One of the best ways to find information, meet fellow travelers or find answers to the little questions is to log-on to the travel forums and see what everyone is talking about. I spent several days looking at these "boards", answering questions, reviewing information and monitoring the frequency of posts by members. I still spend several hours per week hopping around on the good ones. Those getting higher marks have more information on Granada or Andalucia and a higher frequency of posts and answers from fellow members. Some sites think a forum is a way to build community, and it certainly is if you know what you're doing. But many launch a forum without thinking - there is nothing worse than a dead forum. A lack of posts and replies to your questions means you won't be coming back. Below are some quick reviews of what you can expect to find. If you've found others I've missed here please send me an email and I will add them to my list.

Multimadrid.com Boards

Web: Multimadrid.com
Mainly topic based forum. To my great embarrassment I missed this board, and it's by far the best if you're looking for to toss around a an idea or question. Very, very active community with frequent posts. Topics such as "Work and Residency" or "Preparing for your trip or move" are great places to ask questions. As the name states, the focus is on Madrid, but there's plenty of talk about other places and Spain in general. You can customize preferences and see the last 10 posts or 10 topics at the top of the page to keep up with the latest. Search, customizations and your profile help you get the most of the boards. If you're moving to Madrid you can plug yourself into the expat community quickly. Jeremy, who runs the site, answers emails personally and posts daily on the boards. Try this first, then hit the others below. And while you're at it, check out the web page. A great resource for those getting ready to study, move or visit Madrid.

Virtualtourist Forums

Web: virtualtourist.com
Geographic based forum only, but you can drill down to country, region and city. Check out the "Granada", "Andalucia" and "Spain" forums depending on your need. This was in general much better than the rest for information on Granada, although I think Trip Advisor (below) is making some inroads. You can also read most of the message from the index page of posts. Smaller and active community but not much in the way of new daily posts. You get responses fairly quickly, often times from people who live in the places you want to visit. Members also arrange Virtual Tourist Member meetings in various cities in the U.S., Europe and Asia. You can create your own travel page, and get information from others. While some of the navigation is a little clumsy, you have some nice tools, such as your own email address and inbox, as well as alerts to topics you have posted on.

Lonelyplanet.com's Thorn Tree

Web: Lonely Planet's Thorntree
Geographic and topic based. Broken down into 4 types of boards: "Departure Lounge" is composed of destinations; "The Lobby" addresses several general travel topics; "News Stand" covers ethics and politics; "Tree House" details, sports, food, photos and other topics. All countries in Europe outside of the regions of "Ireland/Uk and Scandinavia" were lumped into one board, "Western Europe", making it harder to locate information based on a particular country like Spain. A recent change now allows you to drill down to your specifc country, which is a nice change. Western Europe has a lot of posts every day, so activity is pretty good. The customization features are nice, including subscribing to a thread to see when someone has posted to your topic, private messages and more. Filtering out forums you won't use was also helpful, but I can't seem to find this feature anywhere (and I am not blaming them quite yet, I have been lazy about looking very hard to find this feature on their formum). Beware of the small group of people who like to police the boards as much as answer questions. They are "champions" of making sure posts and questions are framed correctly, in an intelligent manner, but go overboard to the point of aggravation when it could be just as easy to answer the question...they make me so very tired on many days...

Trip Advisor Seville Forum

Web: Trip Advisor Seville Forum
Geographic based. Broken down into countries, regions and provinces (ie: Spain > Andalusia > Granada). Daily posts and very active, with what looks like a good response rate to questions asked. I like the trip advisor site when looking up hotels, although I hesitate to throw all of my support behind user reviews of accommodations. This is not the best way to review a hotel - people with bad experiences are much more likely to post negative reviews, and working with some of the establishments in Seville I have seen a number of posts which are simply lies about the hotels and hostals. And as some hotels have found out, the ratings are easy to manipulate - simply make a reservation in your own hotel and then review it! Or don't, as they require no proof of whether you stayed in the hotel or hostal. An easy way to get good ratings, no? Still, the travel forum is generally separate from the hotel reviews, and while it is relatively young one has to like how active it is.

MadridMan's Bulletin Boards

Web: MadridMan
Topic based forums. Looks a lot like Multimadrid's boards, from the topics to the software. Or maybe Multimadrid looks like theirs. But this is well worth stopping at. Profiles, search, and other tools make it a customizable experience and active posting and answers by MadridMan himself make it an ideal place to get the details on travel or a whole host of other topics. I'd recommend posting on this and Multimadrid and you'll almost definitely get your question answered. MadridMan is no in Spain and branching out to other cities. You will find BarcelonaMan and GranadaMan, plus a few more!

Travellerspoint

Web: Travellerspoint
Geographic and topic based forums with a total of 13 categories. The closest you can get to Spain is the Europe category, but like any good forum they offer a search function to narrow things down quickly. A pretty actvie community with a good number of posts 25 posts over 4 days.

