16 Books About Spain to Read Before Your Trip There

The books about Spain worth reading before a trip fall into three groups: histories that explain why the country behaves as it does, travel writing that tells you what it feels like to live there, and novels that put you inside a Spanish city. The 16 below cover all three, and every one of them is still in print or still easy to find.

Planning the trip itself? Our Spain travel guide covers where to go and when. This page is for the reading list.

The best books about Spain: history and politics

Five books explain modern Spain better than any guidebook chapter, and each takes a different route into the same subject: the Civil War, the dictatorship and the silence that followed.

1. Ghosts of Spain, by Giles Tremlett

Ghosts of Spain is the book to read first if you want to understand why Spaniards of different generations talk about the twentieth century so differently. Giles Tremlett, then the Guardian’s Madrid correspondent, went looking for what the country agreed not to discuss after Franco died, an arrangement Spaniards call the pacto del olvido, the pact of forgetting. He works through the mass graves, the Basque conflict, Catalan resentment of Madrid and the way all of it still shapes ordinary conversation.

Tremlett reports rather than lectures, and he lived in Spain for decades, so the book reads like a long argument with a country he clearly loves. The Bloomsbury USA paperback runs to 400 pages and is widely stocked. Read Ghosts of Spain on Amazon.

2. The New Spaniards, by John Hooper

The New Spaniards is the standard survey of how daily life changed in Spain after the dictatorship ended. John Hooper first published it as The Spaniards in 1986 and rewrote it as The New Spaniards, and the second edition runs through religion, politics, regional identity, education, housing, the role of women, music and money, one chapter at a time.

The second edition is dated December 2006, so it stops before the financial crisis, the Catalan independence push and everything since. Read it for the structure of Spanish society rather than for current affairs, and pair it with Tremlett. The Penguin paperback runs 458 pages. Buy The New Spaniards on Amazon.

3. Homage to Catalonia, by George Orwell

Homage to Catalonia is George Orwell’s first-hand account of fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and it is the shortest route to understanding what the war actually felt like. Orwell went to Barcelona in 1936 to report on it, joined the POUM militia instead, was shot through the throat and then had to flee the city as his own side turned on itself.

The book is famous for the disillusionment rather than the combat: Orwell watched a revolution he believed in be dismantled by its supposed allies, and said so at a time when almost nobody in Britain wanted to hear it. Get Homage to Catalonia on Amazon.

4. The Basque History of the World, by Mark Kurlansky

The Basque History of the World explains the one part of Spain that has never fitted the story the rest of the country tells about itself. Mark Kurlansky traces the Basques through their language, which is related to nothing else in Europe, and then through their cooking, whaling, banking, politics and long refusal to become anyone else’s province.

The Basque History of the World covers the language, the cooking, the religion, the economics and the literature, and the influence the region has had on the rest of Europe. It is the book to read before San Sebastián or Bilbao, because it turns a food-and-architecture trip into something you can follow. Buy The Basque History of the World on Amazon.

5. A Concise History of Spain, by William D. Phillips Jr and Carla Rahn Phillips

A Concise History of Spain runs from prehistory to the present in one volume, which makes it the reference book on this list rather than the one you read in a hammock. William D. Phillips Jr and Carla Rahn Phillips cover migration, religion, empire, art, regional politics and Spain’s shifting place in Europe, with the second edition published by Cambridge University Press in November 2015.

Use it to fill the gaps the other books leave. If you only want one history of Spain and you want it to be complete rather than atmospheric, this is that book. Read A Concise History of Spain on Amazon.

Travel writing and memoirs set in Spain

Four books cover what it is like to arrive in Spain and stay, written by outsiders who did exactly that.

6. Driving Over Lemons, by Chris Stewart

Driving Over Lemons is the funniest book on this list and the one most likely to make you look at farmhouses in southern Spain. Chris Stewart gave up his old life for a remote sheep farm in rural Andalusia, and the book is the story of the first years of it: the neighbours, the paperwork, the water, and the gap between what he expected of the Spanish countryside and what he got.

It is affectionate about the people around him rather than superior, which is what separates it from most expat memoirs. Amazon lists it as the first of a trilogy, so there are two more if you like it. Get Driving Over Lemons on Amazon.

7. As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning, by Laurie Lee

As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning is the account of a young man walking across Spain in the 1930s with a violin and almost nothing else. Laurie Lee left his home in Gloucestershire on foot, crossed from the north of Spain to the southern coast playing for coins, and was still there when the Civil War broke out and ended the journey.

It is the clearest portrait on this list of pre-war Spain as a place rather than a political question, and the ending, when the war catches up with him, lands harder because of it. The standalone Penguin edition is a UK title and is not sold to US customers, so the reliable option is the Penguin Modern Classics omnibus Red Sky at Sunrise on Amazon, which collects it with Cider with Rosie and A Moment of War.

8. Death in the Afternoon, by Ernest Hemingway

Death in the Afternoon is Ernest Hemingway’s non-fiction study of bullfighting, and it is nothing like his novels. He explains the corrida as a craft with rules, a vocabulary and a canon of practitioners, and he is explicit that he is describing it rather than defending it. Along the way he writes about fear, courage and how to look at death, which is what the book is really about.

Bullfighting is contested in Spain itself, banned in Catalonia and the Canary Islands and unpopular with much of the country. Read this to understand an argument you will meet, not as an endorsement of it. Buy Death in the Afternoon on Amazon.

