Tourism Spain

They call it green Spain. Billows of fine rain, gentle as talcum powder puffed from a god's mouth, drift in off the Bay of Biscay to color the mountains and hills emerald. I might never have discovered the wonders of this northern coast of Spain had I not gone to visit my teenage daughter, who was on a foreign exchange program.

"The Guadalquivir skips from orange trees to olive groves, but the rivers in Granada flow from snow to wheat." He's a Gypsy and looks like Willie Nelson, if Willie had jet-black hair and coal eyes, and he's reciting the poem in that melodious Spanish gypsy measure that sounds more like Arabic than Castilian.

A ponytailed Spanish mime in a traditional black fallero suit perches precariously on a bicycle seat and uses my left shoulder for balance. A young Englishman in a baseball cap zooms in with a video camera over my right side. Together, with hundreds of others jammed into a narrow alley near Valencia's central market, our eyes are glued to a 50-foot figure of Jose Maria Aznar, the neoconservative prime minister of Spain, out for a spin on his "Haley Davison" with his miniskirted biker-babe wife.

Andalusia is mostly magnificent: rich in color, noble customs, a tradition of hospitality and tolerance. It is wildly diverse. Seville, urbane and well watered, is among the world's most thrilling cities. Almer'a, cut off by miles of rocky desert, has the sleepy air of a backwater Mexican fishing port. Granada and Cordoba are dramatic, rooted deeply in history. Flower-splashed villages climb impossible hills; their church belfries and Arab watchtowers are visible for miles.

Turbot and pigs' feet are often mixed in a tasty stew in Catalonia, but Sergi Arola has taken it to a savory new level. At La Broche, his chic Madrid restaurant, the upstart chef pan-sears the fish with a touch of cilantro and wraps the pork with onion in a delicate gelatin. He then eases the two dishes like miniature sculptures onto opposite sides of a plate as big and bright as a full moon.

The armed Basque separatist group ETA warned travelers to stay away from Spain and claimed responsibility for five recent killings. ETA, an acronym for Basque Homeland and Freedom, took responsibility for the killings of two police officers and a town councilor this month and two electrical workers in February. The group is believed to have killed more than 800 people since it began fighting for independence in 1968.

It was midafternoon, and, just beyond the beach at La Caleta, fishing boats bobbed at their moorings. The day's catch was in. The fishermen had gone home and were dozing in shuttered rooms or eating the seafood soup they call \o7 caldo\f7 . On the beach, children ran into the salt spray. It has been this way in Cadiz for a long, long time. Three millenniums, in fact. Cadiz can lay claim to being the oldest city in Western Europe.

Spain's tourism chief, Juan Jose Guemes, urged visitors to be calm after a powerful car bomb exploded in a seaside resort, forcing the evacuation of two hotels in what appeared to be the latest attack by Basque separatists to target tourism. After the blast in the northeastern resort of Cap de Salou, 13 people, including two Civil Guard officers, were treated for minor cuts and anxiety attacks, police said.

Knocking on the door of the timeworn Convent of San Leandro here pretty much epitomizes this mysterious and magnificent city. Like Seville, the convent's door is imposing and reveals little of life behind it, but a treat awaits visitors. San Leandro is run by cloistered nuns whose primary contact with the outside world is through a rotating window cut into the old door. If you call when they aren't praying or meditating, a nun will answer by uttering, \o7 "Ave Maria purisima."

There aren't many places on Earth where you can sit beneath a 12th century notched Gothic wall and gaze out at a merry Mediterranean seascape, but Tossa de Mar, in the heart of Spain's Costa Brava, is one. There also aren't many corners of Spain that will remind you of a Greek island. But waterfront Cadaques, whitewashed and attended by scores of new yachts and old fishing boats, probably will.