Granada Airport (GRX) serves the city of Granada in Andalusia, southern Spain, best known worldwide for the Alhambra palace complex, and a rental car is a genuinely useful way to combine a city visit with the mountain scenery of the nearby Sierra Nevada and the coastline just beyond it. The airport is a modest regional facility a short drive from central Granada, with counters from international and local rental companies, and the manageable passenger volumes here typically make for a quick, low-stress pickup compared with Spain's larger coastal hubs.
From GRX, central Granada and the Alhambra are roughly twenty to thirty minutes away, though driving directly into the historic center is generally discouraged given its narrow, steep streets and limited parking, so many visitors park on the outskirts and walk or take a taxi into the old quarter itself. Heading the other direction, the Sierra Nevada ski resort and mountain roads climb to some of the highest paved routes in Europe, reachable in roughly forty-five minutes to an hour, with dramatic elevation gain along switchback roads. The Costa Tropical coastline south of Granada, including towns like Almunecar, is about forty-five minutes to an hour away as the road descends from the mountains toward the Mediterranean.
Driving is on the right throughout Spain, and the roads connecting Granada to the Sierra Nevada and the coast are generally well paved, though the mountain routes involve genuine altitude, switchbacks and, in winter, snow and ice that call for extra caution or even tire chains at the highest elevations. Some Spanish motorways carry tolls, though many of the routes immediately around Granada are toll-free regional roads rather than tolled autopistas. Fuel stations are frequent around the city and along main routes but grow sparser deep into the Sierra Nevada, so it is worth filling up before a mountain excursion, and summer heat in the Granada basin contrasts sharply with cooler, sometimes snowy conditions only an hour's drive up into the mountains.