Spain
Caught with one foot in the past and the other firmly in the 21st century, Spain conjures up stereotypes and then shatters them all. Flamenco and paella may be the country’s defacto symbols, but the first is from Andalucía and the second is from Valencia. The Spanish themselves sometimes refer to ‘Las Españas’, and it doesn’t take long to discover that the notion of ‘Spanishness’ is more complicated than you might expect.
The country is divided into 17 autonomous communities, each with its own celebrated history, culture and traditions. You won’t find flamenco in Barcelona, and the stately Catalan sardana certainly isn’t danced on the streets of Seville. This cultural disparity is echoed in other ways. While old Al-Andalus may still linger in the elaborate Moorish palaces of Granada, the pure austerity of Romanesque holds sway in the northern provinces where the Christian Reconquest was born.