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Ten unforgettable hotel stays in Spain

From bubble pods under the stars and treehouses in the canopies to space-age rooms, historic fortresses and even caves, these extraordinary hotels in Spain are some of the coolest spots to lay your head.

Ten unforgettable hotel stays in Spain
10 unforgettable hotels in Spain. Source: Cabañas en Los Arboles

A bubble hotel in Toledo

At Hotel Miluna in the Sierra de Gredos near Toledo, visitors can experience glamping with a bit of a difference. These are no ordinary luxury tents, they’re bubble tents with clear views of the night sky and a strong connection to nature. Each bubble room is named after a planet and comes with its own telescope so that you can spend the night stargazing from the comfort of your bed. Fall asleep under the twinkle of the stars and enjoy its added luxuries such as outdoor hot tubs.

Stargaze from your bed at the Miluna Hotel near Toledo. Source: Miluna
 

A treehouse hotel in the Basque Country

If you had a treehouse as a child, it was more than likely your wish to be able to spend the night in there and sleep among the birds and the treetops. At Cabañas en Los Arboles, located just north of Vitoria-Gasteiz you can do exactly that, albeit with a few luxuries thrown in. The hotel has a total of 10 treehouses, each one uniquely designed and sitting perfectly camouflaged against the tree canopy. More than just rudimentary tree houses, however, they come with electricity and dry toilets. Some even have running water so you can relax in a bath surrounded by nature.

Sleep in a tree house up in the canopy. Source: Cabañas en Los Arboles

A toy hotel in Alicante

The Hotel de Juguete in the small town of Ibi in the Alicante area is a dream come true for kids and kids at heart. Whatever type of toys or obsession little ones have at the moment, this place has it covered. Choose from various themed rooms such as dinosaur, superhero, Barbie, Mr. Potato Head, Hot Wheels and Playmobil. There are even rooms dedicated to Spain’s three kings – Melchior, Gaspar and Baltasar. Big kids (parents) may enjoy travelling back to their childhoods with a room dedicated to vintage games and characters from Pac-Man to Pink Panther.

Kids will love this unique hotel near Alicante. Source: Hotel de Juguete
 

A futuristic arts hotel in Madrid

The five-star Hotel Puerta América in Madrid transports you into the future with its decidedly space-age feel and avant-garde design. The hotel’s space club rooms were designed by famous Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid and offer flawless stark white décor with flowing curves giving you the idea that you’re on a futuristic spaceship. There are also rooms by other famous designers such as the sleek vanguard ones by French architect Jean-Nouvel, those decorated by Barcelona-based artist Javier Mariscal. Other big names whose work you can sleep in include Norman Foster, Kathryn Finlay and David Chipperfield. Even the hotel lobby and corridors are fascinating spaces – the corridors feel like you’re trapped in the depths of the Starship Enterprise. 

Stay in the futuristic space-age room designed by Zaha Hadid. Source: Hotel Silken Puerta América

A glass hotel in Catalonia

The extraordinary Les Cols Pavellons are like no other space you’ve ever slept in before. They consist of a series of blue glass cubes that allow the light in from every angle – the walls and the ceiling. Mirrored floors reflect the images of the trees from above so that it feels as if you’re right in the middle of some magical forest. Luxurious spa rooms add to the decadence and feeling of peace and nature.

Stay in one of these gorgeous glass-surrounded rooms in the forest. Source: Les Cols Pavellons
 

A cave hotel in Granada

Spain is home to many different cave homes, but nowhere are they more present or famous than in Granada. Locals still live in many of these unique underground houses, but others have been turned into hotels or tourist rentals. Cuevas Al Jatib in Baza, Granada is one such place where you can experience true troglodyte living. They have five caves in total sleeping from two all the way up to 11 people and each one functions like a separate apartment complete with kitchens. Far from being what you’d imagine a cave to be – dark, damp and cold, these are cosy, dry and have all the mod cons cavemen wouldn’t even be able to dream of.

