Spain

The Entry/Exit System (EES) rolled out across the Schengen external border from 12 October 2025 and reached full operation on 10 April 2026. For non-EU short-stay travellers it replaces the inked passport stamp with a biometric record — a facial image and fingerprints, logged electronically on each entry and exit. First registration can add a few minutes at the booth; it is quicker once your file exists.

The ETIAS authorisation is a different, later thing, and it is not required as of October 2026 — the EU abandoned its "last quarter of 2026" target in mid-2026 and now points to 2027, with several months’ notice promised first. When it does arrive it will cost €20, last three years or until the passport expires, and carry no fee for travellers under 18 or over 70 (who still must hold one).

Do not pay for "EES" or "ETIAS" on a third-party website in 2026 — EES needs no application at all, and ETIAS is not open yet, so any site charging for one now is a scam. ETIAS, when it launches, will be sold only through the official EU portal.

Plan the whole trip around the Alhambra. Granada’s Moorish palace-city caps the day at about 6,600 tickets, and the Nasrid Palaces — the part everyone comes for — admit roughly 300 people per 30-minute slot, on a window fixed when you buy and impossible to enter outside. Book it the instant your dates are firm; everything else can follow. Barcelona’s Sagrada Família and Park Güell, Seville’s Real Alcázar and the rest all sell timed slots too, and walk-up is routinely gone by mid-morning in season.

Two free windows worth timing a day around: the Mezquita-Catedral of Córdoba is free to individuals Monday to Saturday, 08:30–09:30 (last entry ~09:20, no groups), and the Prado is free for the last two hours daily — though you still reserve a timed slot. Neither helps at the Alhambra, where there is no free route into the Nasrid Palaces.

In Barcelona the total per-night tax (regional IEET plus the city surcharge, before VAT) runs from about €7 at an ordinary hotel to €8.40 at a four-star and €12 at five-star or luxury; a cruise call is charged too. It applies to the first seven nights and exempts under-16s.

The Balearics run a separate "sustainable tourism tax" (ITS) that is sharply seasonal: in peak summer 2026 it is about €6 per person per night at a five-star, €4 at a four-star and €2 at a tourist apartment, falling in the shoulder months, dropping to nothing in January and February, and halving from the ninth night. Both regions add 10% VAT on top. Everywhere else in Spain — Madrid, Andalusia, the Canaries — there is no bed tax at all.

A week does one region, or two neighbours, well — not the country, which is the size of France. The natural pairings are Seville–Córdoba–Granada across Andalusia, Barcelona with the Costa Brava, and Bilbao with San Sebastián. The Canaries are the winter exception: mild Atlantic sun all year, when the mainland is cool.

If you drive, most of Spain’s big toll motorways are now free — the AP-1, AP-2, AP-4, AP-7 and others reverted to the state as their concessions expired, and the AP-68 Bilbao–Zaragoza follows in November 2026. There is no national road charge. The catch is the low-emission zones (ZBE), now mandatory in every town over 50,000: a foreign-registered car cannot get the DGT windscreen sticker, so to enter the Madrid or Barcelona zones legally you must pre-register the vehicle in the city’s own scheme (Barcelona charges a one-off €5) — though enforcement against foreign plates is still patchy.

Aim for mid-April to June or September to late October — warm, open, far more comfortable, cheaper. July and August bake the interior: Seville and Córdoba routinely pass 40°C, and the summer of 2025 was Spain’s hottest on record, with an August heatwave that topped 45°C in the south. August is also the domestic holiday month — city shops and family restaurants close for weeks while the coast and the islands run at full peak and full price. The cities then are hot and half-shut; the sweet spot is the shoulder.

If a festival is the point of the trip, pin the dates early and book lodging far ahead — rooms vanish and prices jump. Las Fallas fills Valencia 1–19 March (the fiery Cremà on the 19th); Semana Santa processions peak over Holy Week (29 March–5 April in 2026); Seville’s Feria de Abril follows (21–26 April 2026); Pamplona’s San Fermín running of the bulls is the fixed 6–14 July; and La Tomatina in Buñol is the last Wednesday of August (26 August 2026), ticketed and capped at around 20,000.

The backlash is real: Barcelona, the Balearics and the Canaries all saw anti-mass-tourism marches through 2024 and 2025 — water-pistol protests on Barcelona’s streets, tens of thousands marching in the Canaries — driven by housing costs, not hostility to individual visitors, who have not been targeted. The concrete measures change the trip at the edges, not the welcome. So trade down from the headline names and the experience usually improves:

• Park Güell is sold out or packedSkipthe ticketed Monumental Zone queueGothe free Bunkers del Carmel — an open hilltop with a 360° view, best at sunset
• The Sagrada Família is a crushSkipa midday slotGothe first morning slot for the quietest light, or another Gaudí house — Casa Batlló, La Pedrera
• The Alhambra’s Nasrid tickets are goneSkipgiving up on GranadaGoa gardens-and-Alcazaba ticket, plus the free Mirador de San Nicolás for the classic view across to the palace
• Ibiza is too muchSkipthe club-strip crowdsGoquiet Menorca (a UNESCO biosphere of calm calas) or car-light Formentera
• Barcelona feels overrunSkipbasing the whole trip thereGoGirona and Tarragona nearby, or Valencia and San Sebastián as calmer city breaks

The measure most likely to touch your 2026–2028 trip is lodging: Barcelona will not renew any of its ~10,000 licensed tourist apartments, ending them all by November 2028, and is cutting its cruise terminals from seven to five. Book a licensed hotel or pensión rather than counting on a short-let, especially for later trips, and expect apartment stock to thin.

The clock runs late. Lunch is the main meal, around 14:00–16:00, and dinner rarely starts before 21:00; most kitchens simply close in between, roughly 16:00 to 20:30, so a tourist arriving hungry at 19:00 finds restaurants shut or empty. In smaller towns a midday siesta break still shutters independent shops from about 14:00 to 17:00. Tipping is not expected — round up or leave small change; there is no US-style percentage.

Spanish (Castilian) is spoken everywhere, but Spain has four co-official languages: you will also see and hear Catalan (in Catalonia, the Balearics and — as "Valencian" — Valencia), Basque in the Basque Country, and Galician in the north-west. A few local words go a long way, especially outside Madrid. Tap water is safe across the mainland and most of the islands.

The one real nuisance is pickpocketing and bag-snatching, concentrated in Barcelona — La Rambla, the beaches and Metro lines L1, L3 and L5 at rush hour and around the Sagrada Família — and in central Madrid. Keep your bag zipped and in front and your phone out of back pockets; violent crime against visitors is rare.