Introduction

Overview

Andalucía is probably one of the best known parts of Spain for holidaymakers, famous for its sandy beaches and year round sunshine and its cosmopolitan Costa del Sol. However the landscape is also the most varied of any region in Spain and you can do practically everything from windsurfing on the windy Atlantic coast to skiing in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Once one of Spain’s poorest regions, Andalucía now has an excellent infrastructure, with good roads, telephone lines (for those who can’t leave the laptop at home!) and a good public transport system between main towns. Service in the bars and restaurants is excellent and off the beaten track you will find some of the friendliest people in Spain, where astoundingly not speaking each other’s language is never a problem.

Fact file

Capital: Sevilla
Provinces: Cádiz, Huelva, Córdoba, Sevilla, Málaga, Jaén, Almería, Granada
Costas: Costa del Sol (Málaga); Costa de la Luz (Huelva and Cádiz), Costa de Almeria, Costa Tropical (Granada)
Coastline: some 900 kms (of which 335 are conservation areas) ranging from long sandy beaches to volcanic cliffs interspersed with isolated coves
Oceans/Seas: The eastern coastal provinces (Almeria, Granada and Malaga and part of Cadiz) are on the Mediterranean Sea and eastern Cadiz and Huelva in the south-west are on the Atlantic.
Mountains: the Sierra Nevada mountain range. The Mulhacen mountain (3,478m) is the highest in mainland Spain and, despite being in one of the southern most parts of Europe, is snow capped all year round. Sierra de Ronda (Malaga) Sierra de Baza etc.
Language: Castilian Spanish. There is a distinctive andaluz accent and way of speaking (habla andaluza) - characterised by missing off the ends of words, particularly the “s”s.
Population: 7 million (about 18% of Spain’s total 41m). The village with the smallest population is Cumbres de Enmedio – a tiny hamlet in the Sierra de Aracena, 140 km from Huelva. With only 52 inhabitants it is a striking example of shrinking rural areas, abandoned by young people to find work and a new life in the cities, leaving behind them villages with an aging population and extremely low birth rates. By contrast Almería is the province to have seen the biggest increase in its population – 17.83% since 1991. This increase is largely due to the arrival of immigrants attracted by the prospect of employment in the greenhouse farming economy.
Size: 87,300 sq km. 17.3% of Spain and more than 4 times the size of Wales.
Main industries: Andalucia is very geared up for tourism – according to 2002 statistics on the Junta de Andalucia’s (local government) website around 62% of the active population in employment work in the service industries with the broad categories of construction (14%), agriculture (13%) and Industry (11%) accounting for the rest.

Don't go home without ...

Visiting
• La Alhambra in Granada (a palace built by the Moors in the 13th century)
• La Mezquita in Cordoba (a mosque with a cathedral built round it)
• The old quarter in Seville (unchanged in centuries, tiny bars and art galleries)
• Ronda and the white villages (Sierra de Ronda)
• The caves of Nerja in the province of Granada

Trying
• Spanish dry sherry (fino) served ice cold at aperitivo time
• The cable car ride from Benalmedana to the peak of Calamorra at 724m
• A ferry ride from San Lucar de Barrameda to the borders of the Doñana national park.
• A tablao restaurant supper with flamenco dancing

People watching
• the rich and famous adorning their yachts in places like Puerto Banus, Sotogrande and Marbella
• local people cooling off at the end of a hot day on the pavement outside their houses, called tomando el fresco
• the best trained waiters in Europe, typically to be found in the bigger tourist spots

With thanks to Colin Wilshire for permission to use his photo of a Moorish garden