3 Review(s)

With a compelling sureness of touch, the Pulitzer Prize-nominated author Frederic V. Grunfeld offers the reader an intimate knowledge of Spain gained over twenty-five years. He takes the intending traveller south from the Pyrenees, across the central meseta of Castilla and Aragon and down to Andalucia. He finds wild mountain walks above the tourist resorts of Mallorca and dragon trees on the island of Tenerife. Grunfeld's flair for portraiture shines through wherever he goes: 'Here are fieldstone houses and Romanesque churches', he writes, 'that seem to grow out of their hilltop sites like so many stone mushrooms. Except for telephone and electric lines you could easily imagine yourself back in the Middle Ages.' Following the personal style set by the series, he indulges his own fancies, wandering through La Mancha in the steps of Don Quixote and tilting against his own windmills in the form of the shoe-box hotels of the Spanish Mediterranean. This edition has been completely revised with the assistance of the Ministry of Environment in Madrid.The editors have revisited exploration zones and added hotels, itineraries and new train and bus information, with fax numbers, e-mail addresses and web-site details. The entire text has been reset, bringing this established guide-book fully up to date.