Become a troglodyte for the night at Cuevas Al Jatib. Source: Cuevas Al Jatib

A quirky-designed wine hotel in La Rioja

Frank Gehry the award-winning American architect who designed Bilbao’s fabulous Guggenheim Museum designed a similar building among the vineyards in La Rioja – the Marqués de Riscal – an extraordinary place where you can spend the night. Made from huge curved sheets of Titanium, which twist and turn like rippling ribbons, it’s coloured in shades of purple to match the colour of the grapes in the surrounding vineyards. Not merely a hotel, this whimsical place is also a winery with a vinotherapy spa, wine tours and of course tastings.

Stay in this extraordinary wine hotel in La Rioja. Source: Marqués de Riscal, Marriott

A cinema hotel in Madrid

Movie fans will fall in love with Madrid-based DormirDCine where you can spend the night in cinematic Hollywood-themed rooms. Accommodation features huge murals based on epic films and famous directors and actors. Sleep surrounded by movie scenes from Amélie, King Kong, Mary Poppins or Memoirs of a Geisha or enter the worlds of Woody Allen, Marlene Dietrich, Tim Burton and Steve McQueen.

Spend the night surrounded by movie stars. Source: DormirDCine

An eco-design hotel in the mountains in Alicante

On the shores of the Guadalest Reservoir in the province of Alicante, sits a very unique eco-hotel concept that blends in perfectly with its natural environment.  The Vivood Landscape Hotel comprises a range of box rooms each with sustainable living at their heart. Each box is fronted entirely by glass, bringing the dramatic mountain vistas inside and merging with its natural environment so as not to create an eyesore upon this wild landscape.

Bring the views of the outside inside at Vivood Landscape Hotels. Source: Vivood
 

A fortress hotel in Mallorca

Clinging to the edge of the Bay of Palma on the island of Mallorca sits a magnificent 19th-century military fortress, turned luxury hotel – Cap Rocat. Enter through its castle-like gateway into the main square, reminiscent of Moroccan medinas fringed with palms and filled with fountains. The rooms are far from the military barracks they once were, now sumptuous suites set between the thick star-shaped walls.

Sleep in a 19th-century military fortress at Cap Rocat. Source: Cap Rocat
 
 

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TOURISM

Ecotax and cruise bans: Why Spain’s mass tourism measures haven’t worked

Regions and cities around Spain have tried several ways to slow down the negative effects of mass tourism on local communities, largely without any luck and not addressing the major problem underpinning it.

Ecotax and cruise bans: Why Spain's mass tourism measures haven't worked

The Spanish tourism sector continues to grow, but so does opposition to it.

Increasingly in Spain in recent years, anti-tourist sentiment (sometimes veering into anti-digital nomad sentiment) is on the rise, and much of it is born from frustrations about mass tourism and gentrification and their impact on Spaniards.

READ ALSO: Why does hatred of tourists in Spain appear to be on the rise?

In 2000, 46.4 million tourists visited Spain. In those days, travellers (often from Northern Europe) flocked to the coasts to stay in the hotel blocks right on the beach. The classic Spanish holiday, if you will.

But things are changing. By 2023, that figure had nearly doubled to 85.3 million.

Yet during those 23 years hotel accommodation grew by just 7 percent. This statistic, cited by Juan Molas, President of Spain’s Tourist Board and cited in Spanish daily El País, reveals a lot about the Spanish tourism sector and why efforts to try and combat mass tourism (or its negative effects, at least) have failed so far.

Molas’ statistic begs an obvious question: where do the rest of those tourists now stay, if not in traditional hotels?

Increasingly, in short-term accommodation such as tourist rentals and, in recent years, Airbnbs.

READ MORE: ‘Get the f*ck out of here’ – Málaga plastered with anti-tourism stickers

There have been regular protests against mass tourism around Spain in recent months, notably in places like the Canary Islands and Málaga.

Anti-tourist graffiti has appeared in places such as Barcelona, Valencia, Granada, the Canary and Balearic Islands, places that face the brunt of mass tourism in Spain. Locals complain that the proliferation of tourist rental accommodation depletes the affordable housing stock, inflates the local property market, and prices them out of their own neighbourhoods.

