Barcelona

Barcelona is the capital of Catalonia, a city of about a million and a half people on the Mediterranean, with a Roman core, a medieval old town, a nineteenth-century grid laid over the lot, and more Modernista architecture than anywhere else on earth.

It is also a city that has spent the past decade learning to manage its visitors, and that is the part no older account can tell. Almost every practical arrangement described below arrived after 2010.

Before booking: what has changed

Barcelona has introduced more visitor regulation than any comparable European city, and some of it affects what can be booked at all.

  • Licensed tourist flats are being abolished. In June 2024 the city announced that the ten thousand or so short-let licences would not be renewed when they expire in November 2028, after which tourist flats cease to exist as a legal category here. They are perfectly legal and bookable in the meantime. The rule has been upheld at constitutional level but is still contested, so anyone booking a flat for a date near the deadline should check it is still licensed.
  • There is a tourist tax, and it rises every year. Two charges stack — a Catalan regional levy that varies by type of accommodation, and a city surcharge on top — both per person per night for the first seven nights. The rates are reset each 1 April and are scheduled to keep climbing until 2029, so any figure quoted anywhere goes stale annually. Under-seventeens are exempt. Expect it to be added at check-out rather than included in the booking.
  • Guided groups in the old city are capped at twenty people, and megaphones and loudspeakers are banned for commentary. There are limits on how many groups may stand in particular squares at once — two at a time in the Plaça de Sant Felip Neri, for instance. In force since March 2023 and extended to 2028.
  • Organised groups of fifteen or more are barred from the Boqueria market on Fridays and Saturdays, April to October.
  • Cruise passengers: the city and the port agreed in July 2025 to cut the terminals from seven to five, and the terminal nearest the city centre closes at the end of 2026. Terminal assignments shift every year to 2030 — check with the line rather than any guidebook.

Getting in from the airport, where there is a trap

The airport is Josep Tarradellas Barcelona–El Prat, about fifteen kilometres south-west.

  • The metro reaches it — but not the centre. Line L9 Sud serves both terminals and runs about every seven minutes, but it terminates at Zona Universitària, so a change is needed for anywhere central.
  • The trap: the airport metro needs either a dedicated Airport Ticket or the Hola Barcelona travel card. The ordinary T-casual multi-journey ticket is not valid on it — arriving on one means buying a separate ticket to get out of the station. For anyone flying in and using public transport, this alone usually settles the choice in favour of Hola Barcelona.
  • The train, Rodalies line R2 Nord, runs from Terminal 2 to Barcelona Sants in about twenty minutes and Passeig de Gràcia in about twenty-six, which is often quicker than the metro. From Terminal 1 it means taking the free inter-terminal shuttle first.
  • The Aerobús coach runs from both terminals to the Plaça de Catalunya.

An expansion of the airport was agreed in June 2025 — a longer sea runway and a new satellite terminal — with the master plan not due for approval until 2028. It is strongly opposed on environmental grounds, because of the lagoons of the Llobregat delta, and was the target of a large march through the city in September 2026.

Getting about

  • The metro is the best in Spain and reaches every sight listed below. Tickets are sold by zone; central Barcelona is zone 1. The network is migrating to a contactless card called T-mobilitat.
  • Walking is practical in the centre in a way it is not in most large cities, and the Eixample is now markedly pleasanter on foot than it was: since November 2022 four streets — Consell de Cent, Girona, Rocafort and Comte Borrell — have been remade as planted, largely traffic-free "green axes" with new squares at their crossings.
  • A car is a liability. A low-emission zone covers more than ninety square kilometres in and around the city, operating Monday to Friday, 07:00 to 20:00. A vehicle without the Spanish environmental label cannot drive in it, and a foreign-plated car must be registered in advance or buy daily permits, of which only ten a year are allowed. The old city is largely pedestrianised regardless.

Language

Both Catalan and Spanish are official, and this trips up visitors who prepared in Spanish. Catalan is the default language of street signs, municipal notices, transport announcements and a good many menus, so the words on the signage will not be the ones in the phrasebook: sortida rather than salida for the exit, carrer rather than calle for a street, obert and tancat rather than abierto and cerrado.

Spanish is understood universally and nobody minds a visitor using it. English is widely spoken in anything tourist-facing. Catalan is the habitual language of about a third of Catalonia and Spanish of about half, with many people using both.

Catalan politics, in brief

Catalonia held an independence referendum on 1 October 2017 which Spain's Constitutional Court had declared illegal, and the prosecutions that followed dominated Spanish politics for years. An amnesty law took effect in June 2024 and has been working its way through the courts since; the position shifted again in October 2026 and may shift further.

None of it affects travel. A visitor will see independence flags on balconies and may coincide with a rally, particularly around 11 September, the Catalan national day, or 1 October.

Anti-tourism protests, fairly stated

There have been demonstrations against mass tourism, and the ones that made the news abroad — in July 2024 and June 2025 — included tourists being sprayed with water pistols. They were announced in advance, lawful and confined to agreed routes in the central district, and the larger 2026 mobilisation was aimed at the airport expansion rather than at individual visitors. The realistic expectation is not of being targeted but of occasionally coinciding with a march in the centre on a summer weekend.

Pickpocketing

Barcelona's reputation is deserved and the method is distraction in a crowd. Recorded crime in the city fell by about a tenth in the first half of 2026 and incidents on public transport are declining, but crowded tourist streets remain where it happens. Bags worn in front, nothing in a back pocket, phone not on the café table.

The sights, and where they are

Gaudí and Modernisme

  • Antoni Gaudí — an overview of his work, with Casa Batlló, Casa Vicens, Palau Güell and the crypt at Colònia Güell.
  • The Sagrada Família — the basilica, and since late 2025 the tallest church in the world. Needs booking.
  • Park Güell — above Gràcia in the north. The monumental zone is ticketed and capped; book it.
  • Casa Milà, La Pedrera, on the Passeig de Gràcia.

The old city

  • The Gothic Quarter — rather less medieval than it looks, which is the interesting part.
  • La Seu — the actual cathedral, as distinct from the basilica.
  • La Rambla — being rebuilt until 2027.

Montjuïc and the waterfront

  • Montjuïc — the hill by the port, with the castle, the gardens and the 1992 Olympic ring.
  • The Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya — the Romanesque collection is among the great museum holdings of Europe. Check its status before 2027.
  • Poble Espanyol — a hundred and seventeen Spanish buildings reproduced for the 1929 exposition.
  • Port Vell — the old harbour, remade for 1992.

The Parc de la Ciutadella

  • The Arc de Triomf — the gateway to the 1888 exposition, and not a military arch at all.
  • Barcelona Zoo — in the middle of a deliberate change of model.

The Catalan parliament also sits in the Parc de la Ciutadella, in the former arsenal, which is worth knowing because older accounts place it on the Plaça de Sant Jaume in the old town. It is not there: that square holds the city hall on one side and the Catalan government's own seat, the Palau de la Generalitat, facing it.

Two things that arrived too late for any older account

  • The Mirador Torre Glòries. Jean Nouvel's bullet-shaped tower, long known as the Torre Agbar, was closed to the public for its entire life until an observation deck opened in 2022, with views from a hundred and twenty-five metres and an installation by Tomás Saraceno.
  • The Parc de les Glòries. What was one of the worst traffic interchanges in the city is now nine hectares of park, finished in April 2025, linking the Eixample to the 22@ district and the sea.

Barcelona also hosted the America's Cup in October 2024, in which the British challenger INEOS Britannia reached the final and lost to New Zealand.

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