Being a guest

How to be a good guest

Spain took around ninety million international visitors last year, into a population of forty-eight million. In most of the country that is simply the economy. In a handful of places it has stopped being an abstraction: rents have moved, central neighbourhoods have emptied of residents, and locals have marched about it. Almost nothing on this page is a rule. It is what works when you are the guest.

The manners below are conventions rather than laws. Where something is a rule — a dress code, a fire ban, a ticket restriction — we say so.

The short version

Greet before you ask. Buenos días, por favor, gracias. Nobody expects your Spanish to be good; everyone notices whether you tried. In a shop or a bar, the greeting comes first — a request with no greeting is the single most common way visitors come across as curt without meaning anything by it.

Eat where the menu is in Spanish. Menus with photographs are not a moral failure, but the bar with a chalkboard and no English is usually cheaper, better, and pleased to see you. Standing at the bar costs less than the terrace by law, and it is where the conversation happens.

Treat a church as a church and a procession as worship. Cover shoulders and knees, keep your voice down, and check before raising a camera. Holy Week is not a pageant staged for visitors; it is a religious event that visitors are allowed to watch.

Ask before photographing a person. A gesture toward the camera is enough consent in a market or on a village square. A long lens from across the street is not.

Assume the countryside belongs to someone. Spain is a patchwork of private land. A track that looks public may cross a finca, and coto privado means turn around.

Sleep in fewer places and stay longer. One base for four nights does more for a town's economy, and for your trip, than four towns for one night each.

Pressure points

Where the numbers actually bite

Visitors cluster, and the clustering is the problem rather than the total. These are the places in Spain where the strain is documented and public, with the version of the same trip we would take instead. The wider argument is in Beyond the Circuit.

Barcelona and the Catalan coast

Rents in the old town have been pushed up by short-term lets, new hotel licences in the centre are effectively frozen, and the city has moved to wind down short-term rental licences by 2028. Opposition to tourism here is not a fringe position.

InsteadSleep outside the centre and come in by metro or train. Give the Ramblas a pass and walk Gràcia, Sant Antoni or Poblenou instead. If you rent, use a licensed flat and check that the licence number is displayed.

Mallorca, Ibiza and the Balearics

Rental rules are tight and getting tighter, large demonstrations against mass tourism have been held in Palma, and through July and August the island's roads and coves carry more people than they were built for.

InsteadGo in May or October. Take the train from Palma to Sóller rather than driving the same road, and if you want the Tramuntana, walk a stage of it instead of queueing for a car park.

The Canary Islands

Water and housing are the pressure points on islands with finite supplies of both, and in 2024 tens of thousands marched across the archipelago against the tourism model. A cheap winter base here has a cost, and locals are the ones paying it.

InsteadStay in the towns rather than the purpose-built resorts, shop where residents shop, and treat water as the scarce thing it is.

Seville and the Andalusian centres

Central apartments have shifted heavily to visitor use, and the Alcázar, the cathedral and the Plaza de España absorb the numbers a whole province receives in a summer.

InsteadSleep in Triana or Macarena rather than beside the cathedral, and give a day to a provincial town — Carmona, Osuna, Écija, Utrera — where the same architecture sits with nobody in front of it.

San Sebastián and the Basque coast

The city has argued publicly with itself for years about how many visitors it can hold, and a night in the Parte Vieja in August is now mostly visitors.

InsteadEat pintxos standing at the bar and move on after one or two, the way locals do, then spend the evening in Gros or Antiguo, where the same cooking is done for neighbours.

Santiago de Compostela

In summer the closing stages of the Francés bring thousands of walkers a day into a city of under a hundred thousand, and the old town's beds and kitchens take the strain.

InsteadWalk a quieter route, or the Francés in a shoulder-season week, and book your bed ahead so you are not the person phoning around at nine at night.

