The first of our posts in which we discuss our choice of destinations for each country is Spain, which actually was a really, really difficult one. The problem with Spain is two-fold:

1. a lot of Spain's tourism is beach holiday tourism, which isn't a problem per se, but the complication is that it's not very concentrated, but spread out over it's long coastline and a bunch of islands. There's ten different 'Costas' after all, which unlike for example the Turkish Riviera, cannot be included under one name. Plus different nationalities tend to flock to different costas so it's easy to get biased here.
2. There are obviously the few undisputed highlights, but below that there is a very large group of destinations that are all very worth visiting, but with little that distinguishes them. And again, they're very spread out over different regions which makes it hard to group them.

This therefore makes the Spanish choice a bit more arbitrary than other countries, which is likely to generate more discussion.

So let's start with our list:

• The four largest cities in Spain are Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, and Seville, and they are all included for obvious reasons.
• Besides the cities, Spain's most famous attraction is undoubtedly the Alhambra in Granada.

But that's pretty much it in terms of no-brainers, unfortunately.

• Well, perhaps not really. There's neither any doubt that the Canary Island should be on the list and so do the Balearic Islands. We've split the latter up in Mallorca and Ibiza because of recognisability.
• Then there's the mainland beach destinations, the 'Costas'. The Andalusian Costa del Sol is arguably the most famous so that one's on the list plus that nicely includes Malaga (which is roughly on the edge). We'll come back to the other later.
• We've got three destinations in Andalusia now, but do feel we need to add Cordoba to the list, the Mezquita is really one of a kind. Ronda and the many other stunning small villages in Andalusia are out though as you wouldn't really do that without including one of the larger cities anyway.
• Salamanca is another mid-sized city we include: generally considered as one of its finest in Spain and it gives us some cover in the east of the country.
• We're also looking at Bilbao and San Sebastian in the north in terms of mid-sized cities, but cover both by adding Basque Country as a region
• Should we included cities like Zaragoza, Murcia, Burgos, Oviedo, Logrono, and Almeria? Maybe, but it's hard to give one the edge over the other. Pamplona has of course the San Fermin fest, but would otherwise not be on many itinararies and is right next to Basque Country.
• There are a few smaller cities though that merit inclusion: Toledo, just south of Madrid, and Segovia, north of the capital, are both stunning and on many itiniraries.
• That's also true for Santiago de Compostela, which is of course also famous for being at the end of the pilgrimage walk, which gives it the edge over including Asturias as a region (it's safe to assume that if you've been to Asturias, you've been to Santiago).
• Perhaps lesser known is El Escorial, the palace / monastery north of Madrid. It's a magnificant building and one of the first to receive World Heritage status in Spain so it's in. We've got a lot around Madrid now though so unfortunately cannot include Avila.
• We've covered most of what would be including in a three-week round trip of Spain now, though we've ingored anything nature up to now. 
• Spain perhaps isn't famous for its nature, but the Pyrenees, Sierra Nevada, and Picos de Europa are stunning mountain ranges. The Sierra Nevada, however, are in Andalusia again though - prettu much next-door to Granada, so we leave them out, but the other two are in and give us perfect cover of the north. 
• We're on 18 destinations now, which is sort of where we'd expect Spain to be, though feel like the east coast is slightly unrepresented with just Barcelona and Valencia. We therefore include the Costa Blanca, which includes beach resort towns like Benidorm and Torrevieja, and Alicante.

Does this makes sense or would you argue for different destinations? Feel free to comment below, though please do so in a civilised way.