Spain

30 routes

MoviesApproximate

The Witcher: Season One from Hungary to the Canaries

Netflix's Continent was built from a patchwork of real places: a Hungarian fort, a village museum, a former monastery, Canary Islands coasts and a ruined Polish castle. This route follows season one's shoot from October 2018 to May 2019: Cintra and Marnadal in Hungary, Aretuza and Ciri's desert in the Canary Islands, and Sodden Hill at Ogrodzieniec in Poland. Filming spots only; the Continent itself is invented.

7 locations3/7 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

Miklouho-Maclay: The Maclay Coast of New Guinea

A Russian student expelled from university in 1864 ends up living among people in north-eastern New Guinea who had never seen a European. Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay was a zoologist and anthropologist, an early follower of Darwin who refuted the view that human races were different species. The route follows him from Haeckel's Jena and the Canary Islands to Astrolabe Bay, the Sydney research station he founded, and his grave in St Petersburg. Most pins are approximate: the sources name regions, not camps.

6 locations2/6 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning: Spain 1935

In the summer of 1935 the young Laurie Lee left London for Spain with a violin and a single Spanish phrase. For a year he walked and played his way from Galicia to the Andalusian coast, sleeping under the open sky or in cheap posadas, welcomed even by the poorest villagers. The route follows his memoir from Vigo through Zamora, Toledo, Tarifa and Málaga to Almuñécar, where he was rescued by a British destroyer as the Spanish Civil War began. Pins mark towns, not the roads he actually walked.

6 locations0/6 visitable

Real JourneysSpeculative

Cabeza de Vaca: Across North America, 1528–36

A failed Spanish expedition to Florida left four survivors, and one of them, Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, walked and traded his way across the continent over roughly eight years before meeting Spaniards again in Mexico. He wrote his account from memory. The route runs from Spain through Cuba, Florida and the Texas coast to Culiacán and Mexico City. Most stops are approximate, and the middle of the journey is not traced because historians cannot fix his route.

7 locations5/7 visitable

MoviesApproximate

Lawrence of Arabia: Wadi Rum, Seville and Almería

David Lean's 1962 epic follows T. E. Lawrence through the Arab Revolt, but most of its Arabia was built in Spain. Seville played Cairo, Jerusalem and Damascus, while Almería and a beach near Carboneras supplied the desert and a whole replica of Aqaba. The route follows the story's order and keeps history apart from the film's shooting locations. Stops say plainly whether they show what happened in 1917 or where the cameras stood.

7 locations4/7 visitable

BooksApproximate

Perfume: Grenouille's Paris, Cantal and Grasse

Patrick Süskind's Perfume follows Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, born in Paris in 1738, with a gift for scent and no scent of his own. His path runs from the Innocents cemetery to a mountain cave, and then to Grasse, where his craft turns murderous. The route follows the book from Paris to the Plomb du Cantal, Montpellier and Grasse, and ends in Barcelona, where Tom Tykwer's film rebuilt Paris. Only a few places are named exactly; the rest are approximate.

6 locations5/6 visitable

Real JourneysApproximate

Hasekura Tsunenaga: From Japan to Rome and Back

In 1613 a samurai from Sendai set out to Mexico in a galleon built for the mission to meet the King of Spain and the Pope. Hasekura Tsunenaga's embassy took seven years, crossed Mexico and the ocean, and came home to a Japan that was closing its doors to Christianity. The route follows him from the port of Tsukinoura through Acapulco, Mexico City, Havana, Madrid, Saint-Tropez and Rome, then back via Manila to Nagasaki. Japanese dates are given in the Gregorian calendar. Most pins mark towns or harbours, not documented buildings.

9 locations2/9 visitable

HistorySpeculative

Columbus's First Voyage: Palos to San Salvador and Back

In August 1492 three small ships slipped down the Río Tinto from Palos with a plan to reach the Indies by sailing west. By mid-March 1493 Columbus was back in Palos without his flagship, which had been wrecked off Hispaniola, but with captives, samples of gold and plants unknown in Europe. The route follows the voyage in order: the friary where the plan found friends, a stopover in the Canaries, the first landfall in the Bahamas, the wrecked flagship and the fort of La Navidad, a storm-driven stop in Lisbon, the return to Palos and the report to the monarchs in Barcelona. The landfall island and the fort site are both debated, and the pins say so.

