Sustainable Technique to See Barcelona

Final fall, I went on an exhilarating journey to Barcelona. 

If I point out this to associates, they have an inclination to deliver up the water-pistol protests. In July 2024, some Barcelona residents sprayed water at vacationers consuming on Las Ramblas, a storied pedestrian avenue. The folks deploying the pistols have been participating in a bigger protest in opposition to a tourism surge that, in 2023, introduced an estimated 16 million guests to a metropolis with 1.7 million inhabitants. Earlier than I went, I examine packed streets lined with outlets promoting low-cost trinkets and bachelor-party revelers. It didn’t sound like a spot anybody would wish to go to. It additionally didn’t sound very similar to the Barcelona I used to know. 

I first visited town as a school scholar, once I took a summer season job in Madrid, and fell for it to such an extent that, for some time, I jumped at each likelihood I might to return. I went to Barcelona throughout my honeymoon; when my companion’s work required that he journey to Barcelona, I tagged alongside. Craving town’s structure, meals, artwork, and nightlife, I ended up visiting half a dozen instances, however I hadn’t been again in a decade. How a lot might Barcelona have modified in these years? 

I additionally heard the federal government was taking main steps towards making town a extra livable place for residents, together with organising superillas, or superblocks—streets open primarily to pedestrians and cyclists, with pocket parks on the intersections. (My pal Erin Nixon, who till lately ran a wine bar within the El Born district, described the superblocks as “recreation changers.”) Hoping to counteract prohibitive housing prices, town’s mayor has additionally dedicated to utterly phasing out short-term leases, comparable to these discovered on Airbnb, by 2029. 

Tourism provides 14 % of Barcelona’s gross home product. Would possibly there nonetheless be methods for folks to go to town responsibly that each locals and guests would welcome? If that’s the case, what would such a visit appear like?

Once I landed in Barcelona on a brisk October morning, I started listening to tales considerably complicating what I’d been studying about tourism. Crimson Savannah, a U.Okay.-based tour firm, had put me in contact with a Catalan culinary-tour group cofounded by Barcelona native Àlex Cardona. That morning, considered one of its guides, who requested to go by the title Alex P., took me on a short stroll down Las Ramblas. Inside minutes, I might simply see that the boulevard had develop into crowded and kitschy, hectic with distributors peddling souvenirs. The oldest and most well-known market on the road, La Boqueria, appeared extra like a fun-house hallucination of the vacationer’s thought of Barcelona than a residing, integral a part of town. 

Alex P. identified plastic cups crammed with reduce fruit, paper-cone bouquets of jamón and chips, and juice stands—a lot of the foods and drinks offered at La Boqueria is designed for vacationers to eat whereas strolling. Selfie-takers proliferated. The place bore little relation to La Boqueria’s legendary previous as a spot the place residents did their day by day procuring. Whereas it does nonetheless include gems—El Quim, as an example, is beloved for tapas—it was a market, Cardona later advised me, the place he and his father not felt related.

However then we took a brief stroll into the Sant Antoni neighborhood, and I felt as if I’d stepped by way of a magic portal into a unique metropolis. We stopped at one other market, the Mercat de Sant Antoni, its stalls housed in a chic, intricately tiled constructing. Inside was the Barcelona of my recollections, as if I’d moved not simply by way of house but in addition time. It was vibrant, calm, and spacious, the skylights excessive, the loudest noise the slap of contemporary squid on a countertop. A lot of the consumers had the looks of locals going about their day’s enterprise, conversing in Spanish and Catalan. 

We walked previous charcuteries, fishmongers, outlets specializing within the prized tinned meals referred to as conservas, and a stall providing nothing however an impressive number of eggs. Intoxicated by the market’s sights and smells, I used to be glad to cease at Bar Pinotxo, a celebrated tapas spot that, a number of months earlier, had relocated from La Boqueria. We ordered cava and a few dishes the waiter really helpful: garbanzo beans with blood sausage; sautéed mushrooms. They have been scrumptious, with Catalan flavors I can’t fairly discover outdoors the area. 

Simply as we left the market, we walked by way of my first superilla. Folks have been sitting on schoolbus-yellow benches and consuming at tables beneath broad timber that supplied ample shade. Quiet pervaded the house: it felt akin to a small, tranquil park. Alex P. mentioned that the superblocks had at first been controversial, with opposition coming from commuters, taxi drivers, and supply folks. However that they had turned out to be exceedingly standard—so standard, the truth is, that Barcelona plans to put in greater than 500 superblocks by 2030 and make main avenues largely car-free.

