Barcelona Travel Guide

Not since the 14th century, when the Catalan capital was the most powerful city in the Mediterranean, has Barcelona's future looked so promising. The catalysts for change have been many. The first -- political -- was in 1975, when General Francisco Franco, who had systematically and often brutally tried to eradicate the treasured Catalan language and culture, died. The city in turn started to live and breathe again independently. Today Barcelona is a proud, bilingual metropolis with street signs, newspapers, and television programs in both Catalan and Spanish. In 2006, a progressive statute granted an even greater degree of self-rule to the whole region.

The second -- more cosmetic -- catalyst came just before the 1992 Olympic Games, when feverish renovation work changed the city's image from that of a drab, gray burg to a new gleaming metropolis. The Barri Gòtic, many of whose central medieval buildings had for countless decades been coated with grime, could at last be seen in all its pristine glory, with newly sandblasted facades quietly glowing in the light of the quarter's atmospheric narrow alleys. The waterfront, once lined with large oily containers and sad-looking palm trees, was transformed into an open, sunlit area of promenades, marinas, and modern restaurants stretching several kilometers from beachside Barceloneta via the Vila Olímpica and the 2004 Forum site to Sant Adrià de Besòs

Suddenly Barcelona has become the weekender capital of Europe. Visitors jet in on low-cost flights for the fun lifestyle, superb Mediterranean climate, and an unrivalled location that offers easy access to the delectable coves of the Costa Brava, scenic mountain trails of the Pyrénées, historic cities of Gerona and Tarragona, and wealth of Gothic and Romanesque monuments that fill the countryside.

They also come to see Barcelona's many offerings in the world of art, architecture, and haute cuisine: the Picassos, Dalís, Tàpies, and Mirós; the moderniste extravaganzas of Gaudí and modern eccentricities of Gehry and Nouvel; and Ferran Adrià's "New Catalan Cuisine," lauded even by the French and spearheading a culinary revival that's resulted in half a dozen Michelin rated restaurants to date.

Yet for all its outward changes the city remains at heart what it's always been: practical, businesslike, proletarian, nonconformist, rebellious, artistic, and unabashedly hedonistic. It's a heady, complex blend that has survived many a dark time and whose freewheeling Mediterranean spirit is epitomized in the bustling Rambla avenue, which runs all the way down to the port from Plaza Cataluña along the source of a former riverbed. All this makes for a spirit as communal and sociable as the city's traditional Sardana dance, in which no one leads and no one follows and everyone moves together in unison.