7 locations0/7 visitable

Real JourneysExact

The Camino de Santiago: The French Way

The French Way is the most popular route of the ancient pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, It starts at Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, crosses the Pyrenees, and from Roncesvalles on the Spanish side still runs about 780 kilometres west to Galicia. It is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. This route follows it through seven landmarks: a mountain gate, a village of legend, a pilgrims' bridge, a great cathedral, a knights' tournament, a Galician hilltop and the tomb of St James.

7 locations7/7 visitable

MoviesApproximate

Leone's Westerns: Tabernas and Cabo de Gata

Sergio Leone's "spaghetti westerns" put the American West in southern Spain. Their Almería desert towns and the sets built for those films still stand. The route follows the desert and the white village of Los Albaricoques through three Leone films: A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More and Once Upon a Time in the West. One stop lies over the border in Granada province.

5 locations4/5 visitable

MoviesApproximate

Almodóvar: Madrid and La Mancha on Screen

Pedro Almodóvar has shot the majority of his films in Madrid, and Madrid's tourism office lists the exact streets, bars and squares where his scenes happened. The route follows eight filming spots in order of release, from the El Rastro bar of Labyrinth of Passion in 1982 to the Comendadoras square of Parallel Mothers in 2021, with one detour to Almagro in La Mancha for Volver.

8 locations6/8 visitable

HistorySpeculative

Lorca's Granada: From Fuente Vaqueros to Víznar

Contains difficult themes: the murder of a poet in the Spanish Civil War. Federico García Lorca was born in a farming village in the Granada vega and wrote his rural plays in the family's summer house on the city's edge. In August 1936, weeks into the Civil War, he was arrested in Granada and killed near Víznar. The route follows his life from the birthplace to the orchard house, then the last days in 1936 and the memorials in the hills. The exact place of his death and grave is still disputed, and the final stops are marked as approximate or speculative.

6 locations3/6 visitable

BooksApproximate

Tales of the Alhambra: Washington Irving's Granada

Washington Irving came to Granada in 1829 and ended up living in a palace of the Moorish kings. With a 17-year-old local guide named Mateo Ximenes at his elbow, he gathered the legends that became Tales of the Alhambra in 1832. This route follows the book through six places: the gate with the magic hand and key, Irving's rooms, the Hall of Ambassadors, the Court of Lions, the Generalife and the Tower of the Princesses. Several tales are legend as much as history, so the pins mark the places where Irving tells them.

6 locations6/6 visitable

BooksFictional

La Regenta: Oviedo as Vetusta

Clarín's novel hides Oviedo behind the name Vetusta, a provincial capital of gossip, piety and boredom where Ana Ozores, the Regenta, is slowly worn down. It begins with the Magistral watching the town through a telescope and ends with Ana fainting in his chapel. The route follows seven scenes from the tower to the duel and the confessional, and ends at the modern statue of Ana. Spanish guides tie some scenes to real Oviedo; where they do not, the pin is approximate or absent.

7 locations5/7 visitable

BooksApproximate

Lazarillo de Tormes: Salamanca to Toledo

Lázaro, a hungry boy born in a river mill, serves a string of cruel masters on the roads of Spain. The picaresque classic is told in his own sly voice, and it lets a reader trace his path from the bridge in Salamanca to the streets of Toledo. This route follows his early years: the stone bull, the grapes at Almorox, the revenge at Escalona, the miser priest at Maqueda and the squire's empty house in Toledo. Most places are named only as towns, so most pins are approximate.

6 locations6/6 visitable

BooksSpeculative

The Song of My Cid: From Burgos to Valencia

Spain's oldest surviving epic poem follows Rodrigo Díaz, the Cid, from a humiliating exile out of Castile to the conquest of Valencia, and then to a trial in Toledo after his sons-in-law abandon his daughters. The route runs from Vivar and Burgos through Cardeña and Valencia to Corpes and Toledo. The poem and the historical Cid differ in many details, and the site of Corpes is disputed.

6 locations4/6 visitable

MoviesApproximate

Doctor Zhivago (1965): Lean's Russia in Spain and Finland

The novel was banned in the Soviet Union, so David Lean could not shoot his epic there. Instead he built Moscow in a field outside Madrid, turned the pine woods of Soria into the Urals and sent a second crew to the snows of Finland. The route follows the story in order, from the dam of the frame story to the ice palace at Varykino, and shows where each scene was really filmed. Most pins mark general areas, not exact camera spots.

