RV travel in Spain

I think it depends where you want to go and what you want to do. I've never done this myself, but I think the following are true:

If you are expecting RVing in Europe to be a lot like it is in North America, you will probably be disappointed. Gas is significantly more expensive. You will not have the freedom to navigate many of the places that tourists want to go - the old cities that draw us to Europe. If you think that RVing will save you a lot of money, I think you will be disappointed in the savings, and you will find that your RV ends up greatly limiting what you can experience there.

If you just want a trip to Europe and are looking for a way to beat hotel expenses, this does not seem like a smart choice to me.

If what you're really looking for is an RV experience in another country, and you don't mind the fact that you will not be able to drive/park in many places that most tourists want to go, and all you really care about is RVing for its own sake, then it may be an OK choice.

I think most Americans who want to experience Europe and want to do it by RV to keep costs down are very mistaken, since your trip then becomes an RV trip that just happens to take place in Europe, rather than a trip to Europe where you just happen to sleep in an RV instead of a hotel.

I second everything that David has said, there are not too many RVs in Spain (I only started seeing them regularly when I moved to the US). I also want to reiterate that European petrol prices would be considered obscene from a North American perspective, especially in western Europe. I don't know much about RVs (I've never even seen one up close lol) but I would suspect that they require a lot of petrol and would incur quite a bit of cost. I did a quick search and the average price for a US Gallon of petrol in Spain is hovering around $5.80 USD.

For me, the biggest reason why I would shy away from RV travel in Europe is the fact that your access to the main sites will be severely limited. You will have to find a large enough parking area a good distance outside of the city center pay to park your RV and then pay for public transportation to bus/train in to the main sites.

Motor homes as they are called in Europe, not RVs, are likely to cost more than renting an apartment and you will be limited where you can park the vehicle in towns and cities. Fuel is significantly more expensive compared to the States and they don’t do many kilometres to the litre.

Spain is popular as a winter long destination with caravan and motor home owners, particularly Germans, French and the British, so camp sites will be busy. Some coastal towns have banned overnight parking of motor homes in certain areas, as they have been overrun.

April means school Easter holidays, so both apartment, hotel and vehicle hire will all be more expensive during this period.

You may find hiring a car and renting an apartment easier but a motor home is useful if you want to experience rural Spain, not towns and cities.

We've seen a lot of RVing in France and along the Rhine in Germany. It looked like fun. We are going to Andalusia, Toledo and Segovia in November. I was very surprised at how inexpensive room rates turned out to be. Now, I think you are going in a more shoulder or perhaps even peak season. I would look at the cities you'd like to visit and check out hotel/inn prices for April. The other thing I wonder about would be, is there a place on the outskirts of towns you'd like to visit and then transportation into the towns? I'm thinking that there are a lot of cities that would very difficult to navigate an RV. We don't even plan to drive a small car into the white villages, for example.

Thank you!

I want to emphasize a point Jules M raised - accommodations in Spain can be shockingly inexpensive. If you can accept a small-ish, unfancy but perfectly clean and acceptable room with ensuite bathroom, look into hostals. These are not hostels, but rather what in other countries might be called guest houses or pensions. In 2015 for a single room, I paid €53 per night in Madrid at the Hostal Acapulco http://www.hostalacapulco.com/ and €35 per night in Toledo at the Hotel Santa Isabel https://www.hotelsantaisabeltoledo.es/Inicio/w/en-US

Prices do depend on the exact destination - San Sebastian and Barcelona are definitely more expensive. It also depends on when you visit - for reasons I never did learn, my dates in Bilbao had higher hotel prices than normal (something was going on, because many places were sold out and others had only suites left, but the tourist office wasn't sure why).

If you've never been to Europe, you won't have an understanding of how narrow many of the streets and roads are. It is bad enough driving a smallish SUV and having to worry about the side mirrors getting clipped by parked cars on both sides of a one-way street, an RV would be an absolute nightmare.

That's in addition to the cost factor.

I know several British families who tour with RVs. There is a whole community of enthusiasts, including touring clubs based on the brand.
In our own family, in France not Spain however, some members set their camping trailers up in campgrounds for a month at a time.

Is it worth it? There are too many factors to weigh. You might want to test out the area first and then decide. If you set up in an RV campground or space reserved for RVs, chances are you'll meet a lot of Europeans.

RV would be most practical in the countryside (but still not very practical). Having visited Spain several times, I really don't think it's a country where the countryside is the highlight. The distances are long between stops of interest, and the gas expensive. I can't think of any country in Europe where an RV would make sense, out of ~25 that I have visited.

In defense of RVs.

About 23 years ago, I took my family on a European vacation. We decided at the outset to rent a motor home (or "Campingcar" in Euro camping lingo) in Paris and to set out for points south. Mom, Dad, 2 pre-teens, and we were on the way to adventure. It was an amazing journey, one in which we met individuals we would never have met under normal circumstances.

We traveled through France, Italy, Germany, and Austria, camping in very popular places in the Italian Riviera, on a hilltop above Siena, in a campground on the Italian coast near Ostia, in Pisa, in Nancy, in Avignon, in Valence, in Garmisch, and my personal favorite, in a small suburb of Venice where a water bus would moor, load up, and cast off to visit St. Mark's Square.

It was a diesel Pugeot that slept 4 with a refrigerator that actually made ice cubes. It got 20 miles to the gallon (I calculated the change from metric liters/kilometers into miles/gallon with the aid of a small hand held computer) and drove down the road at the speed limit or better wherever we went. It was hotel, dining room, transportation and home for 3 weeks. My family loved it (except for the fact that my daughter really didn't like the idea of bunking in with her younger brother--we solved that problem by erecting a barrier between them composed of suitcases) and the memories are a wonderful smile inducing event at family gatherings.

We used trains and buses to get to/from campgrounds into towns and cities. We shopped at supermarkets and small village markets, eating like the Europeans do.

Never having tried that in Spain, I can't comment on how it would be, but if you are looking for an unusual family vacation where you can meet middle class Europeans in an unfussy and relaxed environment, camping is the ticket. If you are doing it because you have an RV stateside and want to replicate the experience across the pond, it may not be for you.

I think the problem lies with the interpretation of the word RV. Whenever I think of an RV I imagine the huge behemoths that are commonly seen in the US. What I think about in the European sense are what I would call motorhomes or camper vans, small, compact vehicles that can move around the country fairly easily.

So when people talk about RV'ing in Europe the concept of driving around in huge vehicles is not what is immediately brought to mind. Travelling around in a typical compact motorhome however is quite common.