whens best time to book a holiday?

lea2012

As a suggestion, based on your initial post, take a look at the Costa Dorada area. We've been several times to PortAventura in Salou and love it. I'm not overly keen on Salou itself as it's a bit busy for me so we stay in La Pineda or Cambrils which are either side of Salou when we go or we've stayed at PortAventura itself a couple of times too. The theme park is great for kids and adults too, lots of rides from big rollercoasters to smaller rides and the shows are amazing too. They have cirque du soleil next year too which sounds great. We've booked with Portaventura Holidays in the past as they give you free theme park tickets even if you stay away from the park itself and they have plenty of apartments to choose from.
Barcelona is only an hour away too and there's a great waterpark at Portaventura and one in La Pineda too.

glenandemm

cheers guys some great and intresting advice there, we are toying about with renting a spanish villa with its own pool etc and driving there through france as we got family we'd like to visit too near toulouse and nantes and now we have a diesel which is great on mpg rather than a 3.0 petrol bmw it wont cost half as much lol.
wee always booked our own holiday rather than package like florida we booked the fly drive separate from the villa and the fly drive worked out cheaper than booking the flight and car separate at the time!

zagfles

If you're going via Nantes have a look at Western crossings particularly if you live in the West of the UK...they can be expensive but you'll save on petrol, tolls and maybe accomodation. The motorways from Caen to Nantes are free.

You could consider Western France instead of Spain if you don't want to do too much driving - or the NE med coast of Spain is great - southern Spain is a long way to drive.

Diesels are great in Europe as diesel is usually cheaper than petrol (unlike here) as well as giving better mpg.