From the superilla, we headed to Latorre Punset. This tiny store focuses on meals suited to l’hora del vermut, the Catalan custom of a pre-lunch snack and vermouth. Catalan vermut, which has been making a comeback over the previous decade, has little in widespread with the astringent drink dashed into American martinis; it’s made out of fortified crimson or white wine gloriously seasoned with herbs and spices. Latorre Punset’s home vermut was piquant and complicated, my favourite of the journey. It paired properly with the store’s berberechos, beautiful little cockles that we doused in a spicy crimson sauce by native model Salsa Espinaler and ate with potato chips. 

I’d have ordered extra, however we had one other cease forward: Va de Cuina, movie star chef Jordi Vilà’s specialty-food and takeout store only a block from Mercat de Sant Antoni. As we walked there, I tipped my head upward to revel within the architectural particulars: an astonishingly heterogenous array of finials, scrollwork, turrets, spires, and balconies. Once I regarded down, I noticed an expanse of panots, the ornamental paving tiles designed by Gaudí and others. As I walked the lengthy, tony Passeig de Gràcia, I might determine Gaudí’s tiles by their serpentine curves, spirals, and shell motifs: the impact is as fanciful as something at Parc Güell. With each step, I felt as if I used to be taking in additional of town’s singular grace.

Later, I requested Àlex Cardona what he thought sustainable tourism in Barcelona would possibly appear like. He mentioned that almost all guests spend their time on the metropolis’s best-known points of interest—Las Ramblas; the Barri Gòtic, the middle of the previous metropolis; and Antoni Gaudí’s Parc Güell and Sagrada Família basilica. Whereas Gaudí’s extravagant creations, specifically, are maybe too spectacular to overlook, there may be a lot magnificence and historical past elsewhere on this millennia-old metropolis. 

Cardona means that vacationers attempt to assist native companies as they discover—not chains, however locations the place the house owners really work. Folks also needs to attempt to perceive the variety of the tradition. As lately as final spring, polls confirmed that nearly half the inhabitants of Catalonia would select to be impartial from the remainder of Spain. Catalonia has two official languages, Catalan and Spanish; particularly outdoors of Barcelona, locals could also be extra more likely to converse in Catalan. “There isn’t any such factor as ‘Spanish’ meals,” Cardona went on: areas comparable to Catalonia, Andalusia, and the Basque nation every have their very own distinct cuisines. 

Chef Vilà grew up outdoors Barcelona in El Papiol, a Catalan city surrounded by kitchen gardens, and he conceived of Va de Cuina as a spot to promote his variations of the standard soups, terrines, conservas, and desserts of his childhood. We tasted his grandmother’s recipe for paté, a rooster paste so distinctive that I promptly resolved to make a full meal of his meals. 

Al Kostat, chef Vilà’s extra informal Sant Antoni restaurant, shares an area with Alkimia, which is extra formal and Michelin-starred. (Cardona advised me Al Kostat is the place he goes to have fun his birthday along with his dad and mom.) The restaurant’s inside is placing, with luminous jellyfish decorations and a hallway adorned with what seems to be an enormous, stylized fish skeleton. However as I started consuming, I shortly forgot the décor and was as an alternative captivated by the chef’s impressed takes on conventional Catalan dishes, in addition to innovations of his personal. I nonetheless lengthy for his delicate oysters topped with scrambled eggs, rooster cannelloni, and buttery pumpkin cappuccino.

I saved going again to Sant Antoni all through my journey, however what I valued concerning the place—its relative quiet, virtually ubiquitous magnificence, and excellent outlets and eating places—isn’t distinctive to this one neighborhood. I loved simply strolling round Barcelona. In daytime town’s visible splendors stuffed my sight; come night, I beloved Barcelona’s ebullience, the liveliness of its plazas, the best way I might stroll the streets after midnight and really feel something however alone. And fairly often, I might keep away from extreme vacationer hordes by going ever so barely off town’s best-known paths. 

I spent a part of a day gallery-hopping alongside Carrer del Consell de Cent, a serene superilla adjoining to Passeig de Gràcia. The galleries I visited have been empty apart from the folks working there. Once I needed a break, I had no bother discovering a spot at Al Kostat. It may be tougher to get a reservation at Bar Cañete, an in-demand restaurant a block away from Las Ramblas the place I dined one other night time. However in the event you’re keen to eat dinner when Catalans do—at 10 o’clock or later—you must be capable to get a seat. 

