Hotels in Huelva

Huelva is Spain's least-visited provincial capital by tourists, and it shows: this is a working port city, not a resort, built around fishing, fertiliser plants and the Rio Tinto mining trade rather than sightseeing. Columbus set sail from nearby Palos de la Frontera, and the monastery at La Rábida and the Columbus monument draw the odd history-minded day-tripper, but the city centre itself was rebuilt after a 19th-century fire and lacks the old-town charm of Seville or Cadiz an hour or two away.

What Huelva does have is genuinely good, cheap seafood — this is prawn and clam country, close to the Doñana marshes — and a real, unpolished Andalusian atmosphere without the tourist markup. Be honest: there's little to keep you here more than a night or two unless you're using it as a base for the coast or Doñana National Park.