during my flying visit the other week I also managed to fit in an exhibition. La Movida: juventud y libertad 1977-1986 (La Movida: Youth and Freedom, 1977-1986) is about La Movida, the cultural movement that exploded in Madrid during the early years of la Transición, Spain’s transition to post-Franco democracy.
Probably the best-known legacy of La Movida for an international audience are the films of Pedro Almodóvar, and some items from the director’s personal collection are on display here, along with costumes, film posters and lots of musical memorabilia from the period.
The exhibition is in the glorious modernista (art nouveau) Palacio de Longoria, home to the General Society of Authors and Editors. It’s not usually open to the public, so a visit also gives you a rare chance to admire its elaborate central staircase and stained-glass ceiling, though the staircase itself is off-limits.
Entry is free, and the exhibition is open daily from 4-9pm until 20 July. Definitely worth a visit if you’re in Madrid over the next couple of weeks!
A TV, music and reading list:
📺 The TV show Alex Polizzi’s Secret Spain was first broadcast on the UK’s Channel 5 in 2016, and I absolutely devoured it. It’s a six-part series in which the hotelier and broadcaster travels around Spain from Galicia to Andalucia, learning about regional food and wine and cultural traditions from Catalonia’s human towers to flamenco.
A few months ago, the whole series was uploaded to YouTube by ITV’s Taste channel. What a delight! Give it a watch here.
🎵 On the subject of flamenco, my new musical obsession is the rising star Ángeles Toledano. Born in the Andalucian province of Jaén, she has made a name for herself for being at the vanguard of contemporary flamenco, often weaving in samples of electronic music and breakbeat.
Her debut album Sangre Sucia (Dirty Blood) was released last year, and her self-penned lyrics are influenced by writers from Federico García Lorca to Walt Whitman and Virginia Woolf.
Have a listen to the song Eres Guapa (You Are Beautiful), where she is accompanied by her longtime collaborator, the guitarist Benito Bernal, and the ethereal sound of a theremin:
🍅 Finally: It’s well and truly gazpacho season in Spain, and the Spanish food writer Blanca Valencia has written this excellent cultural history of one of the country’s most emblematic dishes. I also very much enjoyed her more recent post, Ten Iconic Moments in the Tortillaverse, starting with that photo of Julio Iglesias tucking into lunch on his private jet.
That’s a wrap for this month!
Hasta ahora
Amy
I don’t know if ‘sustainable’ and ‘tourism’ are two words that go together. That advertising campaign is very nice but I don’t know if it will resonate with most of the visitors and foreign residents that are looking for the beach and the sun here in Spain
Mérida and Cáceres are brilliant for people who love Roman remains. I found them stunning. Plenty of tourists but not overwhelmed with them. Extremadura is notorious for heat but in October it’s very bearable even for Celtic-skinned wimps like me.