Bar Cañete will get its fish and seafood from Catalan fish markets, and the produce is regionally grown. I received’t simply overlook its open-faced omelette or the gazpacho, which was a number of the silkiest I’ve ever had the pleasure of consuming. A band was enjoying out on the street. After they coated a recognizable music, the diners, a vivacious mixture of locals and foreigners, sang alongside. As a karaoke fanatic, I’m all the time on the lookout for an excuse to sing with different folks; I might think about that, if I lived in Barcelona, I might develop into a Bar Cañete common. 

Positioned on a hill with sweeping views of town, the Fundació Joan Miró is rightly standard. The playfulness in Miró’s artwork appears to grasp the crowds, who develop into excited and animated. However fewer folks know to go to Espai 13, the up to date artwork house within the museum’s basement. Miró conceived of Espai 13 as a spot for brand new generations of artists to indicate their work. I wouldn’t go to the muse with out additionally seeing the most recent basement exhibition. 

Even at Casa Batlló, a Gaudí-designed home the place it’s probably not potential to keep away from crowds, there’s solely a brief wait in the event you get tickets for a 9 p.m. slot, proper earlier than they shut. Casa Batlló is maybe the Gaudí creation I really like most. Once I visited, I had simply printed my second novel, Exhibit, after years of obsessive, at instances all-consuming work. I’d routinely slept three or 4 hours an evening, the novel’s wants typically prevailing over these of my physique. On higher days, I knew it was the privilege of my life to be so preoccupied with something; on others, I had bother recalling why I’d allowed the pursuit of artwork to outline my existence. 

However as I noticed folks laughing with enjoyment of Casa Batlló’s exuberant, fantastical rooms, eagerly calling to their associates to come back have a look at the subsequent surprise, as I marveled at what might be interpreted as a dragon lolling throughout the curving roof, I discovered myself in tears, my half-spent capability for pleasure returning. Right here was the fruit of another person’s obsessions, and this was a part of the why: artwork might deliver such rejoicing. For some time, I had virtually let myself overlook. 

I skilled delight once more whereas consuming at Aürt, a restaurant fixated on getting as a lot as potential from the elements at hand. One ingenious dish featured a tomato that had been dehydrated, then rehydrated in concentrated tomato water—the tomato deepened by extra of itself. Chef Artur Martínez mentioned he adapts to the calendar of native greens. “We cook dinner what we now have,” he mentioned. “We go along with what the suppliers can present.” 

I spoke with a kind of suppliers, fisherwoman Cristina Caparrós, on a pier in La Barceloneta. Within the Nineteen Seventies, she advised Cardona and me, the wharf had 109 boats; 15 years in the past, it had 23 boats; now they’re down to fifteen. She’s afraid of shedding every thing inside 5 years. 

I requested what, if something, vacationers might do to be useful. To start with, go to town, Caparrós mentioned. Regardless of reviews of overtourism, Barcelona nonetheless wants a number of the enterprise.

Cardona then added, “Don’t eat salmon.” It might assist, he mentioned, if folks cared extra about the place merchandise got here from. Wild salmon comes from Norway. Why not eat Catalan-sourced meals if you’re in Catalonia? And there may be an excessive amount of demand in Barcelona for octopus, Caparrós added; to fill it, octopus is being introduced in from Morocco. 

Gergő Borbély, a diver and oenologist, echoed others’ factors about exploring past the plain and going to regionally owned eating places, bars, and suppliers. “Some folks imagine Barcelona doesn’t want vacationers,” he mentioned. “Some folks imagine the earth is flat.” 

We have been out on a sailboat, tasting wine from a bottle encrusted with beige, curling traces: algae that lent the bottle the look of a treasure retrieved from a shipwreck. Borbély and his spouse, marine biologist Mariona Alabau, are the cofounders of ElixSea, which works with Catalan vintners to age wine on the backside of the ocean. With the elevated strain, fixed temperatures, and micro-vibrations of the seafloor, Borbély mentioned, wine can mature 4 to 5 instances sooner than it does on land. The submerged cellars additionally create short-term synthetic reefs that appeal to marine life. Cephalopods, together with octopuses, lay eggs in these synthetic reefs, and ElixSea has labored with a conservation group that helps incubate any eggs that go unhatched. 

Borbély poured generously from ElixSea-aged wines: first a cava, then white wine from the Empordà area, and eventually a crimson Priorat from Catalonia. The sail flapped. We’d gone far sufficient from shore that I might see the spires of the Sagrada Família, the hill on which the Fundació Joan Miró sits, and the palm timber lining the seashore—this metropolis I really like, shining within the final rays of daylight. 

