<F2-10-2>What is solo travel? Spain (19)

(14) Spain

 Located on the Iberian Peninsula in southern Europe, it was a powerful maritime nation that boasted an invincible fleet at its peak, and together with the neighboring British Empire, it is a world power famous for being the country where the sun never sets.

It is bordered by France and Andorra to the north, Portugal to the west, Morocco and Gibraltar to the south, and Madrid as its capital. Madrid has a population of 6,661,949 as of 2021 and a land area of 505,990 square kilometers.

Barcelona can feel nature in the city center while healing in parks with greenery and temples full of lotus flowers, and Sagrada Familia, Casa Batlló, Park Güell, La Boqueria, Plaza Catalunya, and Villa Güell are the most representative.

Like France, it is one of the largest countries in Europe and has a diverse climate and landscape, but it is located further west than the United Kingdom, but it uses Central European Time (UTC +1), so it uses the same time zone as Western Europe, and there is a difference of one hour from March to October, which is one hour different from  Daylight Saving Time.

The structure of the country is unique, there are areas that are managed alternately by six months with France, there are territories such as Ceuta and Melilla on the African continent, and even the southernmost part of the country is embedded in Gibraltar, which is a British land.

 Like Mediterranean countries, it is sunny all year round and has many beautiful beaches, and as of 2018, there were 83 million overseas tourists and the tourism revenue was 80 trillion won, ranking second in the world.

In fact, Spain is a large country and has quite a variety of climates, with the north being much wetter and cooler than you might think, and the south and interior areas having a desert climate that is hot and dry reminiscent of the Middle East and North Africa, and temperatures often reach 40 degrees Celsius.

It is divided into 17 autonomous provinces (comunidad autónoma), a total of 50 provinces (provincias), and each province is centered on the municipios of the same name, which is not an administrative region, but includes the northern islands of Morocco called Plaza de Soberania.

As for religion, Catholicism is so influential that it is said that the church is always located in the center of the old city, and the pilgrimage route to Santiago, where the tomb of St. James, one of the 12 apostles, is located, is one of the three major pilgrimage sites for Catholics after Jerusalem and Rome.

Education adopts a 6+4+2 school system, 6 years of elementary school, 4 years of junior high school, and 2 years of high school, and it is compulsory from the age of 6~16, so students must attend elementary school to junior high school, and Arabic countries are learning Arabic as a second language.

Immigration at Spanish airports is not strict, and if you are using an EU national airline, you can think that you don’t get tested at all. And because of the long daylight hours, the time to start the daily routine itself is late.

In this regard, restaurants in Spain that serve breakfast usually open at 9~10 a.m. at the earliest. Instead, you can play late at night, so the nighttime drinking culture is very prosperous.   

When you visit the pilgrim office, they check the stamps on your passport and issue you a “Compotella Certificate,” which is a certificate of completion, which has a symbolic meaning that can be used as a “shield of the mind to cope with the hardships of life” rather than a simple certificate of completion.