Spain travel tips

Budget travel in Spain

What a visitor's money does in Spain: every guide rated from very cheap to very expensive, cheapest first, then the things that cost travellers money without buying anything — the ATM, the taxi, the SIM.

Mid-range average across 12 guides · 5 is very cheap

Money

Euro (EUR) · 1 EUR = 1.15 USD · 1 EUR = 0.86 GBP

No need to exchange if coming from the Eurozone. Avoid exchange offices on La Rambla — they charge 10-15% commission. Use your bank card instead.

ATMs

Avoid: Euronet, Cardpoint, ATMs on and around La Rambla

Use: CaixaBank, BBVA, Santander, Banco Sabadell

Euronet machines cluster in the Gothic Quarter and charge around €6 plus a poor conversion rate.

Getting around

A short ride in Barcelona: €7–13 across town — middling

From the airport: El Prat to the centre is a flat €39 by taxi, €5.15 on the metro

Similar, and the taxi usually wins: the airport run is that flat €39 whatever the meter would have said.

City by city, cheapest first

Seville Good value

Order tapas standing at the bar — it is cheaper than sitting. Try espinacas con garbanzos, salmorejo and jamón ibérico. Triana has the least touristy bars.

Granada Good value

Granada is one of the last Spanish cities where a drink still comes with a free tapa, and it is a real plate rather than an olive. Order a second drink and the tapa gets better. Try piononos in Santa Fe and remojón, an orange and cod salad that sounds wrong and is not.

Valencia Good value

Real paella valenciana has rabbit and chicken, not seafood, and locals only eat it at lunch. Go to El Palmar or Malvarrosa and never order it for dinner.

Málaga Mid-range

Espetos — sardines skewered on a cane and grilled over a driftwood fire in a boat full of sand — are the thing, and only on the beach. Fried fish done properly, sweet Málaga wine from the barrel at Antigua Casa de Guardia, and ajoblanco in summer.

Bilbao Mid-range

Pintxos, which are not tapas: you stand, you point, you pay at the end, and you move to the next bar after one. The Basque country has more Michelin stars per head than anywhere on earth, and the cheap end is just as serious.

Barcelona Mid-range

Eat where locals eat: avoid restaurants with photos on the menu. Try pintxos bars in El Born and vermuterías in Gràcia.

Madrid Mid-range

Eat late — lunch at 14:30, dinner at 22:00. In La Latina, order a caña and the tapa often arrives free. Try bocadillo de calamares near Plaza Mayor.

Tenerife Mid-range

Papas arrugadas with mojo — wrinkled salt potatoes with green and red sauces — appear on every table. Look for guachinches in the north, farmhouse dining rooms that open only while the year's wine lasts. The bananas are small, sweet and genuinely different.

Mallorca Expensive

Pa amb oli — bread rubbed with tomato and oil — with cured ham is the everyday plate. Sobrassada is the island's paprika sausage and is spread rather than sliced. And ensaïmada, the coiled pastry, is what everybody carries home in a hexagonal box.

Córdoba Expensive

Salmorejo rather than gazpacho — thicker, with egg and ham on top. Flamenquín, rabo de toro, and Montilla-Moriles wine, which is like sherry and is not sherry.

San Sebastián Expensive

Pintxos are not tapas: they are individual, they are paid for one at a time, and you move bar to bar rather than settling in. Gilda, txangurro, and a slab of grilled turbot. Order txakoli and let them pour it from a height. One bar, two pintxos, then leave.

Ibiza Expensive

Bullit de peix, fish stewed and then its broth used to cook rice, served as two courses. Sofrit pagès inland, and flaó, a mint and cheese tart. The beach restaurants on the north coast are a fraction of the price of the ones on the south and better.

The cost rating is this site's own, for a visitor, from the guides' authors and the corrections readers send in. The general rules — the conversion prompt, shoulder season, the airport taxi — are in budget travel tips.

The guides in Spain

aerial view of city buildings during daytimeBarcelonaSpainSun, sea, and Gaudi masterpiecescity scale under blue skyMadridSpainLate nights, great art, and endless tapasbrown concrete building during daytime photoSevilleSpainOrange trees, flamenco, and Moorish palacesAn arched stone doorway framing a view of the white buildings in GranadaGranadaSpainThe last Moorish palace in Europe, with the Sierra Nevada behind it and free tapas belowgray concrete tower beside houseValenciaSpainBeaches, futuristic architecture, and the home of paellaThe green peaks of the Anaga range above the sea, TenerifeTenerifeSpainSpain's highest mountain, with a subtropical winter around its feetThe pine-covered ridges of the Serra de Tramuntana dropping into the sea at Cap de Formentor, MallorcaMallorcaSpainA mountain range, three hundred beaches and a capital most people fly straight pasta view of a city and a lake with boats in the waterSan SebastiánSpainA shell-shaped bay, more Michelin stars per head than almost anywhere, and pintxos eaten standing upaerial photography of white housesMálagaSpainPicasso’s birthplace, a Roman theatre under a Moorish fort, and three hundred days of sunEs Vedrà and Es Vedranell standing off the south-west coast — Ibiza, SpainIbizaSpainThe island the clubs made famous, with a walled Renaissance town and a quiet north almost nobody seeswhite and brown concrete buildingCórdobaSpainA mosque with a cathedral built inside it, and courtyards full of flowers in a city that was once the largest in Europegray concrete building near body of water during daytimeBilbaoSpainA steel city that rebuilt itself around a titanium museum, and eats better than almost anywhere in Europe