TAPAS LOVERS · SPAIN
Small plates, bar to bar, all night.
Pintxos in San Sebastian, vermut in Barcelona, the Triana crawl in Seville, a free tapa with every drink in Granada. Real reviews of the tapas tours worth booking, in the Spanish cities that eat standing up.
Where the crawl is the point
Three cities that eat standing up.
Tapas is everywhere in Spain, but a few cities turned the crawl into an art. Madrid does it in old tabernas, Seville invented it in Triana, Granada still pours you a free plate with every glass. Three very different ways to spend a night going bar to bar.
Castile
Madrid
Dinner in Madrid is a crawl, not a table. A caña and a few small plates at one old tiled taberna, then on to the next the locals are crammed into, from the jamon counter to the late place with the good vermut. A churros and chocolate stop at dawn is how the long ones end. Half the night is the walking between.
- 1 Madrid Tapas & Wine Tasting Walking Tour – Small Group Local Bars
- 2 Madrid Tapas & Taverns Small Group Food & History Tour
- 3 Madrid: Small Group of Prado Museum Tour & Optional Tapas
Andalusia
Seville
Seville invented the tapeo and still does it best. You eat standing up, bar to bar through Triana and Santa Cruz, a fino sherry and a plate of jamon or salmorejo at each, never sitting long enough to settle. A guide knows which abaceria to push into and what to order before the menu even comes out.
- 1 Sevilla Food Tour: Tapas, Wine, History & Traditions
- 2 Ultimate Seville Tapas, Wine & History Small Group Tour
- 3 Seville: Tapas Crawl
Andalusia
Granada
Granada keeps the oldest rule alive: every drink comes with a tapa, free, and the more you order the better they get. A crawl here is a string of small surprises, from a saucer of habas con jamon to a wedge of tortilla, working up through the Albaicin as the plates keep arriving unasked.
- 1 Granada Tapas and Wine Small Group Tour
- 2 Granada Highlights Tour with Tapas Breaks by Electric Bike
- 3 Granada 3-hour Tapas Tour
If you only book one
The tapas tour more travellers rave about than any other.
Out of every crawl on the site, this is the one that sends people home telling everyone they know to book it.
The crowd-pleasers
The Most Popular Tapas Tours Right Now
Barcelona vermut crawls, Madrid taberna nights, the Seville tapeo, a long Valencia market lunch. The bookings travellers are happiest they made.
Start with a city
The best tapas tours, city by city.
Barcelona for the vermut crawl, Seville for the Triana tapeo, Granada for the free plates. Pick the city you are headed to and we will show you the tapas tours worth booking there.
Which tapas city
Spain crawls three different ways.
The hardest call when you are planning a tapas trip is where to point it. The north skewers its small plates and calls them pintxos; the capital keeps the old tabernas; the south pours you a free tapa and takes all night. Start with the one that sounds like your kind of evening.
Barcelona
Vermut first, then keep moving.
Barcelona eats standing up and on the move: a glass of vermut and a few pintxos at the bar, then on to the next place the locals are packed into. A guide walks you from the Boqueria stalls to the back-street bodegas the tourists never find, and orders the bomba and the anchovies you would have skipped.
See the best Barcelona tapas tours →Valencia
Start at the Mercat Central.
Valencia begins where the cooks shop: the Mercat Central, all marble and stained glass, where a tour tastes its way down the aisle, from the jamon counter to the cheese stall to a glass of cava at the bar inside. Come evening it moves to Ruzafa for the bar crawl, esgarraet and clochinas and the small plates the coast does best.
See the best Valencia tapas tours →San Sebastian
The bar top is the menu.
In the old town of San Sebastian the counters vanish under rows of pintxos, each a little built thing on a skewer, and you simply point, eat, and pay on trust at the end. A guide leads you through the legendary bars of the Parte Vieja, ordering the off-the-counter plates the kitchen makes to order and pouring you a txakoli from on high.
See the best San Sebastian pintxos tours →Malaga
Espetos by the sea, sweet wine in the bar.
Malaga eats with the coast at its back: sardine espetos grilled over driftwood on the beach, then into the old town for boquerones, a wedge of tortilla and a glass of the sweet Malaga wine straight from the barrel. A tapas tour works the bars around the Atarazanas market and the cathedral, ordering the Andalusian plates the rest of Spain copies.
- 1 Caminito del Rey & White Village Tour with Tapas from Málaga
- 2 Malaga Wine & Tapas Small Group Guided Tour
- 3 Málaga: Wine & Tapas Tour
By appetite
How long do you want the night to run?
A gentle market lunch in Valencia with a glass of cava. A Madrid taberna crawl from one small plate to the next. An all-night Seville tapeo that ends when the streets do. Pick the city that sounds like your kind of evening.
Ease in
Valencia, the market lunch.A morning through the Mercat Central at your own pace: a glass of cava, a plate of jamon, the cheese stall, agua de Valencia in the sun. Everything you came to taste, nothing you have to be brave for.
Eat like a local
Madrid, taberna to taberna.A caña and a few small plates at one old tiled taberna, then on to the next the locals are crammed into, from the jamon counter to the late bar with the good vermut. A guide orders the dishes you would have skipped.
All in
Seville, the all-night tapeo.Bar to bar through Triana and the old centre, a sherry and a small plate at each, standing up with everyone else and moving when the bar moves. Dinner that lasts until the streets empty.
Mallorca
Island plates, off the tourist strip.
Mallorca’s real eating is inland and back-street, away from the resort menus: a wedge of warm coca, tumbet and sobrassada spread on bread, a glass of local wine from a small Binissalem bodega. A guide walks you through the markets of Palma and the old town bars, ordering the island plates the package crowds never see, the ones the Mallorquins actually queue for.
See all 33 Mallorca tapas tours →By city
Pick a city to crawl.
Barcelona for the vermut crawl. Madrid for the old tabernas. Seville for the Triana tapeo. Malaga for the espetos. Valencia for the market. Granada for the free plates.
More cities
More cities worth a hungry weekend.
Alicante and Mallorca for the coast, Bilbao and San Sebastian for the pintxos, Lisbon and Porto for the petiscos, the Canaries for the island plates. The rest of the map, ready when you are.
Three cities, three tapas days
Pick a city, plan the day around the plates.
A market morning in Valencia, a free-tapa lunch up through Granada, a pintxos evening in San Sebastian. Three cities, three very different ways to spend a day eating small.
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