Spain Guide
Weather
Overall, spring, early summer and autumn are ideal times for a Spanish trip – though the weather varies enormously from region to region. The high central plains suffer from fierce extremes, stiflingly hot in summer, bitterly cold and swept by freezing winds in winter. The Atlantic coast, in contrast, has a tendency to damp and mist, and a relatively brief, humid summer. The Mediterranean south is warm virtually all year round, and in parts of Andalucía positively subtropical, where it's often balmy enough to wear a t-shirt by day even in the winter months.
In high summer, the other factor worth considering is tourism itself. As the second most visited country in the world, Spain plays host to about sixty million tourists a year – rather more than the entire population – and all the main beach and mountain resorts are packed in July and August, as are the major sights. August, Spain's own holiday month, sees the coast at its most crowded and the cities, by contrast, pretty sleepy.