Bienvenidos a` Espana
Spain has a long and colorful history that left distinctive marks on architecture, the arts and everyday traditions — just about all the things that interest a significant number of U.S. tourists who travel off the North American continent.

It also is a pretty country with a pleasant climate and a widely varied terrain allowing for skiing in winter and lots of beach activities, which can be year-round in some places.
It’s a comfortable place to visit, too, because the Spanish are welcoming, the food and wine are good and many Americans speak some Spanish.

About Spain
On the world tourism map, Spain is second only to France for number of tourist arrivals. Many of those visitors are European, but this sunny Iberian country is quite popular with Americans, too, and across all personality types.

Understandably, history and the arts are major draws, but Spanish culture offers more than buildings or paintings produced by dead men. Take mealtimes, for example. With an emphasis on seafood, Spanish menus offer plenty to please the palate, including adventurous choices, all with wine to match. Vacationers acclimate to long lunch breaks (although the siesta is disappearing) and to very late dinners, typically at 10 p.m. or 11 p.m.

Speaking of culture, Spain is all the more interesting for its variety, as indicated by language. The Basque country in the north is home to a people whose language is unlike any other; its largest city is Bilbao, site of the famous Guggenheim Museum. Galician, most similar to Portuguese, is spoken in the northwest; Galicia abuts Portugal’s northern border. Finally, in Catalonia, with Barcelona as its capital, the native tongue is Catalan, another Romance language. However, the Spanish learned from Hispanic parents or taught in the classroom is understood anywhere in the country.

For entertainment, bullfights draw the tourists, but soccer is the most popular spectator sport among the Spanish. No one has to remain a spectator only. Activities may be outdoors sports, but can include participation in lively annual festivals, or a self-drive tour, or language lessons, for example.

Spain is in a sunny, warm part of Europe, but it has seasons. Even in summer, it is not as hot in many places as one might expect because much of Spain is a high and dry plateau, and that puts a lid on temperatures. This plateau is broken, in turn, by hills and mountains — the better to provide settings for those outdoor activities that appeal most to venturers.

• Take a mountain biking trip in the National Park of Sierra Nevada, with overnights in a traditional mountain village. You can bike by day, and if not too fatigued, travel the few miles into Granada in the evenings.

• Go to Majorca at any time of the year for just about any kind of activity you might pursue on the mainland (though not skiing). Choices range from rock climbing to fishing, from scuba diving to archery, from windsurfing to cycling. Or join a paintball competition. Then, rest on a beach.

• Go skiing in the Pyrenees in the northeast or in the Sierra Nevada in the south.

• Scuba dive in Africa, meaning in Melilla, an autonomous Spanish city on the African coast, adjacent to Morocco.

• Run with the bulls in Pamplona at the July San Fermin Festival, but be aware of the risks. The bulls fatally injured more than a dozen runners in the 20th century.

• Caving, mountaineering and rock climbing are all options in the Sierra Nevada mountains.

• Attend festivals with unusual themes. To wit: the Batalla del Vino in Haro, where on a June day participants battle one another with Rioja wine, and La Tomatina in Bunol, an August event that closes with a huge tomato fight, turning more than 120 tons of the fruit into paste and juice.

But the real eye-popper is the Fiesta of the Near-Death Experience in Las Nieves where survivors of a close call may ride to a cemetery and church in a coffin.

• Attend a bullfight.

• Hike in the soaring Picos de Europa (up to 9,000 feet above sea level), which are in the north of Spain less than 20 miles from the Atlantic Ocean.

• Enter a bike race. Each year, there are more than 5,000 cycling races at all levels across the country. Check with the Spanish Cycling Federation at www.rfec.com if you can work with a Spanish-language Web site. Otherwise, the Madrid contact details are at the bottom of that home page.

• Barcelona is a lovely city made most memorable to visitors by the Gaudi style. The biggest of the architect’s projects was the unfinished Sagrada Familia Cathedral, which looks like one grand fantastical sculpture. Visit this cathedral, and get up into the cathedral spires for a view of the largely roofless church below and parts of the city.

• Visit ski resorts at off season and you can go canoeing or try your luck with a fishing rod.

• Take Castilian Spanish lessons while you are where you have a chance to practice your lessons daily.

• Visit Girona on the Costa Brava, a small city charming to see and great for the photographers among us, but most noted for the medieval Jewish quarter that is a centerpiece of the tourist’s itinerary today.

• Attend a soccer game and watch fans who get crazier than American football fans.

• Plan a self-drive wine tour following the Duero River.

• Go fly-fishing in the Pyrenees. Follow in the footsteps of writer Ernest Hemingway and choose the Irati River mentioned in “The Sun Also Rises.”
Alternatively, go deep-sea fishing off the Atlantic or Mediterranean coasts.

• Go horseback riding in Andalusia in southern Spain.

• Plan a driving trip that traces the steps of American writer Washington Irving who, in his fascination with Spanish Muslim civilization, visited and traveled between Seville and Granada.
The Spanish tourist board suggests a number of other themed driving tours, as well.

• See what may be the world’s finest surviving set of medieval town walls at Avila, and walk the top of the walls for a great view of the town and surrounding area.

• Eat local specialties including paella, gazpacho and lots of seafood — baby eels, crabs, sardines, squid.

• See the sights in Madrid, then get out of town to nearby Toledo, a dramatically situated walled town and repository for many El Greco paintings, and to El Escorial, one of the world’s largest buildings — palace, monastery and burial site for many Spanish monarchs.

• See a performance of flamenco dancing.

• Play golf on the Costa del Sol, or any number of other coastal areas, with the sea as a backdrop.

• Take up brush and easel to paint the scenes of Andalusia. Many artists find the light excellent for watercolors. Take art classes in Mijas or in other Andalusian towns.

• See the Picasso Museum in Barcelona and gain a double benefit — get access to the works of a master plus a look at the interior of several medieval palaces. The museum occupies a set of five Gothic palaces that once housed local aristocrats. (But go to Madrid to see the most famous piece, the “Guernica.”)

• See Spain’s Guggenheim in Bilbao, which has the world’s largest gallery space.

• Overnight in one or more of Spain’s paradors, luxury state-run hotels. Some are former castles or monasteries.

• Go bird-watching in the spring. The Strait of Gibraltar is a key crossing point for raptors, storks and other birds on their migration paths between Africa and Europe.

• Enjoy the beaches, but take some time out of the sun for relaxing spa treatments.