Even walking from Plaza Catalunya to the apartment in the center was a kind of ordeal. Cafes, boutiques, galleries beckon us, we are lured by chairs in front of restaurants, benches from which we would watch the hustle and bustle. Barcelona is a hive of joy.
The city is home to over 1,6 million people. With 16 inhabitants per square kilometer, it is the most densely populated city in Europe after Paris. The metropolitan region includes over 000 million people. And with all that come millions of tourists. We almost wondered if they all went out on La Rambla today. Actions look powerful. On the list of cities that offer a luxurious life, Barcelona ranks first in Europe in terms of price and quality.
RIVER BEDS
We stayed close to the main pedestrian street that leads to the Old Port. It is rare to see so many people in one place, on the move. It's as if they make a torrent rolling towards the sea. La Rambla is the name of the riverbed that dries up for a good part of the year.
Walking along this Barcelona artery, we don't know where to look. Everything attracts attention, everything is interesting.
Since it's time for lunch, we stop at the most famous city market, Bokerija. Small restaurants everywhere. Behind the barstools of the market restaurant, actually large square counters, we find a whole busload of Japanese people chewing. There will be no room. We randomly enter a charming restaurant that also has an upstairs section. We have a superb paella for lunch with a view of the market.
Those who want to get by cheaper should drink wine. Half a liter of wine and half a liter of beer cost the same - five to six euros. And the local house wines are almost regularly really good. Markets are the soul of Mediterranean cities. Bokeria reminds me of the markets of Palermo, Thessaloniki, Izmir. A life that boils and bubbles in a constant game of selling and buying, taking and giving, seducing and wanting to be seduced by smells, colors, tastes. Murmur and music. Calling out. From the market, we go south, towards the port. We have a scheduled cruise on a tourist boat.
The column of Columbus at the end of the street is a sign that we are almost there. By the way, Columbus is pointing west with his hand. And that means his index finger is pointed right next to Majorca, towards Algeria.
Back in Cologne, I bought tickets for a boat tour of Barcelona's coast. Among the many offers, I chose the one that promised good jazz. In the Old Port, which has actually been remodeled into a nice place where you can go to the new shopping center or just for a walk, we wait for the boat to drop off the previous round of passengers.
SHIP JAZZ
Barcelona's tourism industry, with ten million visitors a year, is quite developed. No one fell into the sea when getting off the ship. Not even when climbing into it.
The one-hour cruise, passing by port facilities, cruise ships, sailing along the Barcelonete beach, was accompanied by really superb music.
It is possible that this Barcelona sunset accompanied by saxophone syncopation will be one of the scenes that will mean much more to us in our memories than now, when we are simply enjoying sailing.
The most striking scene for photography was provided by an unusual building with a glass facade. People call it "Hotel Jedro" because of its shape. The official name is "Hotel W". Five stars for almost 500 rooms, a rooftop bar, a restaurant on the beach, plus another restaurant with an internationally renowned chef.
They say that the construction of this building violated Spanish laws because the foundations are 20 meters from the shore, and the law stipulates a distance of at least 100 meters. And here, apparently, the law is interpreted in a creative way when the big money is in the bag. This outline will remind world travelers of the Burj Al Arab in the United Arab Emirates, but that doesn't matter tonight.
The alternating soloing of the saxophonist and the guitarist intertwines with the cool breeze from the open sea, the outlines of the hills below which Barcelona glitters and the glass sail that catches the last rays of the sun.
As our ship glides into the Barcelona twilight, the hotel shines like the sail of that ninth ship that sought Heracles.
IN OVERTIME
The next morning we leave for the north of the city. Catalonia Square marks the beginning of the city quarter which, when they planned it, was simply called Eixample - Extension. A geometrically perfectly planned part of the city, like a chessboard. But with enough greenery. At the intersections, buildings from the first floor on all four street corners have been cut down to leave room for a small square. And on every corner there are cafes or shops.
In one such street, we sat down in a cafe.
The coffee was excellent. And there the combination of colors, the play of the cup and the surface of the table, was recognizable. Spain, and especially Barcelona, has top-notch applied arts.
