Spanish cities, found on the map

Every one on the map

Every place listed below can be asked in this game. Places you find in a passed round drop out of your remaining pool. Grouped into 6 learning regions, matching the rounds on the Spain guide. Regions with no places in this map’s selection are omitted.

What the map tells you about each one

The paragraph the game shows when you find a place, for all 17 of the ones written by hand. Reading them first is not cheating.

Madrid

Madrid is the only major European capital that is not on a navigable river or a coast: it is where it is because it is the center. The city has 3.3 million people and the metropolitan area about 6.8 million, and at 667 meters it is the highest capital in the European Union.

Barcelona

The Sagrada Família was begun in 1882 and is still unfinished, which makes it a building site older than the Spanish constitution by a century. The grid around it is Cerdà’s Eixample of 1859, with the corners of every block cut off for turning carriages, and the 1992 Olympics are what turned the city back toward its own beach.

Seville

Seville is 80km from the sea and is still a port, because the Guadalquivir is the only navigable river in Spain. Between 1503 and 1717 every ship to and from the Americas had to clear its customs house, which made it the richest city in Europe. Its cathedral is the largest Gothic church in the world and holds Columbus in a tomb carried by four kings.

Valencia

The third city, and the one that flooded in 1957 badly enough that the river was moved: the Turia was diverted around the south and its old bed through the middle of the city is now nine kilometers of park. Paella comes from the rice fields just south of here, and it originally had rabbit and snails in it rather than seafood.

Bilbao

Bilbao shipped iron ore and built ships until both trades collapsed in the 1980s, and then commissioned a Frank Gehry museum that opened in 1997 and drew a million visitors in its first year. The Bilbao effect is now the name for the strategy, and most cities that have tried it have not had the same luck.

Zaragoza

The name is a worn-down Caesaraugusta, after the emperor who founded it in about 14 BC, and the same river crossing has been the reason for the city ever since. It is roughly halfway between Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia and Bilbao, which has made it the country’s logistics yard.

Málaga

Founded by Phoenicians about 2,800 years ago, which makes it one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in Europe. Picasso was born here in 1881 and left at ten. The coast either side of it took the first package tourists in the 1950s and now handles more visitors than anywhere else in Spain outside the islands.

Córdoba

In the tenth century this was the capital of a caliphate and probably the largest city in Europe, with paved and lit streets and a library said to hold 400,000 volumes. Its mosque was begun in 785 and had a cathedral built inside it in the sixteenth century, and both are still there. It is also the hottest city in Spain, with readings above 46 degrees.

Granada

The last Muslim city in Spain, surrendered in January 1492, and the Alhambra above it is what the emirs left. The Sierra Nevada behind it has the southernmost ski resort in Europe, about 30km from the town and 200km from Africa, and the peaks are high enough to keep snow into the summer.

Vigo

Vigo sits in a ría, a drowned river valley, and lands more fish by value than any other port in Europe. It also builds Citroëns: the plant here has been running since 1958 and turns out several hundred thousand cars a year, which is not what most people expect from a fishing town in Galicia.

San Sebastián

The Spanish court spent its summers here from the 1840s, which is why a town of 190,000 has a belle époque seafront wrapped around a shell-shaped bay. It has one of the highest concentrations of Michelin stars per head anywhere in the world, and the old town is where pintxos were invented.

Palma

The capital of the Balearics and the point of arrival for most of the 16 million people who visit them. Its cathedral was begun in 1229 on the site of a mosque and has the largest rose window of any Gothic church in Europe, and Gaudí spent ten years rearranging the inside of it.

Las Palmas

Founded in 1478 on Gran Canaria, and Columbus stopped here in 1492 to repair a rudder on the way west. The city claims one of the mildest climates measured anywhere, with an average that moves about six degrees between January and August, and it shares the regional capital with the city on the next island.

Santa Cruz de Tenerife

The other half of the Canary capital, under a volcano that is the highest point in Spain. Nelson lost his right arm attacking the harbor here in 1797 and the attack failed. Its carnival in February is the largest in Spain and is twinned with the one in Rio.

Cartagena

Founded by the Carthaginians about 227 BC as New Carthage, taken by Rome in 209 BC, and a naval base ever since: the Spanish Mediterranean fleet is still here. A Roman theater for 6,000 people was found under the old town in 1988 by workmen digging foundations for a shopping arcade.

Mérida

Augustus settled his retired soldiers here in 25 BC and called it Emerita Augusta, and enough of the town survives that its Roman theater still holds a drama festival every summer. It is the capital of Extremadura today, which makes it the smallest regional capital in Spain at about 60,000 people.

Melilla

A Spanish city on the coast of Morocco since 1497. The Rif war of the 1920s was fought from here, and the modernist buildings that fill the center went up in the boom that followed the port’s expansion, designed almost entirely by a single architect who had trained with Gaudí.

How this one works

The other maps of Spain

Sweden has the same map in Swedish cities. Denmark has the same map in Danish cities. India has the same map in Indian cities. Mexico has the same map in Mexican cities. United States has the same map in American cities. China has the same map in Chinese cities. Turkey has the same map in Turkish cities. France has the same map in French cities. Japan has the same map in Japanese cities. Germany has the same map in German cities. Brazil has the same map in Brazilian cities. United Kingdom has the same map in British cities. Italy has the same map in Italian cities. South Korea has the same map in Korean cities. All three together on the Spain atlas page, the country itself on the Spain guide, and the other two hundred on the world map.