7 locations1/7 visitable

MoviesApproximate

Kingdom of Heaven: Balian's Holy Land and Its Sets

Ridley Scott's 2005 epic follows Balian, a French blacksmith turned Baron of Ibelin, from his village to Messina, Jerusalem, Kerak, the desert defeat at Hattin and the siege that ends the film. Every stop pairs a scene with the place where it was shot, or with the real place the scene stands for. The film was made in Spain and Morocco, not the Holy Land, so the route moves between sets and history. Where the film departs from the record, the stop says so: the historical Balian was a prominent lord of the Kingdom of Jerusalem, not a French artisan.

8 locations5/8 visitable

BooksFictional

The Alchemist: From Andalusia to the Pyramids

Santiago, a shepherd boy from Andalusia, keeps dreaming of treasure at the Egyptian pyramids. A fortune-teller and a mysterious old king send him across the strait to Africa, where he is robbed in Tangier, falls in love at an oasis and crosses a desert of warring tribes. Paulo Coelho's 1988 fable has sold more than 150 million copies. The route follows the boy from a ruined church to the Giza plateau and back again. The book keeps its geography loose, so most pins mark the best-known place for a scene rather than a spot the author names.

7 locations3/7 visitable

MoviesExact

Money Heist: Madrid's Mint and Bank of Spain

A man known as the Professor recruits eight robbers named after cities, puts them in red jumpsuits and Salvador Dalí masks, and sends them into the Royal Mint of Spain. Two heists later, the target is the Bank of Spain. Neither building is what it seems: the Mint is the headquarters of Spain's national research council, and the bank is a government ministry. The route follows the Madrid places where the series was filmed, in story order, from a farm estate in Torrelodones to a staircase in the Casino de Madrid.

7 locations2/7 visitable

MoviesApproximate

House of the Dragon: Cornwall to Spain

HBO's Game of Thrones prequel was filmed primarily in the United Kingdom, and its Velaryon world is Cornish: the island seat of Driftmark is a tidal island, and the Stepstones war camp is a cove on the Lizard peninsula. For the capital and the free city of Pentos, the crew went to western and southern Spain. The route follows the story from the Stepstones war (season 1, episode 3) through the Driftmark episodes to King's Landing in season 2. Sources do not name the exact streets used in Cáceres, so that pin marks the old town.

6 locations4/6 visitable

Real JourneysSpeculative

Magellan and Elcano: The First Circumnavigation

On 20 September 1519 five ships and about 270 men sailed from Spain to find a western sea road to the Spice Islands. Magellan died in the Philippines, but Juan Sebastián Elcano brought the Victoria home three years later with eighteen survivors and 26 tons of spices, having sailed all the way around the world. The route follows the voyage from the mouth of the Guadalquivir past Port St. Julian, through the strait and across the Pacific to the Moluccas, then home past the Cape of Good Hope. Anchorages are often unrecorded, so most pins mark the nearest known place; the dates come from Pigafetta's journal and modern accounts.

12 locations7/12 visitable

GamesApproximate

Assassin's Creed Brotherhood: The Borgias' Rome

December 1499: Cesare Borgia's army has struck the Auditore villa at Monteriggioni, killing Mario and seizing the Apple of Eden. Assassin's Creed Brotherhood sends Ezio to Rome, the center of Templar power, to take the fight to the Borgia-led Templars, and the hunt for the Apple runs from St Peter's Basilica to a temple hidden underneath the Colosseum. This route follows Ezio from the villa at Monteriggioni through Borgia Rome — the Castel Sant'Angelo fortress, the Pantheon, St Peter's and the Colosseum — to Viana in Navarre, Spain, where his fight with Cesare ends on the battlements. Every stop is a real place you can visit.

6 locations6/6 visitable

MoviesApproximate

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: From Utah to the Grail

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) sends Indy from a Boy Scout outing in the Utah desert to the rock-cut façade of Petra, chasing the Holy Grail and his missing father. Three trials guard the cup at the end. The film borrows its scenery from half of Europe, the Middle East and the American West. Nine stops, most of them still standing: the Arches canyons of the opening, the church façade in Venice's Campo San Barnaba that plays the library, an Eifel castle dressed as Brunwald, a San Francisco building that played Berlin's Tempelhof airport, the Almería beach where Henry brings down a fighter with an umbrella, a Granada station playing Alexandretta, the Tabernas tank chase, the Treasury that fronts the Grail's temple, and the Texas sunset the film ends on. Dates are story time; filming ran from May 1988 to early 1989.