Everyday

In a bar, a shop, a market

—Greet on the way in: buenos días through the morning, buenas at any hour after. It is the whole of the exchange that visitors most often get wrong.
—Stand at the bar if you want the cheaper price and the better seat. The gap between barra and terraza is regulated, not a tourist surcharge.
—A tapa comes with a drink, a ración is a plate to share. Ask what a portion is if you are unsure — nobody minds the question.
—No one brings the bill until you ask for it. Sitting on after you have finished is normal, and being hurried out is not.
—In food markets prices are fixed and haggling is not done. At a Sunday flea market, asking is part of it.
—Use the local greeting where one exists: bon dia in Catalonia and the Balearics, egun on in the Basque Country, bos días in Galicia. Spanish works everywhere; the local word is noticed.

Places of worship

In a church, a mosque interior, a procession

—These are working places of worship that happen to sell tickets. Shoulders and knees covered, hat off, phone silent, voice at a murmur. The Mezquita-Catedral in Córdoba and the great cathedrals all ask for this, and it is not a suggestion.
—No flash, and no tripods where they are banned. The ban usually exists to protect the building or the people in it.
—Don't photograph a service. If a Mass is under way, put the camera away whatever the light is doing.
—A procession is worship in the street. Stay out of the route, don't touch the images or the bearers, and follow the crowd on when to applaud — applause and saetas belong to Andalusian Holy Week at the right moments, started by people who know the local rhythm.
—In Holy Week, streets close for hours at a time. Route around the closures rather than pushing through them.

Festivals

At a fiesta that isn't yours

—San Fermín is white clothes with a red neckerchief, and the run is genuinely dangerous. The people running it know the route and the timing; if you don't, watch from a balcony and enjoy it more.
—Las Fallas is a fortnight of explosions. A mascletà is loud enough to hurt at close range, and ear protection is normal here rather than fussy.
—A village fiesta belongs to the village. You are welcome; you are not the reason it is happening. Don't treat the square as a photo set, and don't take the last seat at the bar at family lunchtime.
—Most fiestas are paid for by the town and the local bars. Buying something is the contribution available to you.

Countryside

On the land

—Assume private. Much of Spain is fincas and hunting estates, and a track can cross one. Coto privado, finca privada, a closed gate: turn around.
—Close gates behind you, and don't walk into standing crops. Olive groves look empty and are not.
—In summer, fire bans are real and enforced. Many regions prohibit smoking, stoves and fires in wooded areas during high-risk periods. The fine is heavy and the risk is worse.
—Stay on marked paths in the natural parks. Cutting a switchback is why the switchback erodes, and mountain rescue in the Picos and the Pyrenees is called out regularly for people who left the trail.
—Water is a real constraint here, not a rhetorical one. Drought cycles recur, some summers bring restrictions on pools, gardens and washing, and overuse is noticed.

People

Photographs, flamenco, and being told off

—Ask before you photograph a person. A gesture at the camera gets you an answer in a market or on a village square; a telephoto shot from across the street is a decision you made without them.
—Flamenco is a profession, not an atmosphere. Buy a ticket at a tablao or a peña rather than watching for free through a doorway, and don't film a full set.
—If someone tells you off, take it and apologise. Spanish directness is not rudeness — you are being told the thing plainly, which is its own kind of courtesy. Arguing the point is what turns two seconds into an afternoon.
—The things that land badly are narrower than visitors fear: ignoring the greeting, being loud indoors, and treating someone serving you as furniture.
—You will be given patience with your Spanish. Use it. The effort is the courtesy.

Our part of it

What this guide does about it

—We send you outward on purpose. The map here is built on microregions, small towns and single worthwhile detours rather than four cities with the same itinerary as everybody else.
—We publish exact locations, because a place you cannot find is not a recommendation. What we give with each one is the context that keeps it working: when to go, what it costs, and who depends on it.
—We don't invent experience we haven't had, and we don't write like a brochure. Where a page gives you a judgement or an estimate rather than a fact, it says so.
—Commission never buys a place on this site. Some booking links earn us a percentage; nothing in the Atlas is here because of one.

The rest of the planning layer