What the Champs-Élysées are to Paris, the Passeig de Gracia is to Barcelona. It is often noted that it is the most expensive street in Spain. Of course, the representative entrances to the stores leave no doubt that global companies are determined to get the soul out of the wallets of shopaholics.
You should definitely come here for the houses designed by Gaudi, but also for the unique metropolitan atmosphere.
Hans Christian Andersen stayed in the city in 1862 and left a record that Barcelona is the "Paris of Spain". Over 160 years have passed since then. It seems to me that time works for Barcelona in this comparison.
The street lamps and benches were designed by the famous Catalan architect Pere Falkes i Urpi. A kilometer and a half of this boulevard bears witness to the glorious days of the Barcelona bourgeoisie at the transition from the pre-last to the last century.
GOTHIC QUARTER
We dive even deeper into the past when we come across the Gothic Quarter. It is the oldest part of the city. Barcelona has a whole series of beautiful sacred buildings. Among them, the most historically significant is the Cathedral dedicated to Saint Eulalia. The saint died in Barcelona as a martyr during the Roman persecution of Christians. The cathedral has been her home since the 14th century. The torments to which she was exposed have been recorded. They thought that after torture he was executed by laying him on hot coals. But the sky sent snow.
The snowfall itself is a miracle in Barcelona. I imagine the powerful staring in disbelief at the snowflakes falling from the clear sky to their eyes. Just in this place where tourists are buzzing like flies in a jar.
The cathedral was built as the third church in the same place, on an elevation of twenty meters. It is a gentle mountain slope that descends from the continent towards the coast.
The Iberian settlement of Barkeno was founded two millennia ago by the Lajetani. The Carthaginians first conquered this coast, after their defeat the Romans arrived. Legend has it that the founder of the city was Hannibal's father, Hamilcar Barca.
MYTHIC BARCELONA
The mythological version of the story of the founding of the city claims that the ancient Greek demigod Heracles was looking for a lost ship and found it in such a beautiful place that he founded a settlement there. He named it Barka Nona - The Ninth Ship. Of course, in those days the demigods spoke Greek, not the vulgar Latin that only came with the Roman conquerors. But the myth doesn't mind explaining the name of the city. The Romans called the city Barcino. At first it was a settlement of rich veterans. Then it grows and becomes fixed.
The first Christian communities appeared three hundred years after Christ. The rule of the Visigoths followed, then the one-century Moorish rule. Charlemagne conquered the city in 801 and annexed it to his empire. Centuries of increasingly powerful Counties of Barcelona, Kingdom of Aragon and finally subjugation to the Spanish crown followed.
Near the Cathedral, we enter the courtyard of the Frederik Mares Museum dedicated to the important Catalan sculptor of the last century. I like the courtyard of the museum complex so much that I could sit there and listen to the silence in which the stone and greenery whisper. I later find out that the courtyard where I was sitting is actually part of the palace complex of the kings of Aragon. That somewhat explains that royal feeling.
Barcelona chose the wrong, Habsburg side in the war for the Spanish crown, so the winner Philip V abolished all forms of self-government - traces of the once proud Kingdom of Aragon.
Barcelona sometimes protested. Uprisings like 1842 were not successful - the Spanish garrison on the hill bombarded the town, killed 100 people, the rebels surrendered.
Nevertheless, in the 19th century, the city turned into the most powerful Spanish industrial center, with an unimaginably rich bourgeoisie. One of the symbols of new wealth is the square, which we walked several times during our stay in Barcelona. Its construction and arrangement began only six years after the bloodily suppressed uprising, and were completed in 1859.
Architect Frances Danijel Molina i Kasamaso made his mark on the face of the city with one of the most beautiful squares in Europe - the Royal Square. Neoclassical peace, Gaudi's street lamps and palm trees work like wine. Spatial harmony passes to the observer.
Of course, with the rise of industry, poor working people settled in Barcelona. Among them, Spanish anarchism found a large number of supporters. This tradition will have a great influence in the Spanish Civil War.
Franco's dictatorship did not stop economic development, but it stifled Catalan identity. Autonomy was restored in democratic Spain. Barcelona finally confirmed its status as a world metropolis with the Olympic Games in 1992. Later, terrorism did not bypass the city either. Basque and Islamist extremists killed innocent people in bombings.
