The heat, which is the thing to plan around
This is the single most consequential fact about visiting, and the inland cities are the problem rather than the coast. Seville averages a daily high of about 36°C in July and 35°C in August; Cordoba is much the same, and both regularly run well above those averages. These are not figures that reward sightseeing on foot.
The hot season runs roughly from mid-June to mid-September, and through it the cities empty out in the afternoon for sound reasons. Rain is close to nil from the end of May to early September.
The sensible windows are late March to June and mid-September to late October, with May about the best of it. Winter is mild rather than cold — Seville averages a high around 16°C in January — and the cities are quiet, cheap and perfectly pleasant to walk, which makes it an underrated time to come. The one qualification is that the coast is out of season and the days are short.
Two dates to plan around or avoid, depending on inclination: Semana Santa and, in Seville, the Feria de Abril a fortnight later. Both fill every bed in the city and both make the centre impassable.
Getting there and getting about
- Malaga is the main gateway from the United Kingdom by a wide margin, and the cheapest. Seville, Jerez and Gibraltar all take direct flights too, and Gibraltar is worth considering for the western end of the region.
- The high-speed rail is the thing most visitors underuse. Seville to Cordoba takes well under an hour, which makes Cordoba a comfortable day out from Seville rather than a separate base, and both connect to Madrid in a few hours. Malaga is on the network too.
- A car is unnecessary for the four big cities and close to essential for the white towns, the Grazalema mountains and the Atlantic coast. Historic centres are largely pedestrianised and often restricted to residents, so a car is a liability in town — park on the edge and walk.
- Language. English is spoken at the monuments and on the Costa del Sol, and much less reliably inland. Andalucian Spanish drops consonants in a way that defeats people who learned the language elsewhere, which is worth knowing before concluding one's Spanish has deserted one.
Before travelling
Two changes affect British travellers and neither existed when most accounts of the region were written.
- The EU Entry/Exit System is in force. Introduced in October 2025 and fully operational since April 2026, it records a facial image and fingerprints at passport control on entry to the Schengen area. Children under twelve give a facial image only. Implementation still varies between individual border posts, so queues are unpredictable. Irish passport holders, and British passport holders resident in the EU, are exempt.
- ETIAS is not yet running. The travel authorisation scheme has no confirmed start date and applications cannot be made, so any website offering to sell one is not legitimate. When it does begin, British citizens will need one.
Visits remain limited to 90 days in any 180, and the Entry/Exit System is what now counts them.
The cities, and how to divide them
Four cities carry the region, and they are genuinely different from one another rather than variations on a theme.
- Seville — the capital, and the one to come to if there is only time for one. The cathedral is the largest Gothic church in the world and the Alcázar is still a working royal palace.
- Granada — for the Alhambra, which is the finest surviving Islamic palace complex anywhere and needs booking well in advance.
- Cordoba — for the Mosque-Cathedral, a building with no real parallel, and the old Jewish quarter around it.
- Malaga — once treated as the airport one passes through, and since 2003 a serious museum city as well as Picasso's birthplace.
And the rest of it
- Ronda, split by a gorge, is the best known of the white towns and the easiest to reach from the coast.
- Cadiz is Atlantic, very old, and the base for the Grazalema mountains, the sherry country and the Trafalgar shore. The Royal Andalucian School of Equestrian Art at Jerez is in the same province, and its performances run on set days rather than daily.
- Gibraltar sits at the southern tip but is not part of Andalucia or of Spain — it is a British Overseas Territory, with a land border and its own rules. It makes a strange and interesting day out.
- Semana Santa, Holy Week, is the region's great set piece, and the processions are the reason many people come at all.
The caves at Nerja, east of Malaga, and the ruined palace-city of Medina Azahara outside Cordoba are both worth the detour and neither is in the city it belongs to.
Eight hundred years of Islamic rule, five hundred years of undoing it, and the buildings that record the argument.