Q&A: Best Options for Cell Phone travel to Spain?

You can get a cheap no frills pay as you go phone with SIM card for about 30 Euros. You just need an address in Spain and a passport. The only problem is that it is quite costly to use the pay as you go and to sign a contract it has to be for a minimum of one year, to use within Spain about 20 Euro cents a minute, calls to the US are going to set you back to over 1 Euro a minute. Text messages in Spain are about 15 cents each and to the US about 60 cents each (euro cents). An option would be to get the cheapo phone and then use calling cards that you can get at any shopping center and big supermarkets to call the US. Works just like in the US, you call a toll free number and then put in the telephone number and calling card number. You can get about 2 hrs of calls to the US for about 5 Euros.
You can use your US phone in Spain as normal, but the roaming charges are outrageous.
Also you should know that in every normal city there are places like interent cafes and ‘locutorios’ that have like private phone booths that you can use to make cheap calls to the US. If you don’t have to be in constant contact with the US, it would be a much better option. You can find these businesses on almost every block in larger cities and they are very cheap to use, it costs about 5-10 cents a minute to call the US. They are very popular among tourists and immigrants. And they are open early in the morn til late at night without closing when other shops do.