CORDOBA IN BARSA
We couldn't resist. When we are already in Spain, and not in our beloved Andalusia, then we invited her to us, to Barcelona. One of the most famous artistic flamenco troupes The Tablao Cordobes has been delighting audiences in the Catalan capital for half a century. Dramatic gestures, excellent guitarists, authentic ambience and thick, racial red wine. So Barcelona gave us the best part of Andalusia that evening.
By the way, in the city there is music at every turn. Every morning we walked near the Sagrada Familia. It was noon, the bar's gardens were full. But sometimes luck decides where you spend the next few hours.
In Majorka Street, a couple gets up and vacates a table for us. The bar is called Miss Simona and is obviously Italian-oriented. The white wine and tapas we ordered are among the best Barcelona has to offer. We also had a reason to celebrate - my companion's birthday.
Almost miraculously, a young man with an accordion appeared in front of the bar and started playing "O bela cão".
Chance sometimes works better than travel agencies. We decided to walk after magic hours at Miss Simone's. These days we used the metro, which normally works well, only when we couldn't go any further. The center of Barcelona is huge. Distances on the map, seemingly innocuous, can turn into tiring hikes.
But we have no regrets. The city reveals its secrets on the move much better than in a quick public transport ride from one sight to another.
I read somewhere that Barcelona was chosen as the world capital of architecture in 2026. After spending a few days in the city, I'm surprised it didn't happen earlier.
You enter the boulevards that are not the target of tourists, and then from an unexpected perspective you see one of the buildings by which this city is recognized around the world.
The "Tower of Fame" was originally called the "Agbar Tower" - which is an abbreviation for Water Supply of Barcelona. That is why the French architect Jean Nouvel tried to give the facade the transparency of water. He incorporated the ideas of the famous Catalan predecessor Gaudí into his plans, and out of respect for the Sagrada Familia, his skyscraper was planned so that it would not be bigger than this church.
Barcelona has a tradition of large public buildings. It is difficult to count all the significant buildings that were built by order of the authorities. In 1888, the World Exhibition was organized in Barcelona. At that time, the architect Đosep Vilaseka i Kasanovas was forty years old. He was also known in the city for his drawings and watercolors.
His Triumphal Arch marked a turning point in the generation's non-architectural philosophy. Brick instead of other fashionable materials and the so-called "Mudejar style" inspired by Spain's oriental heritage confidently promoted the new Spanish construction language.
We continue our random walk through the streets of the old town. Sometimes we stop to rest. The sun is already slowly touching the roofs. Let's decide to go to the port one more time. In the evening, our souls crave the sea.
We arrive at the street that separates the Old Port from Barceloneta. In 1992, a world-renowned artist placed a border stone - his sculpture "Head of Barcelona" - on that border, as it should be. The flat sculpture is about fifteen meters high, and the plinth adds five more to its height. Roy Lichtenstein, the American Popart guru, created this work five years before his death. In a way, his comic style captured the essence of the playful and feminine city.
In his formal language, the American remained faithful to the comics, but enriched it with the recognizable lines of Miro. In addition, he paid tribute to the most famous representative of Catalan modernism, Gaudí, by using broken ceramic and marble tiles, which the Catalans call "trencadis" - which means breaking in Catalan - for the mosaic structures. With this, the New York artist really got closer to the spirit of Barcelona.
It's hard to leave this city. On the last night, the pain of parting simmers in us. It's as if a random love adventure is coming to an end, from which not much was expected, and which gave the soul more passion than all the more famous beauties could.
Tonight, we will drown the melancholy of separation from the city that has crept under our skin in a drink in a bar near our lodging.
We deliberately did not let the memories run wild. An Irish pub is not a place to mourn anyway. Beer and ribs turn the mood in a solid direction. And the prices are good, even the Barcelona Irish are better than in other cities.
Now there is no point in listing the fact that we didn't get to visit, so that we take that bracelet home as a package of unfulfilled longing. It only makes sense to visit Barcelona once more.
Bonus video:
