Spain

Early on in his biography of the novelist Kingsley Amis, Zachary Leader quotes a hilariously misanthropic letter Amis wrote to the poet Philip Larkin, one of his closest friends. Amis, at the time in his early thirties, was complaining about a three-month stint he and his family – including his son Martin, then five years old - spent abroad, as required by the terms of the Somerset Maugham Prize, which he won in 1955 for his first novel, Lucky Jim (Martin would also win it in 1973 for his debut, The Rachel Papers).

It was an extraordinary sight. For three days, and about seventy kilometers of hiking, there were just endless olive trees covering the fields, hills and mountains stretching to the horizon of the small Spanish province of Jaén. Tucked away in the southern region of Andalusia, this is the country’s powerhouse of olive-oil production. Many people assume Italy or Greece are the largest producers of olive oil. That’s a result of good branding and name recognition, a Jaén-based olive grower told me. After he pulled up alongside me in his dusty car, we walked through the endless olive groves as I was given a tutorial on olive oil production. Spain is the world’s top producer of olive oil.

When you hear the word flamenco you probably think of a lady dancing in a polka-dot dress, stomping her feet, accompanied by guitars and singing. And in the fair capital of Andalucía, Seville, you would have no problem finding such a sight. All across the old town, around the cathedral and in the lee of its 12-century minaret turned cathedral bell-tower, glamorous flamenco dancers are busy at it, stirring up passion on the cobbled streets and in the city-centre tourist shows. There’s no denying such flamenco demonstrations will raise your pulse and the tourists, not surprisingly, love them.

The biggest single driver of last year’s property boom was the surge in working from home. For many, the commute went from daily chore to occasional concern, enabling them to move to areas that previously seemed beyond reach, from the Cotswolds to Cornwall. But others have gone further still – swapping ‘work from home’ for ‘work from anywhere’. These digital nomads typically ditch the nine-to-five or find flexible employers to enable them to decamp to sunnier climes in the greyest months of the year. And during a winter of high energy bills and soaring living costs at home, the trend has been growing.

If you want to feel scruffy, head to Seville, the outrageously attractive capital city of southern Spain’s Andalucia region. It’s not just the abundant exquisite architecture – the city has one of the largest historic ‘old towns’ in Europe, with every bar, café and restaurant looking tiptop – but also the sartorial elegance that abounds among the local population, made even more striking by it coexisting in apparent easygoing harmony with the often plain awful turnout of us tourists and visitors. If Santiago de Compostela in north-western Spain is the city of rucksacks and walking sticks, then Seville – currently Google’s most searched-for flight-only destination – is the city of smart shirts.

I haven’t come close to dying of thirst in Texas, where I live. In Spain’s little-known Extremadura, however, I found the odds increasing. Wandering through wide-open scrubland in hundred-degree temperatures, my only company was lots of Spanish bulls, unfazed by the blistering heat as I sweated my heart out. The population of Extremadura has been sparse since the Muslim occupation, but there are plenty of cattle. As I headed north from Seville on the Via de la Plata, the latest leg of my extended Camino de Santiago pilgrimage crisscrossing the Iberian Peninsula, Extremadura struck me as remarkably like Texas ranching country.

It was starting to feel rather spooky on the pathway to Finisterre. Only two days before I’d been in the celebratory environs of Santiago de Compostela with its endless arrivals of jubilant pilgrims. Now dark clouds were scudding across the Galician hills in the distance and the only sound I could hear was the wind blowing – in an accusatory manner, it seemed – through the trees beside me. While Santiago de Compostela marks the official end of the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage, with the purported remains of St James the apostle in the basement of its cathedral, a minority of hardy souls continue for another 86 kilometres to the Galician coast.

Surely no other city can claim to have so many backpacks and walking sticks on its narrow cobbled streets. In Spain’s Santiago de Compostela it always looks like there is a giant hiking convention going on. These aren’t your average ramblers, though. They are pilgrims, as the city marks the end of the famous Camino de Santiago pilgrimage. The Camino, or the Way of St James, is most associated with the 500-mile route from the base of the French Pyrenees westward though Pamplona, Burgos and Leon.

Ask a Spaniard where they vacation, and you may get a touch of the Matador effect in response. The chest lifts, the head is tilted up with the bottom lip pushed out accompanied by the reply: 'España! My country.' For like the Greeks, when you have so many domestic splendours to choose from, why would you go anywhere else? It’s estimated that about two out of three vacationing Spaniards remain in country for the holidays. But where do the Spanish go? It’s a bit of a mystery—perhaps intentionally so. With swarms of Brits inundating their land, you can’t blame the Spanish for wanting to safeguard a few vacation refuges. Recently I’ve been encountering Spaniards on the move for their holidays.

About sixty years ago, before my wife was born, her parents set off on a driving holiday to the Continent. They drove down through France and into Spain and ended up in Sitges. They went no further. They’d found the perfect holiday resort, a historic town with a sandy beach and a few bars and cafes, somewhere to sit back and enjoy the sunshine, with a bit of local culture thrown in. Sixty years later, Sitges is a lot busier, but British tourists are still relatively rare. Most visitors are Spaniards, mainly daytrippers from Barcelona. There are some modern buildings, and a lot more bars and cafes, but the town still looks much the same. Compared to most Spanish beach resorts, it’s remarkably unchanged. My wife Sophie and I first went to Sitges in 1999.

Another summer starts, and so another series of the irrepressible reality show, Love Island. Attention is focused on a rustic six-bedroom Mallorcan farmhouse being blinged up with ‘bright colours and neon signs’ for this year’s fame-hungry contestants. Its exact location is a closely guarded secret. An appetite for privacy and rural isolation on the Balearic Island has been strong trend since the pandemic started, with property hunters decamping from cities or the Spanish mainland.