Last Minute Beach Holidays to Spain

Where you land shapes the whole week, and these six bases cover every style of trip between them.

• Majorca, Balearics: The Balearic flagship pairs the UNESCO-listed Serra de Tramuntana mountains with family bays like Alcudia and Cala d'Or, while Palma adds a proper city evening beneath La Seu, among Europe's tallest Gothic cathedrals. The vintage wooden train to Soller, running through the mountains since 1912, remains the classic inland day out, and the island's north and east coasts hide calas you can still have mostly to yourselves in June.

• Tenerife, Canaries: Mount Teide, Spain's highest peak at 3,715 metres, rises straight out of the island's winter-sun heartland, and its national park carries UNESCO World Heritage status. The southern strips around Playa de las Americas and Costa Adeje stay above 20 degrees in January, and resident pilot whales live in the strait just offshore, so boat trips run in every month of the year.

• Costa del Sol: Malaga anchors this coast with its reborn old town and the Museo Picasso in the painter's birthplace, backed by roughly 300 days of sunshine a year. Torremolinos, Fuengirola and Marbella spread west along the shore, while Granada's Alhambra sits about 90 minutes inland for the best cultural day trip on the mainland.

• Costa Blanca: Benidorm's Levante and Poniente beaches both fly Blue Flags beneath a high-rise skyline found nowhere else on this sea. Anyone hunting cheap holidays to Spain usually starts here, because fierce competition keeps board upgrades and late deals honest, and the coach transfer from the coast's main airport takes about 45 minutes.

• Gran Canaria: Often called a miniature continent, the island packs the Sahara-like Maspalomas dunes into its south, pine forest rising to nearly 2,000 metres inland, and Las Canteras, rated among Europe's best city beaches, up in Las Palmas. Few places squeeze this much variety inside a single hire-car day, which is why repeat visitors keep choosing it.

• Barcelona and around: Gaudi's Sagrada Familia, under construction since 1882, headlines a city that also gives you the medieval Gothic Quarter, La Boqueria market and four kilometres of sand at Barceloneta, ten minutes from the old town by metro. It twins naturally with Salou or the Costa Brava for a half-and-half week that mixes galleries with beach afternoons.