Notes from Spain by Ben Curtis

Today I spent 40 minutes on the telephone trying to find a hotel room in Valencia for the night of the 18th of March. This, the Nit de Foc, is the penultimate night, and one of the highlights, of the Las Fallas fiesta, involving an hour-long fireworks display of previously unknown scale and inventiveness, followed by drinking and dancing til dawn in the city’s beautiful squares. Previous Nit de Focs rate amongst my top nights out in Spain, ever. Unfortunately plenty of other people who don’t live in Valencia evidently feel the same way! When I asked one hostel owner if he had rooms for March 18th, he said, “for which year?”

So, if you are thinking of heading to one of the big Fiestas this year, be it Las Fallas, Carnival in Cadiz, Easter in Seville, or San Fermines in Pamplona, book your accommodation now, for this year or next, or end up sleeping on the street. I usually start by checking the big hotel chains on the web, then going through every number in various guide books. My troubles paid off at last today, when I finally found one room going in a business hotel 30 minutes walk from Valencia city center – as close as we’ll get this year!

Photo: Crazy Valencians playing with fire again! For more on fiestas, and to help me find the year’s best, check out this forum thread.

Avoiding other tourists when you are in Spain is a great way to improve your Spanish, and to get away from all the other guiris running all over the other country. Fortunately for those who want to avoid their fellow countrymen when on holiday, most end up in Barcelona, Madrid, Granada and Seville. But what if you really want to get off the beaten track this year, and find yourself alone in a sea of Spanish? Here are a few of our favourite getaways:

Teruel: So off the beaten track that the locals have even started a website declaring ‘Teruel Exists!’ Great for Mudejar architecture and wonderful ham.

Vigo: Downtrodden backstreets and fresh oysters. Workaday Galicia with all the gastronomic trimmings.

Gijon: Stormy weather, a wonderful Chillida sculpture and the best fabada on the planet. Head onwards from here for the beaches around Llanes.

Extremadura: Trujillo and Caceres are small towns with a rich Roman and conquistador past. Most of the province of Extremadura is pretty much off the tourist trail, and there are some wonderful drives through rolling countryside. Take any B-road from Salamanca to Trujillo, via, Guijuelo, and you’ll see what I mean.

Aragon: An empty, majestic province rolling up to the Pyrenees. Try Jaca if you need a town to stay in, but get out into the villages if you can. The best plan is to go without one.

Carmona: A small town just to the north of Seville. Lovely Parador. Try the jamon on toast tapas in the museum bar. A lovely, sleepy Andaluz town.

I could go on and on, but now it’s over to you. Where do you go to escape tourism in Spain? Comments are welcome below or in this forum post.

My favourite image from the Notes from Spain flickr pool this month ties in with one of my desires for the year ahead: to get out and see a lot of the Spain I had no idea was still out there. I knew that Merida was once a Roman settlement, for example, but I had no idea it still contained ruins as interesting as those in the photo above.

The image, of the “Acueducto Romano de los Milagros” (large version here), was taken on Christmas Day by ClintMalpaso.