There is no beach at this resort tucked into the green hills of Galicia, and the sun seldom shines on the nine-hole golf course. Instead of blaring music and whining children, the most common sound here is the bubble of whirlpools and the shuffle of guests in white slippers and robes on their way to get a facial or massage. Nobody orders pitchers of sangria, and the restaurant serves €30 bottles of Rioja.
The Hesperia Balneario Guitiriz, which opened in 2003, is one of more than 100 upmarket spa hotels that have sprung up recently in even the rainiest parts of Spain, according to the Institute for Tourism Research. It is very different from the complexes on the Costa del Sol filled with rowdy holidaymakers, and reflects the country's effort to rebrand itself as an upmarket tourist venue.
It is just the sort of place for Briton Angus Laird, who is staying at the spa with a group of 55 sports car drivers. He came to Spain for beautiful scenery, good food and a taste of local culture, not a cheap stay and a wild time. "I've kept clear of the Costa del Sol," he said, inspecting the Jaguars and Bentleys parked by the hotel putting green. "I think very few people know about this part of Spain, and I think the average English tourist would not be interested in it."
The Spanish government is seeking more tourists like Mr Laird. And the hotel industry is betting that they will be lured by the more sophisticated side of the country.
Since January, the Ministry of Industry, Commerce and Tourism has embarked on a €130m marketing campaign to upgrade Spain's image abroad from a holiday bargain basement to a capital of fine dining, sports and culture.
"Spain's status in the minds of international clients is not what it deserves to be," said Raul Peralba, adviser to Leading Brands of Spain Forum, a group of Spanish chief executives who are trying to overcome negative stereotypes about the country that hurt business.
Carmen Fernandez, a local high school teacher, puts it more bluntly. "For foreigners, Spain is a country for cheap holidays. When I see British holidaymakers, I see trouble. They're just looking to get drunk and have easy sex," she said.
To rectify the problem, the tourism board plans to place €60m worth of media ads alone - the majority in Britain and Germany - to trumpet Spain's nature reserves, roman ruins, golf courses, wine cellars and spas.
The government is trying to reach the type of traveller that already visits the cultural attractions of Italy or France. "Relax in the waters of a tranquil spa or experience all the magic of the opera," says one advertisement. "Walk through the most surprising landscapes," says another.
Under the government strategy, Spain's diverse regions -from the Moorish architecture of Andalucía to the Romanesque churches of Saint James Way in Galicia - will be marketed as separate "products", with ads placed in gourmet, arts, nature and other specialty magazines.
According to a report in April by the Alliance for Excellence in Tourism, the traditional "sun-and-surf" holiday packages already face increasing competition from luxury spas and rural sports such as rafting or horseriding. Since 1990, the number of hotels with golf courses, for instance, has soared from 18 to 246, and the number of four and five-star star hotels has tripled, from 467 to 1,442, a survey by the Institute for Tourism Research showed.
"Some of my friends wouldn't come to Spain if not for golf," said Paul Merry weather, another member of the British sports car rally at the Guitiriz hotel.
Some of the new resorts lure select visitors with novel services like the "wine spa" at the Hotel Golf Peralada near Gerona. Others, such as the Hacienda Benazuza outside Seville, feature gourmet dining with €100 menus by famed chef Ferran Adria.
The Guitiriz hotel panders to two recent Spanish trends: an obsession with pampering and a passion for sports.
Since the mid-1990s, Spanish hotels have increasingly invested in smart properties because they are more profitable, said Antonio Lopez de Avila, an expert on tourism at the Instituto de Empresa business school. "Low-cost tourism generates little money and destroys the country," he said, referring to the coastal strips clogged with high-rise buildings in the south. The four and five-star hotels have been the life-saver for Spanish tourism during moments of crisis when the low-end masses failed to come."
Spain fears growing competition for the bargain seekers from emerging "sun-and-surf" destinations, such as Croatia, Turkey and Morocco.
There is much at stake for the country's economy. Tourism generates more than 11% of Spain's GDP and foreign tourists alone bring in more than €44bn a year. British travellers spend €845 a day, slightly less than the average foreign tourist, according to the Tourism Research Institute.
But the hotel trends do not depend entirely on the foreigners who visit Spain's bars, beaches and bullfights. The hotel boom is driven in large part by the higher purchasing power of Spaniards, he said.
In the 1980s, the average Spaniard could not afford a room at a parador, state-run hotels in castles, palaces and other historic buildings. Today the €100 rooms are affordable to the middle class.
"Fifteen to 20 years ago, for someone in Majorca, a working-class tourist from England was a respected gentleman, today he's just a worker and the Majorcan probably has a higher standard of living," Mr Lopez de Avila said.
Despite the trend, these new resorts are not free of another, more lucrative, form of mass tourism: the corporate convention. On this rare sunny weekday in Galicia, for instance, most of the guests at the Guitiriz resort were businessmen from Mercedes Benz.
Sun, fun and big bucks
· British tourists started package trips to Spain in the 1950s, with a two-week holiday costing £35 per person in high season
· By 1977, with wages rising and charter flights becoming cheaper, 3.5 million took holidays there. Within 10 years that number had nearly trebled
· Spain is now the number one holiday destination for Brits, with 13.8 million visitors travelling there each a year, bringing £5bn to the Spanish economy
· Tourism accounts for 12% of Spain's GDP. Spaniards working within the industry number around 1.62 million or 10% of the active labour force
· Tourism receipts cover around threequarters of the country's visible trade gap. Spain still relies heavily on its charter holiday resorts of the Balearics, the Mediterranean coast and Canary Islands, but is developing sporting holidays, eco-tourism, and business and cultural tourism.
