Bag of ice

Ice is less rare in Europe than it was 30 years ago. But we still get an occasional question here about whether the ice (or water) is safe to put in your glass! And there are plenty of supermarkets in big cities. Perhaps the question is whether a pension-level accomodation can spare enough ice for your cooler? I imagine it's proportional to the size of the hotel. I think it's unwise to generalize about as big a country as you are asking about. For example, are you camping? And don't hostels prohibit hot plates? Example: When we were last in New Mexico, it would often have been a 20-mile drive to buy ice. But I feel confident that the National Parks concessionaires had ice for sale, if you were camping there. We were in a big enough hotel in Porto, Portugal (I mean, less wealthy a country than Spain) that when my wife twisted her ankle on the cobblestones, the bar sent up a bag of ice with no charge. (There were no ice machines in the hall!)

My husband and I are renting a car for a month in May to explore northern Spain. We are driving between accommodations that include pensions, hotels,and apartments with kitchens. I wondered if we might buy a styrofoam chest for the truck or boot of the car and some ice at grocery stores to transport food safely (i.e., not encourage bacteria), especially when we are going from an apartment to an apartment with a kitchen where we may have accumulated a few perishable items. Any luck finding foodstores or gas stations that sell bags of ice?

I haven't been to the north, but in February the locals in the south were ALL drinking cold drinks with lots of ice cubes. My guess, ice is easy to come by in Spain.

I'm not sure about where to buy ice on the road, but when going from apartment to apartment it shouldn't be a problem. Hopefully the apt will have frig w/freezer and you can store up some ice for when you're ready to leave, that should get you to your next apartment.

In a pinch - fill a gallon or two or three qt ziploc with water & put in freezer - should last in cooler from apt to apt.