Spain in November

My experience in Spain in November was very good. Certain areas, like northern and northwestern Spain might be cool and rainy. Madrid might be cooler. But you should have pretty good weather, especially if you are further south and east.

Can only tell you about Barcelona and Madrid when we were there starting 11/19/2009 and weather was delightful, maybe we were lucky. Only needed a sweater vest at night,we had no rain and very few crowds. Enjoy.

Thank you. I will check on the average temperatures for various locations in the region.

Which businesses in which smaller villages? If you are talking of the many resorts on the coast reliant on tourism - many will be. If something else, then the businesses are not open for you - the tourist - and will still be servicing the local population. You are going to have a big disappointment in Spain, if you are simply journeying along the coastline.

Neil: Our intent is not to spend time in the resort areas along the coast. We are simply considering visiting the southern latitudes bordering the coast to take advantage of milder weather in the late fall or winter. Our desire is to frequent places that the locals do. However, I wasn't sure if services like transportation would be cut back during the "off" season.

The winter months are not generally considered the off season as southern Spain is one of the warmest places in Europe at that time of the year. The busiest we have ever seen Seville (aside from Easter) was over Xmas/New Year. Also many tourists are put off by the heat July/August so travel during the cooler months. In cities like Seville almost everything will be open over Xmas and New Year - although we found New Years eve that most restaurants were booked well ahead with large parties. Outside Xmas and NY all should be normal. The smaller places - I am not too sure - last New Year we were in Jerez, which is not in any way a small village but almost everything was closed around New Year. My everything I mean cafes, bars, restaurants and supermarkets - closed or very restricted hours. We have only been to Barcelona late February and everything was open - however around the 3rd week of Feb each year Barcelona hosts some sort of international phone conference - I am a bit hazy on the details of that but something to bear in mind when planning as accommodation is expensive and scarce.

Thank you, Liz. Sounds very reasonable. I certainly would expect busier-than-usual conditions during the holidays. I think that we are considering either November or January for traveling there. As I mentioned in my original post, we want to avoid the tourist crowds, yet take advantage of relatively mild weather. So we are focusing on centering our travels to Andalucia with forays possibly to Barcelona.

We were there last November and the weather was perfect. we went to Madrid, Seville and Granada.

We did our travelling in May in Spain. We took a train From Barcelona to Madrid and then rented a car. The roads are great and well marked. If you are interested we did the hill towns of Rhonda and Acros small and are in the southern area of Spain. Also we did Tarifa(where we took the boat across to Tangiers). One thing we did and is mentioned in RS Spain book is stopped in Gibraltar. What a great day and the history concerning the rock during the war and centuries before are well worth the day.