Finding out about them can be difficult as they are organized regionally rather than nationally, and most information is published only in Spanish. Meanwhile, the small hotel section is booming. Once, the only small hotels in Spain were roadside pensiones with threadbare rooms, thin walls and a noisy bar on the ground floor. Now there are all sorts of unique hotels in places of great natural beauty, or historic towns which have been protected as sites of national heritage. Invariably these are decorated with flair and run as if the guests mattered.
Prices range enormously from the easily affordable to the ultraluxurious.
At the top of the hotel scale are the usual international brand hotels but also a handful of old-fashioned classic hotels which trade on their history and associations with the rich and famous, as much as on their comfort and service. In a category apart are Spain's famous paradores, much written about and familiar to any independent visitor to Spain not traveling on a shoestring. Getting descriptive information on places to stay in Spain is not easy. Forget the official classification system which which unhelpfully defines hotels according to such things as room size or number of lifts rather than quality. There are a few good hotel guides in Spanish, but the range in English is limited and most do not cover enough hotels, do not update regularly enough to make them reliable, or, worse, charge hoteliers for inclusion, compromising their criteria.