Places/Spain

Catalonia

Barcelona

A sea city with its own language, and a modernisme trail that can eat you if you let it.

Barcelona is Catalan before it is a Spanish beach city. You will manage in Spanish and often in English. You will understand the place better if you notice which language the street is using.

Gaudí is a reason to come and a bad way to spend every hour. One building, booked, then the grid of the Eixample and a neighbourhood that is not trying to be a façade.

See

• The Sagrada Família, timed

  Book it or do not go. The exterior from a nearby street is honest if the tickets are gone. The interior is the thing people mean.

• The Eixample on foot

  A few blocks of the grid, a courtyard if one is open, a coffee. This is the city’s real invention, not only the strange church at the end of it.

• Gràcia

  Squares, plazas that are actually local, and dinner that does not face a landmark. Come up in the late afternoon.

• The sea, briefly

  Barceloneta is a port neighbourhood that became a beach. Walk it, swim if the season allows, and eat back in the city grid.