Anything is portable if you have enough porters :-)(posted 8381 days ago)The last time I was in Madrid I came across a fashion shoot at midday outside the Opera House. Two of their seven assistants were controlling the massive stand for the fifteen foot square diffuser they had suspended over the model's head.
Some ideas for replicating this on the cheap:
1) get one of those collapsing light panels with a semi-rigid frame. At a pinch, you could hold it yourself and trip the shutter release remotely.
2) Spanish cafes and restaurants almost invariably have their outside seating shaded by large umbrellas or awnings. Borrow one, or buy your model an iced water and find a table at the edge where you can shoot outwards towards the view.
3) A lot of the old towns in Spain have a maze of narrow, twisty passages, which are photogenic, but which never have much in the way of direct sun anyway.
4) Go to Galicia, or the Picos de Europa, or the Pyrenees, where overcast skies are more common. Gibraltar also has a useful cloud that covers the whole town when the wind blows from the East. The Guggenheim have also kindly erected a set of huge reflectors in Bilbao.