The place to Keep

Almanac Barcelona: An appealingly understated lodge in L’Eixample district, with 91 rooms and suites that evoke a wide range of design eras, from Artwork Deco to the current. The breakfast is superlative.

Cotton Home Resort, Autograph Assortment: Cotton manufacturing was an necessary (and sophisticated) chapter in Catalonia’s historical past. The onetime headquarters of the Cotton Textile Basis, in L’Eixample, was transformed into this luxury lodge in 2015.

Majestic Resort & Spa: Some suites at this historic lodge on Passeig de Gràcia have glass-walled balconies. From the roof-deck pool, you’ll be able to see virtually all of Barcelona.

The place to Eat and Drink

Al Jaima De Abou Khalil: This good-looking restaurant in L’Eixample serves wonderful Lebanese meals.

Al Kostat: The menu at chef Jordi Vilà’s excellent à la carte restaurant mixes conventional Catalan dishes with innovations of his personal.

Aürt: At his Michelin-starred restaurant, Artur Martínez builds a tasting menu round elements sourced from native suppliers.

Bar Cañete: A lauded tapas place in El Raval. Issues warmth up round 10 p.m.

Bar PINOTxO: Established in 1940, this basic tapas counter lately moved to the Mercat de Sant Antoni.

Cal Pep: Open since 1989, this restaurant makes an outstanding tortilla; it has a virtually molten heart of egg and is topped with aioli.

Disfrutar: This Michelin three-star carries on the modernist-cuisine legacy of El Bulli. Be ready for 28 programs served over 4 hours.

El Racó de l’Agüir: Extraordinary dishes steps from the Sant Antoni market. Attempt the signature baked arroz quatretondeta, made with chorizo, ribs, chickpeas, and botifarra sausage.

La Cova Fumada: The family-run tapas bar that created the bomba, a now-classic Catalan dish composed of a deep-fried ball of potato and spicy pork or beef topped with aioli.

Mont Bar: This modern Michelin-starred restaurant can also be refreshingly informal.

Suru: A Catalan-Japanese restaurant that will get its elements contemporary from the sumptuous Mercat del Ninot, simply throughout the road.

Ultramarinos MarÍn: Recent native seafood and meats, sizzling off the grill or from the wood-fired oven. Chef Borja García skilled at Noma and the Basque vacation spot restaurant Asador Etxebarri.

The place to Store

Latorre Punset: A store with a small bar that serves incredible tinned berberechos, or cockles, an exquisite accompaniment to a glass of the home vermut. Try its sister retailer, Conservas Latorre.

Mercat del Ninot: A beloved market in L’Eixample with meals outlets in addition to stalls that promote clothes, jewellery, and books. 

Mercat de Sant Antoni: A 143-year-old meals market the place residents store for the day’s groceries. 

Va de Cuina: Incredible to-go meals from chef Jordi Vilà, together with soups, terrines, conservas, and desserts.

What to Do

Basílica de la Sagrada Família: Visiting this masterpiece by Antoni Gaudí is inevitably chaotic, however seeing it appears like approaching a portal to surprise. For many years it has been the biggest unfinished Catholic church on this planet; whereas the inside is lastly full, work on the outside continues. Get tickets upfront.

Casa Batlló: One among Gaudí’s hottest buildings. If it’s after 6 p.m., you’ll obtain a glass of cava as you stroll by way of the home. 

ElixSea: Take a trip on a sailboat whereas tasting and studying concerning the Catalan wines ElixSea ages within the sea. 

Fundació Joan Miró: The artist Joan Miró created this constructing in collaboration with the architect Josep Lluís Sert. Be sure to cease by Espai 13, a basement house dedicated to the work of latest artists. 

Galeria Mayoral: Positioned on a tree-lined superilla subsequent to different worthwhile galleries, together with Galeria Joan Gaspar and three Punts Galeria.

Museu Nacional d’Artwork de Catalunya: This museum of Catalan artwork has broad views of Barcelona. 

Projecte SD: An outstanding gallery based in 2003, situated subsequent to the galleries Galeria Marc Domènech and Estrany-de la Mota Artwork Advisors. 

How you can Guide

Clare Watkins (impressed@redsavannah.com), the Europe journey specialist at U.Okay.-based tour firm Crimson Savannah, can custom-design a Barcelona itinerary with a give attention to accountable tourism. Different choices embrace an art-focused tour, with stops in Barcelona and Madrid, and a Catalonia food-and-drink itinerary with visits to family-owned wineries and a Wagyu-beef farm.

A model of this story first appeared within the April 2025 subject of Journey + Leisure beneath the headline “A Higher Barcelona.”