9. Discovering Spain: An Uncommon Guide, by Penelope Casas

Discovering Spain is a food writer’s tour of the twelve regions, the Balearics and the Canaries, written by one of the people who taught the English-speaking world about Spanish cooking. Penelope Casas published several Spanish cookbooks and wrote about food and travel for the New York Times, Condé Nast Traveler and Food & Wine, and this book carries all of that into a region-by-region itinerary.

Treat it as reading rather than planning. The updated edition is dated April 1996, so its hotels, restaurants and shops are three decades out of date and stock is thin. The regional food writing has not aged at all. Find Discovering Spain on Amazon.

Books about walking the Camino de Santiago

Two memoirs cover the Camino de Santiago from opposite directions, one practical and one interior. Both are short.

10. Steps Out of Time, by Katharine Soper

Steps Out of Time is a Camino memoir that keeps one eye on the history of the route and the other on why anyone would want to walk it now. Katharine Soper covers the pilgrimage itself, the churches and villages along it and the way the pace of the walk works against the pace of the life she left behind.

It is the more grounded of the two Camino books here, with more about what you actually see. Read Steps Out of Time on Amazon.

11. The Way, My Way, by Bill Bennett

The Way, My Way is the Camino book about what happens in your head rather than what happens on the path. Bill Bennett walked the pilgrimage and wrote about the spiritual side of it, and he does it without the reverence the genre usually reaches for.

Take it as the counterweight to Soper: same walk, different reason for being on it. Buy The Way, My Way on Amazon.

Novels set in Spain

Five novels put you inside a Spanish city or century, and between them they cover Barcelona after the war, the Civil War itself, the Inquisition, the seventeenth century and Andalusia.

12. The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

The Shadow of the Wind is the novel to take to Barcelona, and it is the one on this list I recommend most often. Carlos Ruiz Zafón sets it in postwar Barcelona: a bookseller’s son named Daniel Sempere is taken by his father to a hidden library called the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, chooses one volume from it, and is pulled into a story of mystery, betrayal and forbidden love that reaches back into the aftermath of the Civil War.

It works as a mystery and as a portrait of a city under a dictatorship, and Amazon lists it as the first of four books in the Cemetery of Forgotten Books series. It was one of the first novels set in Spain I read and it is still a favourite. Read The Shadow of the Wind on Amazon.

13. For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls is the Spanish Civil War novel most readers arrive at first. Robert Jordan, an American volunteer attached to a republican guerrilla band in the mountains, is sent to destroy a bridge behind fascist lines, and the book is mostly what happens among the fighters in the days before he tries.

Hemingway reported the war himself, and the novel is less romantic about either side than its reputation suggests. Pair it with Orwell and you have both ends of the same disillusionment. Get For Whom the Bell Tolls on Amazon.

14. The Last Jew, by Noah Gordon

The Last Jew follows a boy called Yonah across Spain during the Inquisition, staying one town ahead of the people looking for him. Noah Gordon’s novel tracks him for years as he crosses the country on a donkey, finds love, builds a life as a physician and passes as an Old Christian while privately holding on to everything he was raised in.

It is a chase story and a portrait of a country erasing part of itself, and it is good background for Toledo, Girona or Córdoba, where that history is written into the streets. Buy The Last Jew on Amazon.

15. Don Quixote, by Miguel de Cervantes

Don Quixote is the novel Spain built its literature on, and it is much funnier than its reputation allows. Miguel de Cervantes sends an elderly gentleman of La Mancha, driven mad by chivalric romances, out onto the roads with a farmer named Sancho Panza, and the joke slowly turns into something sadder as the world keeps refusing to be what Quixote needs it to be.

Translation matters more here than with any other book on this list. The Edith Grossman translation is the one to read in English, and it is the edition linked here. Read Don Quixote on Amazon.

16. The Alchemist, by Paulo Coelho

The Alchemist follows a young Andalusian shepherd who leaves Spain in search of treasure and comes back with wisdom instead. Paulo Coelho is Brazilian and most of the book happens outside Spain, so this is the one entry here that is only partly a Spanish book: it is about someone who comes from Andalusia rather than a story set there.

Include it if you want the mystical end of the shelf rather than the historical one. Read The Alchemist on Amazon.

Which one should you start with?

Start with Ghosts of Spain if you want to understand the country, and The Shadow of the Wind if you want to enjoy it. Those two between them cover the two things a first-time visitor usually wants: why Spain is the way it is, and what it is like to be inside a Spanish city at night.

The order that works for a first trip is set out below.

1. Ghosts of Spain: the modern country and the silence underneath it.
2. The Shadow of the Wind: Barcelona, and the pleasure of reading about it.
3. Homage to Catalonia: the war, from someone who was in it.
4. Driving Over Lemons: rural Andalusia, and a laugh.
5. The Basque History of the World: only if the north is on your itinerary.

What do you think are the novels set in Spain worth adding, and are there books about Spain we have missed? Let me know in the comments.

About the author. This reading list is written and maintained by the Wonderful Wanderings editorial team. Wonderful Wanderings was founded in 2012 by Sofie Couwenbergh, and the books here are ones the team has read rather than titles pulled from a sales chart. The team covers Spain for independent travellers, including the cities, the food and the tours and hotels worth booking, and rechecks this page when an edition goes out of print or a title is reissued.