‘Their pursuits are the cigar and the siesta’: how two centuries of British writers helped forge our view of Spain

Islamic splendours: the Alhambra in Granada. Photograph: David Bagnall/Alamy

Almost 200 years ago, the pioneering British travel writer Richard Ford offered an observation that has been happily ignored by the legions of authors who have traipsed in his dusty footsteps across Spain, toting notebooks, the odd violin or Bible, and, of course, their own particular prejudices.

“Nothing causes more pain to Spaniards”, Ford noted in his 1845 Handbook for Travellers in Spain, “than to see volume after volume written by foreigners about their country.”