You learn startling things about the long entanglement of the British with Spain on every page of Simon Courtauld’s absorbing and enjoyable new book, which is not a travelogue but a collection of historical vignettes arranged geographically. Did you know, for instance, that the first Spanish football team was founded by two Scottish doctors working for Rio Tinto in Huelva, and that in 1907 a team of seminarians from the English College in Valladolid defeated one representing Real Madrid? Or that the first visit by a reigning British monarch to Spain occurred when Queen Victoria went to have lunch with...