Preparing to create a Cloud Spanner instance in a new project: what should you do first?

Before you can create any Cloud Spanner resources in a Google Cloud project, you must first enable the Cloud Spanner API. This is a fundamental step for most Google Cloud services; the API provides the programmatic interface for interacting with the service. Configuring the instance to be multi-regional is a design choice made during instance creation, not a prerequisite. Creating a new VPC network is generally not required for Cloud Spanner, as it's a managed service accessible over the public internet by default, and private access can be configured later. Granting yourself the Cloud Spanner Admin IAM role is about permissions, which are important, but the API must be enabled before any actions, including permission-dependent ones, can be performed.