Andalucia Impressions: Driving in Andalucía

Any consideration obviously depends on your personal experience. We live in Italy and so mostly compare with our experience there. Plus, our journey took place between mid-September and mid-November.

First of all, fuel (November 2018) is a lot cheaper than in France or Italy, about a 1.30 a litre if you look around, which is a big advantage.

I generally found drivers in Spain and in particular in southern Spain to be polite. They seemed to respect the speed limits and other drivers and only got impatient and blew their horn with the Italian driver when I really deserved it. So driving around was usually not stressful. Roads are pretty empty apart from the going to school/work rush hour in towns and cities first thing, and people going out to enjoy themselves after 8pm. We often arrived places mid-afternoon when there was almost no-one around. 

Spanish roads have a lot of indications about potential dangers such as sharp bends and speed limits related to them and it's wise to respect them because they are realistic.

Motorways in Andalusia are often free, the coast one from Malaga, for example, isn't.

We don't have Satnav on our car so simply used Google maps, so one of us drove and the other gave directions based on Google maps directions but also on common sense and local observations. Generally we had no problems. It was absolutely indispensable for finding Airbnbs or campsites and useful for longer distances too. However it does need to be interpreted, sometimes Google maps wanted us to take one particular road for no apparent reason when there were different options and it obviously doesn't take into account the scenery. It often gives you the quickest route as the default, but if, like me, you're not a fast driver that may not be relevant when the shortest is perhaps quite a few kilometres shorter.

We also had a traditional paper map of Spain and one of Andalucía, both Michelin for trip planning in general because we found it easier to spread a big map right across the table and because panoramic routes are signed in green and this was useful when we were undecided between two routes.

We never paid for parking while we were in Andalucía, usually it's enough to park a bit further away from wherever you're going and walk. The only time this made life complicated was in Los Caños de Meca when trying to get near the lighthouse and generally near the beach.

As regards parking and accommodation, the least stressful solution was to stay in a campsite. Apartments and rooms often don't have parking, which we didn't feel happy with considering the foreign number plate and the visible camping stuff inside. When they did, garages are often under apartment blocks with narrow or difficult entrances from narrow streets and very small spaces inside for today's cars. We have a Honda Jazz, so it's not enormous but Andrea sometimes had a hard time maneuvering in and out of spaces I would have found impossible. Spanish people are used to such tight corners, remain unfazed and are surprised if you complain (although there are a lot of scratched cars around!).

Sometimes we parked the car in the street in front of or very near accommodation if it was a small town context and the host assured us it was ok. It was low season but inevitably the car was also occasionally parked in isolated places when we wanted to go on walks but fortunately we had no problems.
I can't say I'm a particularly confident driver and maybe we were just lucky but I found the whole experience of driving around Andalucia relaxing and stress-free. It's a fantastic place and a slow trip around by car really allows you to visit and appreciate its beauties.