Before a first trip to northern Spain, the practical questions arrive before the romantic ones. What money do they use? Will my card work in a mountain village? How much cash should I actually bring? Sensible things to sort, and easy to answer. Here's a plain guide to currency and spending money for a hosted week in the green Cabuérniga valley — with no exchange rates to memorise, because those move and you should check them near the time anyway.

What currency does Cantabria use?

The euro. Cantabria is part of Spain, Spain is in the eurozone, so it's euros (€) everywhere — the same currency you'd use in France, Italy or Ireland. If you're coming from the UK you'll be changing pounds into euros at whatever the rate happens to be when you travel; it's worth a quick look before you go, but not worth fretting over. There's nothing regional or unusual to catch you out. What you spend in Santander you spend in the valley and on the coast.

Card or cash — what works here?

Both, with a lean towards cards for anything of size and cash for the small stuff. Cards and contactless are accepted almost everywhere you'd expect — restaurants, shops, petrol stations, the towns. But this is a rural valley, and a village bar, a market stall or a small café may still prefer cash, and the odd taxi driver certainly will. So the sensible approach is a card for the day-to-day and a modest amount of euro cash in your pocket for coffees, tips and the places that don't love a card machine. If a card reader offers to charge you in pounds instead of euros, choose euros — being billed in your home currency abroad usually works out worse than letting your own bank do the conversion. There are cash machines in the nearby towns if you need to top up.

What will you actually spend money on?

Less than on most holidays, because the big-ticket items are already handled. On a hosted week your breakfast and dinner are included every day, and the house wine, beer and spirits are poured all day on the house — so the two things that normally drain a holiday budget, eating out every night and the bar, are largely off the list. What's left is genuinely just the extras: lunch when you're out on a walk or a beach, coffees and the odd drink in the village, entry to the culture days if you take them — Santillana del Mar, Comillas and Gaudí's El Capricho, the Altamira caves and their Neocueva replica — plus any optional activities you fancy, like riding, a surf lesson, yoga, a painting day or some fishing. Then the usual odds and ends: a souvenir, a taxi, a tip here and there.

How much spending money should you bring?

Enough for the kind of week you're planning — which is a more useful answer than any figure a stranger could invent for you. If you intend to lunch out on the coast most days and load up on paid activities and culture trips, bring more. If your idea of the week is walking from the door, reading in the garden and letting the included meals and drinks do the heavy lifting, you'll spend very little and can bring less. The honest point is that your spending money here is discretionary rather than essential: the roof, the food and the drinks are already paid for, so what you carry is simply the budget for treats and days out, set by your own appetite for them.

A couple of practical money tips

Nothing exotic, just the things that save a small hassle. Tell your bank you're travelling so a foreign transaction doesn't trip a fraud freeze. Carry a little cash from the off, so you're never caught out on arrival day before you've found a machine. Keep some coins back for tips, since rounding up is appreciated in Spain but rarely possible to do neatly on a card. And don't over-withdraw — you can always get more, and you'll likely spend less than you expect once you realise dinner and the wine aren't coming out of your wallet.

One more thing worth a minute before you fly: check whether your UK bank or card charges a fee for spending or withdrawing abroad. Some do, some don't, and it varies enough between providers that it isn't something we'd guess at on your behalf — a quick look at your bank's own terms, or a call to them, settles it in a moment and can save you an unwelcome surprise on your statement once you're home. It's the kind of small admin that takes five minutes and then never has to cross your mind again for the rest of the trip.

Get the money sorted before you fly and it stops being a thing you think about — which is rather the point of a hosted week. Scheduled per-person weeks are booked through Spice Escapes, Casa Agara's booking partner, whose ATOL (9046) covers the flight-inclusive packages — so the biggest cost, the trip itself, is settled and protected before you pack a single euro.

Ask us what a week includes, or see the Green Spain weeks on Spice Escapes →.