The cities of Spain are compellingly individual. And they all are constantly see-sawing between tradition and modernity. The narrow, serpentine old streets suddenly open out to views of daring modern architecture, while spit-and-sawdust bars serving wine from the barrel rub shoulders with blaring, glaring discos. Barcelona, for many, has the edge: for Gaudí's splendid modernista architecture, the lively promenade of Las Ramblas, designer clubs par excellence, and, not least, for Barça - the city's football team. But Madrid claims as many devotees. The city, immortalized in the movies of Pedro Almodóvar, has a vibrancy and style that is revealed in a thousand bars and summer terrazas. Not to mention, three of the world's finest art museums.

As much as the cities, monuments too range as widely from one region to another, dependent on their history of control and occupation by Romans and Moors, their role in the "golden age" of Imperial Renaissance Spain, or their twentieth-century fortunes. Touring Castile and León, you confront the classic Spanish images of vast cathedrals and reconsquista castles (literally hundreds of the latter); in the northern mountains of Asturias and the Pyrenees, tiny, almost organic Romanesque churches dot the hillsides and villages; Andalucía has the great mosques and Moorish palaces of Granada, Sevilla and Córdoba; Castile has the superbly preserved medieval capital, Toledo, and the gorgeous Renaissance university city of Salamanca; while the harsh landscape of Estremadura cradles the ornate conquistador towns built with riches from the "New World".

But there is much more to Spain than mere architectural brilliance. The landscape holds just as much fascination and variety. Evergreen estuaries in Galicia are strikingly different from the high, arid plains of Castile, or the gulch-like desert landscapes of Almería. Agriculture in the patterned hillsides of the wine-and olive-growing regions and the rice fields of the Levante is a sight to behold. Spain is also one of the most mountainous countries in Europe, there is superb walking and wildlife in a dozen or more sierras - above all, in the Picos de Europa and Pyrenees. Spain's unique fauna boast species like brown bears, the Spanish lynx and Mediterranean monk seals- as well as more common wild boar, white storks and birds of prey.

But, undoubtedly, Spain's greatest attractions are its beaches. Seen through your own eyes, you will find they have infinitely more variety than you would be led to believe by the sun-and-sand holiday brochures. In the north, the cooler Atlantic coastline boasts the surfing sands of Cantabria and the unspoilt coves of Galicia's estuaries. Offshore, the Balearic islands have some superb sands and, if you're up for it, Ibiza also offers one of the most hedonistic backdrops to beachlife.