ASK Andrew Taylor what was possibly the finest gig he and his band, Dropkick, ever played, and he thinks, straightaway, back to Spain - and a venue that they reached by the skin of their teeth.

“It was the end of a week-long tour of the country and we were really running late for our gig in Madrid,” he says. “We still had to check into our hotel. We arrived in the city on a Saturday night. There was a mass demonstration going on, connected to the refugee issue. The city was shut down. And there were fans spilling onto the streets after an Atletico Madrid match.

“We only made it to the venue about two minutes before we were due to go on stage. I’ve never seen so many people who were delighted to see us. I don’t think we’d given thought to what we were going to play. It was so stressful, but I was possibly the best gig we have ever played.”

The Edinburgh-based group, who have just released their 15th album, Longwave, are, as it happens, one of several Scottish outfits who have been getting attention in Spain. Music fans there have really taken to Dropkick, and Glasgow-based acts Attic Lights and The Wellgreen, who all specialise in strong harmonies and jangly guitars in the splendid tradition of Teenage Fanclub. Such is the enthusiasm for their sound that all three have released records on Spanish labels.

“The Spanish fans’ love of Scottish bands,” Taylor observes, “is amazing”. And the groups are grateful, not least because, despite a loyal UK fanbase and some good reviews, and despite creating some very good music, they don’t receive quite the same degree of adulation in their homeland.

Now, as a tribute to the memorable nights they have had in Spain, the three bands are staging two special nights under the title of Melody Makers, at Glasgow’s Hug and Pint last night, at Edinburgh’s Sneaky Pete’s tonight. The events bear the same name as a mini-festival that Dropkick and Attic Lights took part in last October, in Valencia. They have invited Star Trip, a Spanish group who also played in Valencia, to join them for what will be their first gigs in this country. And a cluster of music fans are making their way from Spain to Scotland just to see the two shows.

Dropkick’s connections with Spain came about more than a decade ago. “We were playing a gig in Ullapool with Attic Lights and there just so happened to be a music promoter there from Majorca,” Taylor recalls. “He came up to us afterwards, spoke to us and got our CDs, but it was about 18 months or two years after that when he put a proposal for us to play in Spain.

“This was at about the height of My Space. For the first time we were able to connect with people all over the world and share our music via a small online player on the home page. That had a huge impact for us. It’s probably looking at it through rose-tinted spectacles but it almost felt as if it happened overnight: our music was being heard by like-minded people we’d never considered before. We had spent our whole time just focusing on our home and all of a sudden there were folk who were listening to us elsewhere.”

Not long after that, a small Madrid-based label, Rock Indiana asked if it could license a Dropkick album for release in Spain. “Since that point, things have gone well for us in Spain,” Taylor says. “I wouldn’t say it’s a big following, but there does seem to be a community across Spain that is pretty well linked up for our kind of music, which likes such bands as Teenage Fanclub and Big Star. They call it power-pop although that’s not a label I recognise in our music.

“They share our music online, too, and they attend loads of gigs, and that makes it really easy for the likes of us to go over there from time to time and enjoy better-attended gigs.

“We have played all over: we’ve had gigs in Bilbao and San Sebastian, in Madrid and Barcelona. Madrid’s been great, but it’s Valencia that seems to us to have a more obvious community, based around a venue called Loco Club, which is a constant hive of musical activity.

“The venues seem to be run by people who are enormous music fans - they’re not promoters in the traditional sense. They put on acts they love, and people really buy into that ethos.” Fans subscribe to venues in what seems to be a loyalty-card system, and in return they get free access to a number of shows.

Dropkick are cheered not only by the fact that Spanish promoters go out of their way to look after Scottish acts, but also by the fact that, after gigs, fans queue up to talk to the musicians and buy merchandise - CDs and T-shirts - all of which help keeps bands going.

It’s a measure of Dropkick’s popularity that their new album has been co-released by Pretty Olivia Records, of Alicante, which has also released records by The Wellgreen and by Stu Kidd (who plays with The Wellgreen and the BMX Bandits). Attic Lights have a deal with the Madrid-based label, Elefant. The Wellgreen’s guitarist, Daniel McGeever, has just released his first solo album with Zaragoza label, You Are The Cosmos - which happens to be a label that Dropkick has also worked with before.

“This is not our career,” says Taylor, “but what is, is the nicest hobby in the world. We can go away for a week and play some gigs in a nice place and do it without losing any money.”

Kev Sherry, lead singer with Attic Lights, who have just finished their next album, remembers the band playing a brief Spanish tour even before they signed to Island Records more than a decade ago. “It was totally bonkers,” he says. “The audiences kept going nuts. After we signed we kept going back over, and we signed with Elefant, who we are still with.

“It’s a very strange thing,” he muses, “that a Glasgow melodic-sunshine sound is such a big thing in Spain, but of course it is something we are happy with.

“They call our sort of indie music ‘friki’, so if you’re into bands like Belle and Sebastian or Teenage Fanclub and all those kind of bands, you’re into ‘friki’. But through it we’ve become great pals with bands in Spain and you meet other Scottish bands over there.

As with Dropkick, the memory of some Spanish gigs is forever scorched into Sherry’s memory. He laughs as he recalls Attic Lights playing the main stage at the Festival Internacional de Benicàssim.

“It was very egalitarian backstage: Primal Scream might be in the dressing-room next to you, and you’d see Dizzee Rascal or bump into Liam Gallagher on his way to the toilet. It was totally bonkers.

“For some reason I decided to wear a suit on stage. The rest of the band were in T-shirts and shorts. We found ourselves in the direct path of the sun as it was going down. Honest to God, I thought I was going to faint about three times during the gig. I had to take massive breaths as I stepped away from the mic.

“As I came off stage, there was an American band waiting to come on, and one of them said, ‘Dude, you wore that on stage, man? You’re freaking crazy!’ I couldn’t even answer, as I was chugging down water.”

“It’s great that the Melody Makers gigs is coming over here,” he adds. “Star Trip will be coming over and it’ll also feature Dropkick and The Wellgreen - bands that we sort of came up with together at the same time.”

•Melody Makers, Sneaky Pete’s, Edinburgh, tonight. Dropkick are playing in-stores at Assai Records, Edinburgh (today, 1pm)