Andalucia.
Introduction
 The
giant region of Andalucia, located in southern Spain,
is extremely diverse and hard to distill into a few
paragraphs. Most Andalucian provinces, however, do share
the hot, dry sun and a reputation for being the haunt
of poets and artists.
Above all else, it is the remnants
of Moorish occupations that typify Andalucia. Between
711 A.D. and the Christian Reconquest of 1492, the Moors
hosted the most sophisticated civilization of the Middle
Ages in the three major cities of Córdoba, Sevilla
and Granada. Each one preserves extraordinarily beautiful
monuments of the era, the most notable being Granada's
Alhambra palace.
 Today,
the autonomous region counts the provinces of Almería,
Cádiz, Córdoba, Granada, Huelva, Jaén,
Málaga, and Seville in its borders. Andalucia
is bounded on the south and east by the Mediterranean
Sea and Atlantic Ocean and on the west by Portugal.
The regional cities run the gamut
from chic resorts like Marbella on the Costa del Sol
to more industrial cities like Málaga as well
as historical landmarks like Granada or Cordoba.
 The
capital is the city of Seville, which boasts the Alcazar,
a Moorish fortress, and La Giralda, the turret-turned-belltower
on the grandiose Gothic cathedral. The city of Mijas
is an example of an Andalucian institution, the "white
villages," so named because of the omnipresent
brilliantly whitewashed houses.
There are too many local hotspots
to even begin to describe Andalucia, but no Andalucian
guide would be complete without mentioning the ever-present
festivals and ferias, the most famous being the giant
April Fair in Sevilla, the pilgrimage to El Rocío
near Huelva in late May, and the Easter celebrations
at Málaga and Sevilla...
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