Book regarding Spain

Where in Spain are you going?

Giles Tremlett's Ghosts of Spain gives a good look at modern Spain in the light of the Civil War
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghosts-Spain-Travels-Through-Countrys/dp/0571279392

This Paul Preston one is a readble history of the Civil War
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Spanish-Civil-War-Reaction-Revolution/dp/0007232071

Fly into Madrid then south to Seville, Cordoba Granada, Valencia Barcelona
Thank you

For the Civil War, also George Orwell’s classic memoir, Homage to Catalonia. For a book covering many parts of Spain, James Michener’s Iberia. Spain has of course changed massively since he published that one in 1968, during the Franco dictatorship, but he was a great writer who loved Spain and it’s still a very worthwhile read.

It´s a pity you´ll be missing the so different, unspoilt, green and mountainous north, because The Basque History of the World, by Mark Kurlansky, is a must before coming here.

The BBC's Misha Glenny had a 3 episode podcast on the "The Invention of Spain", a short history of the country.
https://www.bbc.com/audio/play/b01nk276

Catalonia, Castille, Galicia and the Basques ... it's been said that many of Spain's problems come from the pretence that she is one country. In The Invention of Spain Misha Glenny explores whether this is true. Three documentaries, from 1492 to 1898, from Columbus to El Desastre, tell the story of the rise and fall of an empire. But they also reveal the fractured state of a nation, both in history and now.
"I can't imagine Spain ever cohering - if it did it wouldn't be Spain." Felipe Fernandez Armesto.
The first programme begins in the annus mirabilis of 1492, when the last Moors in Granada surrendered, Columbus discovered the New World, and an edict was published expelling the Jews. This year is frequently cited as the birth of modern Spain, but behind the national mythology another story lurks. "The birth of this embryonic Spain is rooted in the idea of exclusion," says one contributor, "and that is a very nasty thing to have in your history."

Two I found helpful before visiting Andalucia:
A Vanished World: Medieval Spain's Golden Age of Enlightenment
Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors

I also love perusing regional cookbooks!

Consider For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Hemingway
or,
James Michener's Iberia.

I haven't read this one, but it looks good.
A Concise History of Spain (Cambridge Concise Histories)
by William D. Phillips Jr (Author), Carla Rahn Phillips (Author) Format: Paperback

Yes to GHOSTS OF SPAIN.

THE NEW SPANIARDS is old but worth reading, still.

THE SHADOW OF THE WIND (fiction)

KANTIKA, a novel about a Turkish-Jewish family who emigrates from Constantinople to Barcelona, published 2023, is fantastic!!

I quite enjoyed reading Henry V. Morton's travel account, "A Stranger in Spain," published in 1955. True, it may be a bit "out of date," but for me that's not necessarily a disadvantage. After all, when I travel I will see the contemporary country myself; reading what it was like two or three generations ago, just before the advent of mass "jet-set" tourism, allows me to put what I'm seeing in some perspective.

Also, I found Morton to be an engaging writer, very witty in a way that does not interfere with his main narrative. But one of the things I appreciated about Morton was his realistic view of the Spanish corrida, or "bull-fight," which occupies Chapter 6, Part 6. Unlike some non-Spanish writers, who seem to find a sort of vicarious machismo in expressing their fondness for bull-fighting, Morton views it with almost scientific clarity, down to every gory, agonizing detail. I would recommend this section of his book even to those who don't take on the whole thing, but only provided they can handle a succession of extremely detailed observations of what actually happened in the corrida he witnessed.