A year later, there still seems to be many Sercotel hotels in Europe listed on the Choice website that aren't actually participating in the program. It makes you wonder just how incompetent the people running this company are.

The good news is that high quality independent hotels in Spain -- especially outside the big cities -- often offer tremendous value. You can find a lot of them on booking.com. You don't really need to use your Choice points in Spain. The exception, perhaps, is the big cities, where some point redemptions could make sense. I've redeemed some IHG points in the cities. I'm skeptical I'll ever be able to redeem Choice points there.