Frommers Message Boards

Web: Frommers Community
Geographic and topic based forum. You can drill down to the "Spain" category and avoid having your message lost in a wider "Europe" forum. Almost daily posts with more activity and responses to your questions, but still not what I would call an active community. Registration is not required to post.

Let's Go Forums

Web: Let's Go Forums
Geographic and topic based forums, allowing you to drill down the Spain and Portugal. Semi-daily posts - surprisingly not very active. In the last 4 weeks posts under this topic have been minimal, with even fewer answers. As of July 12th the last post in the Spain forum was July 5th, so that will give you an idea of what to expect. Registration is not required.

Fodors Travel Talk

Web: Fodor's Travel Talk
Geographic and topic based forums in which you can search within Europe category for posts containing Spain (on a drop down) or by keyword. Active community with a lot of posts per day. Lack of community tools such as profiles, email alerts or private messages don't help. Frames layout is also not ideal. The frequency of posts helps make up for the lack of tools and extras. Fodors is, in general, for a more affluent market.

Rick Steve's' Graffiti Wall Message Board

Web: Rick Steve's Graffiti Wall
Topic based forums on Europe only. Some helpful and "cute" topics they've chosen, but very frustrating that you can't drill down by country unless they've selected them, and then it's generally in the context of "Eating & Drinking" or "Planning & Packing". Less of a message board and more of a confusing format. I used to love the shows on PBS on Sundays and always tried to watch them. I know there is some great information on his site and in his books, but more and more I see complaints about his prices and information being outdated. Take his information on a general basis and I think you do better. For years he said to leave out Cordoba, or at least it was omitted from several guides. Is this still the case? Why would you do this? Maybe it has changed in the last year or so.

Bootsnall.com Forums

Web: Boots n' All
Geographic and topic based. Spain again is lumped in with two Europe topics. Almost daily posts with a little more active community than the rest, but I see many days without posts and little about Spain (likely due to who they have posting at the time). To give you an idea of activity: in checking the Europe forum on July 12th I see one page with about 40 posts which date back to May 1st. Registration is required to post, which doesn't help the activity, although that is becoming the norm now. Unfortunately, after the registration process (which includes some cryptic questions) you need to be "approved" personally by a forum admin which can take up to 24 hours. A real problem when wanting to get everyone involved is taking the immediacy out of the interaction. I'm even less enthusiastic about their domain name...

Savvy Traveler Bulletin Board

Web: Savvy Traveler
Geographic and topic based forums with 7 regions and 4 topics to choose from. Europe is as narrow as you can gow if you're looking for informatio on Spain. No dates for the posts don't help to see how fresh the discussions are. Messages are sorted by most recent reply and digging back shows there were 20 posts or replies in the last month, so not that active. You can search the forum to narrow down the topics, and subscribing to certain threads notifies you of new posts and helps you weed through the unwanted material.

Travelpunk.com Boards

Web: Travelpunk
Geographic and topic based forums. Western Europe is the closest you'll get to Spain as a topic. Weekly posts or less with little activity. As of July 12th the Western Europe forum's 1st page had a list of 20 posts dating back to January 5th! The groups focus on backpackers, students and budget travelers, as you can see from the hip photos they use. Registration is not required to post.

Busabout.com Forums

Web: Busabout.com
Geographic and topic based forums, allowing you to drill down to "Spain, Portugal and Morocco" Semi-monthly posts and less active community. As of July 12th the first page of the this forum has 10 posts dating back to April, with more than 75% of them going without a response. Registration is required, although a much simpler process than some of the others.

Meta-travel.com Forums

Web: Meta-travel
Topic and Geographic based forums with little activity. Customization, profile and search all make it easier, but there are very few posts and best you can do for Spain is drill down to Europe. Search for words "Seville" or "Sevilla" netted two posts, one of which was mine.

Yahoo Groups Spain Travel

Web: Yahoo Groups: Travel Spain
A lot of activity here, with plenty of daily posts. Many are trip reports from people coming back or updating while traveling. No offense to those posting, but the group seems a bit older than the other boards, with the exception of Frommers and Rick Steve's sites. Still plenty of useful information. The board seems to have a small number of very active posters, and I'm not crazy about the format, although it works pretty well. Registration is required, in that you have to have a Yahoo ID to participate. Any post also shows your Yahoo email address, leaving you open to plenty of spam after you post.

Hostelseurope.com

Web: Hostelseurope
Topic based only - about 8 of them - and most related to hostels or working in hostels, which can be a plus if that's what you're looking to do. Less active, often weekly frequency in posting. Registration is not required to post.

Travelinformation.org

Web: Travel-information.org
It can go weeks and even months without a post. Not useful at all in it's current state so I won't waste any more time on it.

iAgora.com

Web: Iagora Forums
Bad, really bad. It has the tools to be a good forum, but practically no activity on the boards makes it one to avoid.