Footprint Handbooks this year marks the 80th anniversary of its South American Handbook, the world's longest‐lived travel guide in the English language. Footprint now has over 100 country guides, together with a range of city guides, including unusual destinations such as Bilbao, Bologna, Reykjavik and Talllin. Recently, Footprint has announced that all their series are to be redesigned, starting with the volumes on Andalucía, New Zealand, and Sri Lanka, already available. Much more modern, easier to read, “easier to navigate”, with larger type and a striking new colour section. Good becomes better!
Footprint Andalucía, completely rewritten for this fourth edition, covers the Southern Spain región autónoma of Andalucía, somewhat larger than Scotland, comprising the provinces of Almería, Cádiz, Granada, Huelva, Jaén, Málaga, and Sevilla. Within these provinces lie the four coastal “honeypots”; Costa de la Luz (Cádiz), Costa del Sol (Málaga), Costa Tropical (Granada) and Costa del Almería (Almería). Footprint guides are justly noted for their realism and honesty, for their “warts and all” approach. This volume, revised to 2004, characterises the state of these costas as “thoughtless overdevelopment”! The regional government has belatedly realised it perhaps should have been encouraging a more enlightened, sustainable tourism and is taking steps in that direction, increasing protection levels for the region's many natural parks, and devoting more money to the preservation of Andalucía's rich cultural and architectural heritage.
Transcending the international frontier, the Cádiz provincial section has eight pages (pp. 209‐16) on the “controversial British enclave” of Gibraltar. There are two excellent maps, of the whole Rock and of Gibraltar's urban centre, along Line Wall Street and Main Street.
All the standard Footprint features continue, from the supremely well‐informed and sensible Essentials (pp. 18‐58) to Background (pp. 435‐72) and Footnotes (pp. 473‐86). Footnotes include a skeletal Basic Spanish for travellers, lacking any guidance on “joined up language”, a useful food glossary, and an expert glossary of architectural terms that merits extension in future editions. There are an index, maps, plans – all very well done and genuinely useful.
The Guide (pp. 59‐434) is arranged by province, west to east, and shows first‐hand knowledge and critical assessment throughout. Due weight is given to the Moorish splendours of Granada, to the monuments of the Reconquista, to the stories of Columbus and Federico García Lorca, to the White Towns, to the Alpujarra, to Huelva's Sierra Morena and Coto Doñana, to Málaga's brand new Museo Picasso, and to the Archivo delas Indias in Sevilla. The “stock Spanish clichés” of flamenco, fiestas and bull fighting are rehearsed, along with the ravages inflicted by the “Brits abroad” in the past 20 years. An especially attractive feature is the walking trains in the Sierras, vividly traced by Guy Hunter‐Watts, tempting energetic folk away from the tapas bars and fleshpots of the coastal sprawl, and into the Andalucían reality of wide spaces and lonely farms. As always in Footprint guides, boxes scattered throughout the text highlight topics of significance, interest, colour, or fun. Sevilla's Semana Santa and Feria de Abril, the pioneer aviator Ramón Franco, Manuel de Falla, Los toros, Don Gerardo (Gerald Brenan, 1894‐2001), Spaghetti Westerns, Plasticultura, Antonio Machado …
Comprehensive, realistic, helpful, honest, and engrossing, this is a guide sans pareil, indispensable in reference and lending libraries, in posh suitcases, and in scruffy backpacks.
