John Lennon and Beatles sites in Spain

Spain matters to Lennon for one autumn. In 1966 he lived in Almería while acting in How I Won the War, and there he began writing Strawberry Fields Forever. The house he stayed in, the 1866 Santa Isabel house in Villablanca, is now the Casa del Cine, a city museum of Almería's film history. In the old town, Carmen Mudarra's bronze shows him at 26 with a guitar. The council unveiled it in March 2007 and later moved it to Plaza Flores after vandalism.

The band played Spain only twice, in July 1965, and both times in bullrings. At Madrid's Las Ventas on 2 July a little over 10,000 people came, leaving the ring about half empty. The next night they closed their European tour at La Monumental in Barcelona before about 18,000. Neither ring carries a Beatles marker.

Barcelona has a quieter tribute as well. Plaça de John Lennon in Gràcia opened on 30 April 1993, with a record-shaped disc of bronze and stainless steel on its west building. In A Coruña, local collector Chema Ríos campaigned for José Luis Ribas's statue in the Jardines de Méndez Núñez, unveiled on 7 May 2005 with Lennon's half-sister Julia Baird present.