The Costa Meno: Spain 

If you’re a newer reader, our Costa Meno series is something we do each summer to find you the best stays in a country or region with last-minute availability—without maxing out your card. It’s a term we made up, playing off the evocative costa—which, of course means “coast” in Spanish and Italian and conjures images of Europeans bronzing sin SPF on tiny calas along the Costa Brava—and costa meno, which means “costs less” in Italian. It’s not a real coast, just our fantasy one where every hotel has great interiors, food, and service, at a price you wouldn’t think twice about booking for a full week. We use it to describe the special sort of properties we all want to find but are not easy to search for. Try typing in “affordable” and “cheap” and you’ll end up with dank rooms and popcorn ceilings that just aren’t worth it, but with enough digging, there will be charming, thoughtful small hotels for the same price. 

Our methodology: we priced out double rooms for weekdays in mid-July (since prices tend to spike on weekends), and focused on places under 250 euros (~$285 as of publishing) a night. We did include a handful that inch above that, because they looked too good not to. While our Costa Meno ceiling has typically been 300 or even 400/night, Spain has so many affordable options (and honestly, we could all use a deal this year), that we challenged ourselves to look for even better finds. Focused on places on or near the coast, less than an hour from the water (so no Madrid!); geographically, we started with the Balearic Islands, moving clockwise around mainland Spain starting in the northeast with the Costa Brava.  

We collected recs from friends and scoured our Spain Travel Planner, Dispatches, Spain Hotels List, Guest Books and did tons of new research. What we’re sharing below ranges from Spain’s historic, state-owned Paradores to family-owned fincas and converted farmhouses, as well as small, soulful boutique hotels and hostals (don’t write them off as hostels!). And we aren’t including rentals—which you don’t need us to tell you are often more affordable if you’re splitting the cost with others.