TRYING to cram in all of Spain's top monuments in one lifetime means being constantly on the go, even if you start your road-trips in playschool and live to be over 100. Perhaps what we really need is the equivalent of Las Vegas, where you can tour everywhere from the canals of Venice to the Eiffel Tower on one complex, then say afterwards that you've 'done' them and don't need to bother with the real thing – the Vegas versions are exactly the same, surely?
Sevilla's famous bullring - but not the real one. A kitchen-sized, completely hand-crafted replica at Villasudores…just wow. (All photos by Parque Miniaturas Villasudores)
To a certain extent, Spain has one of those already – the Poble Espanyol ('Spanish Village') in Barcelona. Rather than monuments, though, this surreal and fascinating complex shows typical, life-sized buildings and streets from every province, carefully labelled and within separate quadrangles for each region, so by following the indicated route you can tour the country on foot in a couple of hours.
And, it turns out, we also have our own micro-Andalucía; it's been around for nearly two decades, yet somehow we've all managed to miss it.
At Villasudores, exact replicas of famous tourism and heritage sites, as well as 'generic' and 'trademark' buildings seen in southern Spain, are created in microscopic, intricate and faithful detail, but in much smaller, more manageable sizes.
So if you've been to the Alhambra Palace in Granada or the Great Mosque of Córdoba already, and would really quite like to see them again but can't be bothered with the queues, crowds or booking tickets online, head down to this open-air 'model village' in Gibraleón, Huelva province, and you can walk around each in minutes without missing any part of the original.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com