Travel in Spain in Spring 2025

It is theoretically doable, but I think it's very ill-advised and will not produce as enjoyable a trip as you'll have if you trim the itinerary and allow more time at several stops.

Toledo is a lovely, historic city. With just one night there, the night you land after an overnight flight, you may be sleepwalking if not actually asleep during the entire visit. What will you have the energy (or willpower) to see on Day 1? Heading straight to Toledo on arrival day is a very good idea, but please make it for at least 2 nights.

Seville is, truly, at least a 4-night sort of place, or 5 nights if you want to take a day trip to Cordoba. Cordoba is definitely worth multiple nights, but it doesn't have as many sights as Seville, so Seville is a better base.

I like Bilbao a lot, but there's no way I'd travel all the way there from Madrid (and later on to Barcelona) for just one night. Bilbao alone calls for more time than that, and there are many other interesting places to visit in the Basque Country once you get there. And spring is far from the best time to go to that part of Spain, which tends to be cool and damp even in the middle of the summer (making it a great place to escape the heat then).

Two nights (a scant 1-1/2 days) in Barcelona will give you fits as you begin to plan your sightseeing. The city has six highly popular sights that basically require advance purchase of entry tickets because the ticket lines are so long. And those tickets are timed, so you have to calculate very carefully how much of a gap to leave between each pair of entry times. When will you want to eat? How long will that take? And so on. I recommend at least 4 nights in Barcelona.

You shouldn't split your time in Madrid. Stay there only once, at the end of your trip, so you don't waste time with two hotel check-ins. I think 3 nights is a reasonable minimum for Madrid. If you're art junkies, add at least 1 night.

Your tentative itinerary adds up to 12 nights in Spain. If you cannot increase that significantly, I'd drop both Bilbao and Barcelona so you aren't so rushed in Madrid, Toledo and Andalucia. If you can manage 13 nights, I'd allocate them like this, or close to it:

Toledo: 2 (you must return to Madrid on the train before heading south)
Granada: 3
Seville: 5 (with day trip to Cordoba)
Madrid: 3

With only 12 nights, I'd have a hard time deciding where to cut a night; I wouldn't take it from Toledo.

You could save a bit of time by seeing Cordoba in transit on the way from Granada to Seville or from Seville to Madrid. That would eliminate the round-trip from Seville (a minimum of 84 minutes). I'd want to get an early start, and you should research options for luggage storage in Cordoba in case the lockers at the bus station (which is very near the train station) are full when you arrive. Just Google luggage storage Cordoba and make note of places near the train station.

It takes a lot of 12-night trips to even begin to see Spain's highlights. I'm just suggesting that you consider geography when you put together your itinerary so you don't spend so much time sitting on trains. (Bilbao is a really major outlier, time-wise).

April is really the ideal time to go to Andalucia, based on weather statistics. I hope you can take full advantage of the fortuitous timing to get a good look at that part of Spain. (You could spend the entire month there and not run out of places to go.)

Oops--Forgot about Easter. It falls on April 20 next year. Holy Week (Semana Santa) is a very big deal in a number of places in Andalucia, especially Seville. Hotel demand and prices will be high that week. It's not unmanageable, but it's something to consider. You can't be quite as efficient a sightseer as usual when you're dodging processions and dealing with changes in the opening hours of museums. The trade-off is worth it to most people for the cultural experience.

Such a thoughtful and sensible response from acraven!

I, too, do not think Spain should be a race-around to check off each city trip, although so many seem to want to do it that way. If you had more time and a rental car, you can be more expansive with your itinerary, but you really should know WHY you want to go somewhere and exactly what you want to see and do there.

I agree to remove Bilbao and Barcelona, because they are farther out, your time is limited, and you also have to add in travel time between all these locations.

I also think staying in Sevilla is preferable, although Cordoba is small and sweet. I am not sure I would stay three nights in Granada, unless I wanted to take in some different flamenco shows.

Yes, Semana Santa and the Feria de Sevilla are major events with tons of locals and tourists, so perhaps you might want to go before or after to avoid all the crowds and ongoing events, although many visitors travel there just for those special weeks!

You could also stay a few more days in Madrid and take day trips to Avila, Segovia and Salamanca, all very historic and lovely.

Finally, for me Toledo is a jewel of a city, and I would stay there as long as I could just to soak in all the "ambiente." If I were not so well settled in the USA, I would surely move there, although I also have a soft spot for Santiago de Campostela.

Have fun planning, and BUEN VIAJE!

Thank you, both, for your well-considered answers and thoughtful advice. I probably should have lead off by saying that we spent a week in Madrid and a week in Barcelona before Covid (where did those years go?). I will copy your answers and send them off to our daughters who are mostly interested in the south of Spain. We definitely need to rethink time in Toledo and in Sevilla and probably extend it. As for Barcelona, I'm mostly interested in seeing the progress made at La Sagrada Familia. My husband and I are art, architecture, and food junkies and, as retirees, can extend our trip to go to Bilbao.

My deepest thanks,
Janet

If you're really interested in architecture, you should take a look at the Ruta del Modernisme website and consider buying the guidebook. It makes a very nice, useful souvenir, but it is very heavy despite being paper-bound.

https://rutadelmodernisme.com/en/

The guidebook comes with discount coupons for most of the modernista sites you can enter, but the discounts are modest and I wouldn't try to take advantage of them at the most popular sites where ticket lines are long. Just buy online tickets in advance for places like La Sagrada Familia, Parc Guell, Casa Mila/La Pedrera, Casa Batllo, and the Palau de la Musica Catalana. I'd be inclined to buy the ticket for Palau Guell in advance as well. I think--but cannot guarantee--it would work OK to buy tickets for other modernista sites at the on-site ticket counter in order to take advantage of the discounts.

@ Eloise... may I entice you to base in Barcelona -so you can see the progress made at La Sagrada Familia- and then hiring a car to drive around Catalonia?.

It is the size of Maryland, which means everything is fairly close, and there are tonnes to see and enjoy. We have the benefit of a myriad of very different landscapes due to the fact we're by the Mediterranean yet we have the Pyrenees to the north. This makes it possible to have sandy beaches, +10,000 ft mountain ranges and vast plains and forest all at less than 2h drive from each other.

Just some ideas: http://act.gencat.cat/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Welcome.pdf

As per art and architecture-related sites that might catch your eye, have a look here: https://patrimoni.gencat.cat/en/discover/search