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Visiting
Spain's predominant climate is Mediterranean-temperate, with dry summers, and pretty constant temperatures during the winter. In Spain, you will enjoy more than three thousand hours of sunlight. Therefore, it is hardly surprising that this region is one of the warmest in Europe.
Spain can be enjoyable any time of year. The ideal months to visit are May, June and September (plus April and October in the south). At these times you can rely on good-to-excellent weather, yet avoid the extreme heat - and the main crush of Spanish and foreign tourists - of July and August. But there's decent weather in some parts of Spain virtually year round. Winter along the southern and southeastern Mediterranean coasts is mild, while in the height of summer you can retreat to the northwest, to beaches or high mountains anywhere to escape excessive heat. The best festivals are mostly concentrated between Semana Santa (the week leading up to Easter Sunday) and September to October.
 The Spanish invented the novel and the guitar, gave the world flamenco, Picasso and gazpacho and dreamed up some of the world's most fabulously out-there architecture. Their influence on 20th-century art and design has been inestimable, and if all that's not enough, they're relentlessly well dressed, insouciant and have a contagious knack for enjoying life.
In 1986 Spain joined the EC (now the EU) and in 1992 Spain returned to the world stage, with Barcelona hosting the Olympic Games, Seville hosting Expo 92 and Madrid being declared European Cultural Capital.
The season of festivals and fiestas is revving up to full throttle, from streets carpeted in flowers to films-by-the-sea, from the running of the bulls to concerts and ballet in the gardens of the caliphs. Paella and sangrνa are world-famous, but we want you to know about an evolving cuisine whose contemporary practitioners are as daring and celebrated as any on the planet. Youve heard about the eyepopping Guggenheim Museum that has transformed Bilbao, but let us tell you about Gaudν and the modernista architects who made Barcelona as visually arresting a city as any in Europe. The capital, Madrid, has over fifty museums and a palace with 2,600 rooms. It has tropical islands, hidden hilltowns, Roman cities. Our mountains have snow past Spring and our nightclubs thump on past dawn.
Spain, a memory of a lifetime.
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