Barcelona City Guide

Barcelona Overview

Food, fiesta, fashion and fun.

After a makeover lasting more than two decades, Barcelona has transformed itself into one of the most dynamic and stylish cities in the world. Summer is serious party time, but year-round the city sizzles - it's always on the biting edge of architecture, food, fashion, style, music and good times.

The buildings, especially the work of the eccentric genius Gaudí, will blow you away. The art, with significant collections by Picasso and Miró, will make you clammy all over. The people, with their exuberance, their creative spirit, their persistent egalitarianism, will fascinate you.

Barcelona Photo Gallery

Photographs of Barcelona

Modern art rusts on La Barceloneta beach

Barcelona's version of the Arc de Triomf

Besties de Foc (beast of fire) and Dimonis (demons), Festes de la Merce

Barcelona Fast Facts

Facts about Barcelona

Currency in Barcelona

Notes in Spain

Euro notes come in denominations of 5, 10, 20, 50, 100, 200 and 500. It is often difficult to get change for a 500.00 EUR note.

Coins in Spain

One euro is divided into 100 cents or centimes. Coins of 1, 2 and 5 centimes are copper-coloured; coins of 10, 20 and 50 centimes are gold-coloured; 1 and 2 euro coins are gold-and-silver coloured. It's a good idea to keep a supply of various coins for parking meters, laundrettes, tolls etc.

Preferred Form of Payment in Barcelona

Plastic will save you the most hassles. ATMs are abundant and accessible if you need cash, but so are the places that take major credit cards. Two or more cards are handy and a few travellers cheques as a backup are also not a bad idea.

Changing Your Money in Barcelona

Travellers cheques can be cashed at banks and exchange offices, and usually attract a slightly higher exchange rate than cash. These days, even small towns have a cajero automático (ATM) where you can withdraw euros from credit and debit accounts at what is usually the best rate for non-euro zone visitors.

Using a Telephone in Barcelona

Barcelona's ubiquitous blue payphones are easy to use for international and domestic calls. They accept coins, phonecards (tarjetas telefónicas) issued by the national phone company Telefónica and, in some cases, various credit cards. Tarjetas telefónicas are sold at post offices and tobacconists.

Public phones inside bars and cafes, and phones in hotel rooms, are nearly always a good deal more expensive than street pay phones.

Using a Mobile Phone in Barcelona

You can buy SIM cards and prepaid call time in Spain for your own national mobile phone (provided what you own is a GSM, dual- or tri-band cellular phone). This only works if your national phone hasn't been code blocked, something you might want to check before leaving home. If you buy a SIM card and find your phone is blocked, you won't be able to take the card back. You won't want to consider a full contract unless you plan to live in Spain for a good while, and even then the benefits are not always tangible. You need your passport to open any kind of mobile phone account, prepaid or otherwise. All Spanish mobile phone companies (Telefónica's MoviStar and Moviline, Vodafone and Amena) offer prepaid (prepago) accounts for GSM phones (frequency 900mHz). The SIM card can cost between 25.00 EUR and 60.00 EUR, which includes some prepaid call time. Phone outlets are scattered across the city. You can then purchase more time in their shops or by buying cards in outlets such as tobacconists and newsstands.

US mobile phones generally work on a frequency of 1900mHz, so for use in Spain, your US handset will have to be tri-band.

You can organise mobile phone rental by calling the Madrid-based Cellphone Rental (tel: 91 523 21 59; 656 266844; www.onspanishtime.com/web). The phone is delivered to your hotel by overnight courier at a cost of 40.00 USD (including the cost of return by courier at the end of the rental period). The basic phone rental costs 35.00 USD a week (or 6.00 USD a day) plus whatever your usage comes to. You also pay a 150.00 USD deposit to discourage scarpering with the phone. The whole operation is done over the internet.

Doing Business in Barcelona

Barcelona Airport's Terminal B has a dedicated meeting room which can be hired (tel: 93 298 38 15) and most major and luxury hotels have on-site business centres.

The main business district in Barcelona is along the western end of the Avinguda Diagonal. The big banks cluster here, along with several major business-oriented hotels. The most spectacular changes are happening further northeast again, on the coastal corner of the city around the Riu Besòs, long abandoned and now a sea of tower blocks and skyscrapers built for and around the site of the Fòrum Universal de les Cultures 2004 (Fòrum 2004). The international talk and entertainment fest that dominated Barcelona's summer in 2004 came and went, but what remained was a whole new barri, dominated by Europe's largest convention centre, some intriguing architecture, a new marina, and a spread of high-rise luxury apartments and shopping centres. Some fear that what is known as Diagonal Mar will prove a disastrously expensive flop; others believe it a triumph of urban renewal. The hi-tech bet is in the once-depressed industrial area of El Poblenou, where the town council has carved out an area known as 22@bcn. It hopes a modern business district, led by international cutting-edge enterprises, will emerge here.

Media in Barcelona

Spanish newspapers can be identified along roughly political lines. In Barcelona, there are publications in both Catalan and Castilian. Most major European newpapers and magazines are freely available. Rádio Nacional de España has several stations; there are also Catalan stations and BBC World Service. TVE2 is a state-run TV channel specialising in news and arts programmes. The other state-run channel TVE1 and the commercial channels feature the usual mainstream fodder plus some late-night sauce.

Periodicals in Barcelona

Radio Stations in Barcelona

Books in Barcelona

Factoids

Gaudí's Big One

One church by the famed Barcelona architect Gaudí is still being built: the tall, strange, nouveau-gothic La Sagrada Família. Construction started in 1882, continues slowly, and is expected to be finished around 2020.