Need Help with Trip to Spain/Portugal This July

To make it worth while and fun/ I feel you need at least 5 days in Barcelona and still will leave not have done some wonderful things. Madrid is lively and fun but I feel like other places in Spain are more historic. It looks like your tour starts in Madrid, I would use as many of your days as possible in Barcelona. If you do plan some nights in Madrid, I'd look at some day trips. You could go to Segovia, about an hour away and has a very ancient, long and in tact Roman aqueduct and a charming old town.

It will be quite hot in Spain in July.

The easy comment is that between Barcelona and Madrid the best travel option would be by fast train (known as AVE), which take you from city centre to city centre quickly.

As a confirmed misanthrope I've never considered a multi-day coach trip and can't advise about that company or any other (although I see it is at least a small mini-coach tour; not a big bus horror like other companies). But looking at the itinerary you linked, I'd say whilst a bit of a whirlwind it hits the highlights, with the exception of no time at the seaside. Presumably, they are well-organised on the logistics, but still something like day 7 could be a real blur of places. If you're happy with that pace then the tour makes sense - you certainly couldn't cover all that in the time available doing it yourself by public transport, or even by car.

On the other hand, with 10 nights (and not including Toledo), you could create your own DIY tour of Andalucia and see some of the highlights, moving around by railway, coach (bus) and, perhaps, hiring a car. If you ended in Sevilla, there is a flight to Porto, from where you could easily then go onto Lisbon to fly home. I'm sure lots here would happily post our "ideal" 10 night Andalucia route if you were interested.

I guess, in the end, it depends on your preferred "tourism style" and how many nights overall you have for the whole trip. I'm thinking about 15 or 20 nights and you like to move quickly?

It's hot in July, especially inland Andalucia which is scorchio. So you may not want to travel too fast and instead include time for relaxing during the afternoon heat.

P.S. I just noticed you wrote "this July". That's not long away now so you do need to get a wriggle on for those parts you plan to do yourself (and presumably the tour could sell out soon too). It's peak tourist season, hotels fill-up and places like the Alhambra are already selling tickets which could run-out quite quickly.

You give us no idea of your interests or reasons for going to Spain. Or how long you can stretch out your time there.
Barcelona needs at least 4 full days. Madrid (in my opinion) 3 - 4 days if you do Segovia as a day trip. Lisbon probably needs 3 days as well.
But given the itinerary you provided, it appears that you are a 'tapas' type tourist - with a taste of a place, rather than some in depth time to find its secrets and secondary points of interest.
The tour itself adds in some 'stops to visit' which means a lot of time on the road and 2 nights is only 1 full day. In a place like Seville, that just isn't enough. It states morning at Alhambra....which for many isn't enough time. It is a large space and you will be jockeying around other tours and visitors.
But maybe that is the compromise that works for you. A stop or two to make purely DIY and a bunch of other locations where someone else does the logistical work. That isn't a bad thing, as it can take time to arrange an extended multi stop trip and not all are interested or have time to do it. Time is money, after all.
If you are happy with the pace, it covers the highlights.

Thanks, everyone, for getting the ball rolling for us. Sorry for being a bit vague. All your points are spot on and thanks for the reminder about the heat and about alternative ways of structuring our time and for getting around.
Our way of visiting places has been first to go "tapas-style"--getting an overview of multiple places on a trip without it being so quick as to be breathless and meaningless, and then to return to spots we love and "live there" a bit. We returned to France and spent a month in the same Airbnb in Paris in 2015 and loved it (struck up relationships with shop owners, bartenders, transit workers, etc.) This would be my wife's first time to Spain/Portugal so we wanted to get the "big picture" view first. Our cultural priorities are food/wine, music, architecture, history, nature, entertainment, etc. Thanks again for all your help!
Paul

I will point out the downside of going to Madrid and points south in July. Andalucia is the hottest, driest part of Europe - great in February, miserable in July. There's a reason July-August is LOW season . . . triple-digit heat, even in Madrid. Barcelona and coastal Portugal are less hot, though often noticeably humid.

I second Chani: all of the places covered by the Blueroads tour are very likely to be scorching in July. Including the Portugal side. Some people, myself included, do not mind 100+ temperatures but they might affect your enjoyment. If so, from Madrid (itself very hot, but you list it as a priority), I would swing north and west to Lisbon: Segovia, Ávila, Salamanca, then on towards Lisbon (either directly with the overnight train, or with intermediate stops but I've never been to Central Portugal). I don't think you need a tour on that route.

Would you consider Barcelona, the Basque region, Costa Brava, and other parts of northern Spain instead of Andalucia because of the heat? We were in Seville in late September/early October, and it was 90 - 95 degrees. Can't imagine what it's like in July! Would you enjoy sightseeing in 100 degree temps? I remember reading trip reports from people who were there during the summer and they wrote about dripping in sweat after walking for 10 minutes.