re your footnote 1: yes you can. 我想去西班牙踢球和冲浪。 我想去西班牙度假和葡萄牙买酒. 和 is one of the most universal conjunctions (and prepositions?) with no syntactical restrictions -- much like the English "and". As for the characterization of 和 as preposition, I don't see it. That may be juxtaposing English linguistic structure onto Chinese?

@Argyll 和 can't be used to link verbs. The fact that it can be easily understood doesn't mean it's correct. As a conjunction it's typically a noun conjunction. An easy counter-example, taken from the internet: 你要按照我说的做并且要做好 in here 和 clearly doesn't work. Verb or clause juxtaposition is rendered with 并、且、以及、及 etc. As for the "together with", I removed the quotes. I'm not suggesting the translation is always "together with".

An alternative way of seeing why 和 does not replace 并且 in 你要按照我说的做并且要做好 is that 并且 is a preposition that link sentences in the same class as "as well + comma", "in addition + comma" while 和 is not. Rather, whether two actions are involved, 和 never replaces 并且.

@Argyll English "every day I go to class by bike and do my homework at home" (clause juxtaposition) -> in Chinese "我每天骑自行车去上课并在家里做作业"。"and" is perfectly fine in English, just as 并 in Chinese, whereas 和 would not be correct

Clause juxtaposition is different from connecting verbs. Connecting verbs can be coincidental due to connecting phrases. The point is indeed 并且 is used for clause juxtaposition -- though it may be less productive to consider English style clauses in Chinese. That's why you see a distinction between 并且 and 和. There is a distinction. At the same time, 和 is seen connecting verbs because it is used to connect phrases.

btw, in both 西班牙和葡萄牙，我都去过 and 登机前请您准备好护照和登机牌, 跟 can be used. 跟老师请教问题 is probably more common than 和老师请教问题. They are said often, though both make no sense.

@Argyll 我【和/跟 】老师请教 is an example from Zdic, it means "I consult with the teacher". Not sure why it seems strange to you... I agree that 和 can be used to coordinate a list of verbal phrases as in your example above 踢球和冲浪, that's not the same as claiming that it connect verbs.

It's strange because in actuality, there is directionality required in the semantic. 我向老师请教问题 would correctly contain that meaning, except 向 would not be colloquial. If this is the only example where 跟 is used, it doesn't really make 和/跟 contain directionality. It just makes the usage unique and colloquial. (Though 跟 due to meaning "follow" contains direction. "follow" and "towards" are probably different.)

Independent from connecting phrases, 和 does also connect verbs. Earlier I put emphasis on coincidence only because for a moment I hesitated if one can legitimately consider verbs as never repeated in a single verb phrase. And that's ofc not the case. Please Google, for example, "行军和歌唱" (with ""). Repeated verbs in a single sentence (without clause/verb conjugate into noun) is rare in Chinese. Doesn't mean 和 is not used in those rare instances.

@Argyll I know that it's possible to find examples that support your theory. We would need to go deep in linguistics to show why 和 can be used in those cases without contradicting my claim. However for the purposes of this discussion, I simply wanted to challenge this remark of yours "和 is one of the most universal conjunctions (and prepositions?) with no syntactical restrictions", which is of course not true.

I welcome the challenge. It is however as universal as conjunctions get. You specifically proposed that 和 cannot connect verbs. That is not true. You are only observing that because connected verbs themselves are rare in Chinese.

@Argyll ah I managed to move the discussion to chat. I won't insist any further on the fine details of this point. I feel we both said what we had to say. Thanks for the interesting conversation

I understand your point, and I'll concede to you that you are right, on some aspects

Well-thought contributions like yours are certainly a welcome addition to Chinese.SE

Thank you for welcoming onto the SE. Discussions like this will certainly keep me hooked on the SE in the future. And thank you for sharing your insights in these examples!

Just to clarify my background, I'm a decade-long language learner, not a native speaker, so my questions and answers are usually based on this perspective

And English is not my native language either by the way