Go into El Capricho, built 1883–85, and work out how much of the later Gaudí is already in it

Find the sunflower tiles running round the outside and work out why they are there

Walk up to the Sobrellano palace and pantheon by Joan Martorell

Find the former Pontifical University by Domènech i Montaner on the hill

Work out how a village this size acquired three major Catalan architects, and where the money came from

Antonio López y López, first Marquis of Comillas, made a fortune in Cuba and brought Catalan architects home to his village on the Cantabrian coast. The result is extraordinary for a place this size: Gaudí's El Capricho of 1883–85, one of his earliest works and one of only three he built outside Catalonia; the Sobrellano palace and pantheon by Joan Martorell; and the former Pontifical University by Lluís Domènech i Montaner. It is effectively a Catalan Modernisme colony dropped into a Cantabrian fishing village.

Comillas: A Catalan Modernisme Colony in Cantabria

Walk through the Neocave — the full-scale replica built metres from the sealed original — and find the Polychrome Ceiling's herd of painted bison

Find the museum exhibit on María Sanz de Sautuola, the 8-year-old girl who spotted the bison ceiling in 1879, a decade after the cave itself was first found

Read how the paintings were dated across more than 10,000 years of use, from the Aurignacian through to the Magdalenian period

Find where the museum explains why the real cave closed to the public in 2002, and why only five visitors a week — chosen from a waitlist no longer open to new names — are ever allowed inside

In 1879, amateur archaeologist Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola was led into this cave by his eight-year-old daughter María, who looked up and spotted the painted bison on the ceiling before he did. The original cave has been closed to the public since 2002 to protect paintings up to 36,000 years old; the Neocave, a full-scale replica built metres from the real one, is what every visitor actually sees today.

Altamira: The Girl Who Looked Up

Go in on the mine train through the old gallery, which is the only way in

Find the helictites — eccentric stalactites that grow sideways instead of down

Find the draperies, translucent sheets of calcite hanging like flags from the roof

Work out how it was found: miners cutting for zinc and lead broke into a cavity that blew air at them, which is what soplao means

Work out the scale of what is behind the lit section: about twenty kilometres of cave, of which four are open

El Soplao was cut into by accident during zinc and lead mining, and soplao was the miners' word for a karst cavity that blew a strong draught when they broke into it. It runs to about twenty kilometres of which four are open, and what makes it exceptional is the formations: helictites — eccentric stalactites that grow sideways and defy gravity — and translucent draperies hanging from the roof. You go in on a mine train, through a working gallery, into a cave the people who found it had no idea was there.

El Soplao: The Cave the Miners Found by Accident

Walk both of the converging streets and count the carved coats of arms on the house fronts

Go into the collegiate church cloister, which is among the finest Romanesque cloisters in northern Spain

Work out the joke about the three lies in the name and check each one

Go on to Altamira two kilometres away and the replica cave there

Come out of season or early in the morning, because this is one of the most visited villages in Spain

Sartre called it the prettiest village in Spain. The Spanish joke is that the name is three lies: it is not holy, it is not flat and it is not on the sea. What it is is a nearly untouched medieval and Renaissance street plan of two converging cobbled streets lined with noble houses bearing carved coats of arms, with a Romanesque collegiate church at one end whose cloister is among the best in northern Spain. Altamira is two kilometres away, which is the other reason people come.

Santillana del Mar: The Town of Three Lies

Go into El Pindal and find the mammoth among the thirteen bison and eight horses

Look for the red dots, lines and club-shaped signs painted beside the animals

Walk out across the Rasa de Pimiango, the raised wave-cut platform above the cave, to the cliff edge

El Pindal opens in the sea cliffs near Pimiango, at the far eastern end of Asturias, and its paintings have been known since 1908. Most are on the right-hand panels: thirteen bison, eight horses, a hind, a stag and a mammoth, with red dots, lines and club-shaped signs among them. The cave has been protected since 1924 and part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Altamira and the Palaeolithic cave art of northern Spain since 2008. Only the eastern half is open to visitors; access to the western half is restricted.

El Pindal: A Mammoth on the Sea Cliffs of Asturias

Learn to spot an indiano house: the palm in the garden is the giveaway

Find the school, the fountain or the cemetery an indiano also paid for in the same village

Work out where the money came from — Cuba, Mexico, Argentina — and what it cost to get it

Go into one that is open as a museum or a hotel and look at what was brought back

Work out why so many are on this particular stretch of coast and not inland

From the 19th century into the 20th, people left the Asturian and Cantabrian coast in enormous numbers for Cuba, Mexico and Argentina, and a proportion came back rich. What they built is unmistakable: brightly painted mansions with galleries and towers, set in gardens planted with imported palms — a palm in the garden is the reliable sign — often alongside a school or a fountain they also paid for, because returning as a benefactor was part of the point. Whole villages along this coast are shaped by them.

The Cantabrian Indiano Houses

Surf Los Locos, which is the break Suances is known for

Work out why several breaks within a few kilometres work on different swells and tides

Come in winter if you can actually surf, because that is when the Atlantic swell arrives

Take a lesson in summer if you cannot, when the same beaches are small and forgiving

Walk the clifftop between the beaches and read the water before you get in

The Cantabrian coast faces north into the Atlantic and picks up swell all winter, which is why northern Spain has a surf culture that most visitors never notice. Suances, at the mouth of the Saja-Besaya estuary, has several breaks within a few kilometres of each other — Los Locos being the best known — working on different swells and tides, so something is usually doing something. Winter is the serious season here; summer is small, crowded and mostly for learning.

Suances and the Cantabrian Surf Coast

Walk up through the gate of the walled village to the chapel at the top

Find the Torre d'en Nunis, the Muslim tower that was here before the conquest

Look across the channel towards Menorca and work out how a few bonfires won an island

Capdepera's castle crowns a 159-metre hill two kilometres from the east coast of Mallorca, a walled village of about 8,000 square metres climbing from its gate to the chapel of Nostra Senyora de l'Esperança at the top. When James I took Mallorca in 1229 only one Muslim tower stood here, the Torre d'en Nunis. Needing his troops for Valencia, he had huge bonfires lit on this hill, visible from Menorca, so that the island's Muslim rulers would think an army was camped here ready to invade; the trick worked, and the Treaty of Capdepera let them stay on Menorca as tributaries of the Crown. James II built the walled village in 1300 to repopulate the east of the island.