ONCE again, 'staycations' are set to make up the bulk of Spain's tourism this summer, especially as Spanish residents themselves are not planning on heading abroad just yet – a study shows that 91% of those intending to take a holiday before the start of the school term will be going somewhere within their home country.
Cartagena's Roman theatre earned the most ratings for the province-region of Murcia (photo: Murcia city council)
But within it, most expressed a desire to see another part of it: The latest report by the National Tourism Output Observatory (ObservaTUR) claims 71% are seriously thinking of visiting a different region to the one they live in.
It is likely many have not yet decided exactly where – although the coasts and islands are likely to be popular, as are any places where the travellers have friends or family – and could be seeking inspiration.
Wherever they end up, there's at least one major attraction in every single province worth the trip on its own; and all provinces have plenty of sights to see, so it's not always easy to pick out the ones you really don't want to miss if your time there is short.
Luckily, to help us along, holiday excursions organiser Musement has created a handy little map where we can see at a glance which have been given the most top ratings on Google by those visiting.
Compiling the map meant narrowing it down from 4,500 popular sites – not even including lesser-known ones that might be just as popular if they were discovered – to a mere 52, or one for every province.
Favourite attractions you could probably guess at
Some were the obvious choice for their province. Granada was always going to be the Alhambra Palace – although its other huge attraction, the Sierra Nevada National Park, also a key skiing resort, is shared with the province of Almería, and was the top-rated for here. For Huelva, it was clearly going to be the Doñana National Park, whilst for Barcelona, the Sagrada Família cathedral was one of several of these that would probably make up the main, or even only, initial reason for a visit there, such as the sublimely-beautiful cathedral in Burgos, Castilla y León, widely thought to be one of the most attractive in the world, and its rival for the crown, that of Santiago de Compostela in the province of A Coruña, Galicia.
For Segovia, the mammoth Roman aqueduct and in its neighbour, Ávila, the city wall, are what everyone would have expected to be chosen, and probably the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, too – no surprises there.
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