9 locations8/9 visitable

MoviesExact

Game of Thrones: Spain and Morocco

The journey south ran through Morocco first. For the third season the Atlantic ramparts of Essaouira stood in for Astapor, the slaver city where Daenerys buys an army of eunuch soldiers, and the earthen ksar of Aït Benhaddou stood in for Yunkai, whose two hundred thousand slaves she promises to free. When the story turned to Dorne, Spain answered: the Alcázar of Seville became the Water Gardens of House Martell, and the bullring at Osuna the fighting pits of Meereen. Six stops in the order the episodes aired — two in Morocco, four in Spain. The last two are the biggest set-pieces of the sixth and seventh seasons: Girona's cathedral and steps as the Sept of Baelor, and the Roman ruins at Itálica as the ruined Dragonpit.

6 locations6/6 visitable

MoviesApproximate

Star Wars: Beyond Tatooine

Tatooine is the Star Wars desert everyone knows, but the films kept finding other corners of the Earth for their galaxy: redwoods in northern California, a villa on Lake Como, a plaza in Seville, the desert around an oasis in Abu Dhabi, a monastery island off County Kerry and the largest salt flat in the world, in Bolivia. This route follows the shooting in the order the films were made, from the Endor forest of Return of the Jedi to the Crait battle of The Last Jedi. Two stops mark an area rather than a spot: the Endor scenes were partly shot on private land, and no source names the stretch of desert that stood in for Jakku.

6 locations5/6 visitable

BooksSpeculative

Don Quixote: La Mancha's Windmills to Barcelona

A gentleman of La Mancha, a head full of chivalry books, a plain full of mills: this route follows Don Quixote from the village argued to be his to the strand of Barcelona, keeping the order of the book. It begins with the village whose name the narrator refuses to give, the inn where a landlord reading from his account book dubs him a knight, and the ridge of mills that shivered his lance to pieces. In Part II it follows him to Dulcinea's town by night, the cave where he sleeps an hour and believes three days have passed, the lakes of Ruidera, and finally Barcelona, where galley crews salute him three times and a bachelor from his own village unhorses him. Which mills he charged, and where the inn of that first night stood, are guesses: Campo de Criptana and Puerto Lápice are the usual answers.

7 locations5/7 visitable

BooksApproximate

The Shadow of the Wind: Zafón's Barcelona

Barcelona, 1945. A bookseller leads his ten-year-old son Daniel through a dark alley off the Ramblas to the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, a secret library where every child may adopt one book. Daniel chooses a novel by Julián Carax — and discovers that someone has spent years hunting down and burning every other copy. Carlos Ruiz Zafón's 2001 bestseller is a love letter to the old city, and its mystery runs through real streets: the Ramblas, the Gothic Quarter, the Ribera, Tibidabo and Montjuïc. The library, the bookshop, the hospice and the Aldaya mansion are invented, so those pins mark the streets where Zafón put them; the café, squares and castle are real and open to visitors.

8 locations8/8 visitable

BooksApproximate

The Sun Also Rises: Paris to Pamplona

Jake Barnes, an American newspaperman wounded in the war, spends his Paris nights in the cafés of Montparnasse with Lady Brett Ashley — the woman he loves and cannot have. Then the whole crowd heads south: trout fishing in the Pyrenees, then a week of San Fermín in Pamplona, where drink, jealousy and a nineteen-year-old matador break everything open. Hemingway built the novel from his own trips of 1924 and 1925, and almost every stop can still be visited: the café on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, the inn at Burguete, the arcade café on Pamplona's main square, the bullring, the beach at San Sebastián and the Madrid restaurant where the book's last meal is eaten.

9 locations8/9 visitable

HistorySpeculative

Hannibal's Alpine Crossing

In 218 BC the Carthaginian general Hannibal set out from Spain to attack Rome by the one route the Romans never expected: overland, across the Pyrenees, the Rhône and the Alps, with tens of thousands of soldiers, horses and 37 war elephants. Five months later he came down into the plain of the Po with a battered but unbeaten army, and within weeks had won his first two victories in Italy. The route follows the march as told by the Greek historian Polybius, who wrote about seventy years later and walked the Alpine route himself. Nobody knows for certain where Hannibal crossed the Rhône or which pass he used, so several pins are marked speculative.

8 locations8/8 visitable