Specialist guidebooks
Phil Ball   Morbo - The Story of Spanish Football (When Saturday Comes Books, UK). Excellent and well-written account of the history of Spanish football from its nineteenth-century beginnings with the British workers at the mines of Río Tinto in Huelva to the golden years of Real Madrid and the dark days of Franco, with the ever present backdrop of the ferocious rivalry or morbo - political, historical, regional and linguistic - which has driven the Spanish game since its birth. Essential reading for every football aficionado visiting Spain.

Bob Carrick   Ventas Within a Short Drive of the Costa del Sol (Santana, Málaga). Useful guide to some of the best ventas - Spain's bargain roadside restaurants - within easy reach of the Málaga coast. Widely available at bookshops in major resorts.

Wildlife
Frederic Grunfeld and Teresa Farino   Wild Spain (Sheldrake Press; Prentice Hall). A knowledgeable and practical guide to Spain's national parks, ecology and wildlife.

Heinzel, Fitter and Parslow   Collins Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe (Collins, UK). Alternative to the other Collins guide.

Peterson, Mountfort and Hollom   Collins Field Guide to the Birds of Britain and Europe (Collins Reference; Houghton Mifflin). Standard reference book - covers most birds in Spain.

Oleg Polunin and Anthony Huxley   Flowers of the Mediterranean (Chatto, UK). Useful if by no means exhaustive field guide.

K.J. Stoba   Bird Watching in Mallorca (Cicerone Press, UK). Island guide listing 282 species and where and when to see them.

Food and wine
Coleman Andrews   Catalan Cuisine (Grub Street, UK). Best available English-language book dealing with Spain's most adventurous regional cuisine.

Nicholas Butcher   The Spanish Kitchen (Macmillan, UK). A practical and knowledgeable guide to creating Spanish dishes when you get back. Lots of informative detail on tapas, olive oil, jamón serrano and herbs.

Penelope Casas   The Foods and Wines of Spain (Knopf, US). Superb Spanish cookbook, covering classic and regional dishes with equal, authoritative aplomb. By the same author is the useful Tapas: the little dishes of Spain . (Knopf, US).

Alan Davidson   The Tio Pepe Guide to the Seafood of Spain and Portugal (Anness, UK). An indispensible pocket book that details and illustrates every fish and crustacean you're likely to meet in restaurants and bars along the Spanish costas.

Julian Jeffs , Sherry (Faber, UK). The story of sherry - history, production, blending and brands. Rightly a classic and the best introduction to Andalucía's great wine.

Mark and Kim Millon   Wine Roads of Spain (HarperCollins, UK/US). Everything you ever wanted to know about Spanish wine and sherry: when, how and where it's made, with a good array of useful maps.

John Radford   The New Spain (Mitchell Beazley, UK). Lavish coffee table format disguises this book's serious content - a detailed region-by-region guide to Spanish wine with colour maps, bodega and vintage evaluations and fine illustrations.

Jan Read   Guide to the Wines of Spain (Mitchell Beazley, UK). Encyclopedic (yet pocketable) guide to the classic and emerging wines of Spain by a leading authority. Includes maps, vintages and vineyards.