Often, these sorts of tourist rental accommodations are unlicensed and illegal. In Madrid, for example, there are tens of thousands of tourist apartments in Madrid available through platforms such as Airbnb and Booking, and yet recent findings show that barely five percent have a municipal tourist licence in order to operate legally. 

“Neither the central administration, nor the regions, nor the town councils have done their homework on the illegal [accommodation] offer, which is the most important scourge of tourism in Spain,” Molas says.

Though the problem seems obvious to many, including experts like Molas, some regions of Spain have focused on other ways to try and limit mass tourism… and they haven’t really worked so far.

READ ALSO:

Tourist tax

Tourist taxes made big news in recent weeks when Venice began charging tourists on day trips to visit the tourist hotspot.

In Spain, Catalonia and the Balearic Islands are the only two regions that have implemented tourist taxes so far, although not with the express aim of reducing the number of visitors.

Rather, Catalonia taxes overnight stays while the Balearic Islands taxes possible environmental damage. Visitor arrivals have continued to rise despite the taxes.

In the thirteen years since the tax was introduced in Barcelona, tourist numbers have risen from 14.5 million to 18 million. Importantly, a moratorium on hotel construction has been in place in the Catalan capital since 2017, which has led to an exponential growth in tourist rental accommodation in the city.

In the case of the Balearic Islands, the annual number of tourist arrivals has increased from 13 to 14 million in the six years in which the so-called ‘ecotax’ has been in force on the islands.

Limiting cruise ships

Coastal and island resorts in Spain have also tried to combat mass tourism by limiting the number of cruise ships allowed to dock there.

In 2022, Palma de Mallorca became the first destination in Spain and the second in Europe, after Dubrovnik in Croatia, to make an agreement with major cruise ship companies to establish a limit of three cruise ships per day, and specified that only one of them could bring more than 5,000 passengers ashore.

In places like Mallorca but also in Barcelona, enormous cruise ships previously docked and released thousands of tourists into the city at once.

But once again, like with the tourist taxes introduced, a limit on cruise ship numbers, although welcome, misses the point — cruise ship customers sleep on the ship, not in the real problem underpinning Spain’s mass tourism model: accommodation.

Tourist accommodation

Varying legislation restricting Airbnb-style rentals has already been introduced in recent years in cities such as Valencia, Palma, Seville, Tarifa, Madrid, Barcelona, and San Sebastián, with varying degrees of success. 

The number of short-term rental accommodation has exploded in Spain. They are particularly popular with remote workers and among digital nomads with the foreign spending power to price out locals. Recent data shows that in the old town of Seville, over half of residential homes are used for tourism. In the area of ​​Madrid’s Puerta del Sol, 28.3 percent are tourist apartments, while the figure stands at 18.3  percent in the centre of Valencia.  

READ MORE: How Spain’s Asturias region plans to limit short-term holiday lets

Tourist taxes and limits on cruise ship numbers are welcome. But they appear to be doing little to tackle the true underlying problem with Spain’s mass tourism model.

For now, measures are being rolled out largely on a regional level, but it may require the national government to step in and legislate, as it did when it scrapped the Golden Visa earlier this year, although again the effectiveness of this measure has also been questioned. 

READ MORE: Is Spain’s decision to axe golden visa about housing or politics?

Increasing the social housing stock more generally would also go some way to alleviate the pressure on Spaniards struggling to pay rent or even find a home.

Tourism is a double edged sword in Spain. The tourism sector has long made up a significant proportion of Spanish GDP and provided employment for locals, but the model it currently has is outdated, it inflates property markets, angers Spaniards, and creates tension between tourists and locals.

In 2023, international visitors spent €108 billion in Spain, 17 percent more than in 2019. Spanish travel industry association Exceltur forecasts that in 2024 it will surpass €200 billion for the first time.

READ ALSO: ‘The island can’t take it anymore’ – Why Tenerife is rejecting mass tourism

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