Granada

Granada is unusual in that its crowd curve is capped by a ticketing system. The Alhambra admits a fixed number of visitors a day, with a separate half-hour slot for the Nasrid Palaces, and in spring and autumn the whole allocation sells out weeks in advance. That means the real seasonal pressure shows up in the Albaicín, the tapas bars around Navas and Elvira, and the hotel rates — while the monument itself feels similar in April and in November, because the same number of people are inside it.

The city sits at 740 m against the Sierra Nevada, which gives it a sharper climate than the Andalusian average. Winter nights drop to around freezing, summer afternoons reach 34–35°C, and there is snow on the mountains visible from the Mirador de San Nicolás for much of the year. The two comfortable seasons are April to early June and mid-September to early November, and they are exactly when demand is highest.

The genuine off-peak is January and February — cold, dry, bright, and the one time you can book Nasrid Palace tickets a few days out. Summer is a middle case: hot, but with a strong domestic holiday market in August and the Festival Internacional de Música y Danza running in the Alhambra itself from late June, which is the single best way to see the Generalife. The other local peculiarity worth knowing is the free tapa served with every drink; it makes an evening here cheaper than anywhere else of its size in Spain.