Barcelona is surreal enough by day. Almost every main road, and not a few side streets, sports
But the Gothic surrealism of Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia cathedral—a soaring Expressionist structure that seems to have been clawed out of concrete and stone—is matched only by the night-time surrealism of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. Where the rest of the city is still recovering from the spanking suburban newness imposed during the 1992 Olympics, the Gothic Quarter cheerfully chugs on with its warren of sinuous, cobbled streets and imposing old buildings. At noon, the sleepy, alarmingly narrow alleys don’t look broad enough to even accommodate four people side by side. At midnight, all such laws of spatial physics are suspended, and the Gothic Quarter teems with thousands of partygoers doing what they do best.
Almost as if mandated by some obscure legislation of the European Union, there are very distinct stages to the process of enjoying a night out in Barcelona. The evening must always, always begin at a café. A few creamy café con leches should go leisurely down the hatch, somebody should timidly suggest dinner, and somebody else should contemptuously scoff at the very idea. Nobody in Barcelona has a traditional dinner before a night on the town, not when the Gothic Quarter is littered with tapas bars frying, boiling, grilling, sautéing, dipping and drizzling with extra-virgin olive oil practically everything known to man.
Once upon a time in Spain, bartenders used to cover drinks with a saucer, or tapa, to keep the flies away, and a custom evolved of placing some olives or nuts on the tapa to whet the appetite. Another myth has it that King Alfonso the Wise of Spain, presumably inclined to eat for his entire kingdom at a single sitting, was advised by his doctor to eat small, light meals many times during the day, all washed down with a glass of wine or sherry.
Gradually the tapas became popular in their own right and correspondingly more elaborate—salty strips of the local jamon iberico (cured ham); crunchy little fried fish, tangy with drops of lemon juice and butter; thick triangles of rich, nutty ewe’s-milk Manchego cheese; tiny clams cooked with wine, garlic and parsley; steamed mussels; pickled olives; quick-fried potatoes in garlic and olive oil, and more. Basque tapas are primarily sauce-based and often served on toasted bread; Andalusian tapas tend to consist more of fresh seafood, rapidly fried in hot oil.
Barcelones, like all Spaniards, take their food seriously, and even shopping for food is an activity that is conducted with all the solemnity of a bar mitzvah. One little pocket of the Gothic Quarter is a sprawling, tented food market, where the gloom between the stalls is dispelled with fluorescent tube lights and a happy cacophony of sales banter and bargaining.
Food-wise, there is nothing you cannot buy here. There is seafood of every species, fresh from the Catalan coast and displayed proudly in beds of ice. There are haunches of meat hanging from hooks in the ceiling, waiting to be sliced up and packaged in wax paper. There are salamis and sausages, thigh-high jars of olives fatly floating in brine, eggs as big as a fist, thuggishly huge blocks of cheeses, neatly stowed bottles of wine and olive oil, crates and crates of vegetables, racks of spices, and breads with smells so divine that they ought to be captured in perfume vials. If this is what Barcelona’s restaurants work with, it is no wonder the food is groan-aloud-in-ecstasy, loosen-your-belt-several-notches, mortgage-your-house-to-eat delicious.
Every bar and restaurant worth its sea-salt in Barcelona has a lengthy blackboard menu outside, displaying a chalk-scrawled list of the tapas on offer. It makes it so much easier to engage in tapas-hopping—drifting in and out of bars at whim, pecking at house specialities or personal favourites before hearing the seductive call of the sautéed shrimp next door and moving on. This is the Grazing Approach, the only practical way to make sure that when, years later, you think back to Barcelona, you cannot look past the plates and plates of food that will cluster around the forefront of your memory.
The artery running through the Gothic Quarter is Las Ramblas, a mile-long boulevard that stretches from the port to the super-busy Plaza Catalunya, home to shops, boutiques, cafés, theatres and that absolute pinnacle of culture, an erotic museum. Las Ramblas is more active at night than during the day, and pavement artists, flower-vendors, bird-sellers, street-performers and pickpockets peddle their unique skills into the small hours of the morning. Running off this bustling thoroughfare on either side are the capillaries into the heart of the Gothic Quarter, where restaurants, pubs, bars, discos and clubs practically elbow each other in the ribs for space.
Proper club-hopping kicks into gear only after 10.30pm, and for tourists, it is perhaps a good idea to hitch themselves to a package-tour pub crawl. Ours, pithily named Travel Bar, assembled a group of 10, sat us at tables in their own courtyard, set down as centrepieces huge pitchers of sangria—a divine chilled concoction of wine, fruits and brandy—and left us to get acquainted. It’s a neat concept; not only are you steered through the area’s best bars and clubs by the locals who know it best, but you meet potential companions for your Barcelona sojourn and, as the couple that had begun necking midway through the third club could testify, perhaps even more.
In the Gothic Quarter, there is a bar for everybody. There are smoky little bodegas with no music and beefy men sitting grumpily over their drinks on rough-hewn wooden benches. There are sophisticated jazz clubs, raucous bars with incomprehensible Spanish hits blaring from the speakers, cellars for heavy metal enthusiasts, blues-only bars, Euro-techno dance clubs, cheerful pubs with intermittent Christina Aguilera, and bars with varying qualities of live music. In one bar, a Willie Nelson lookalike sat in a corner with a weather-beaten guitar, looked around forlornly until somebody threw him the name of a tune, played it to perfection, and then restarted the cycle by looking around forlornly again.
Many of these bars close between 2 and 3am, and it is only the discotheques that are allowed to stay open later. But that is evidently ample time to work through a routine that starts sedately with glasses of house wine, progresses through cocktails and beer, detours sporadically into Long Island iced teas, and ends with tequila shots and salt-smeared lips. After 3am, long lines form outside the discos, and people twist and convulse under throbbing strobe lights until just before dawn.
Invariably, pub-crawling is the singular occupation of the young tourist to Barcelona, and it is not surprising that the locals already have their favourite seats in their favourite bars marked out. When yet another gaggle of Americans on Spring Break storms through the door to knock back five drinks in half an hour, Barcelones smile warmly but wisely, turn back to their conversation, and continue nursing their cider or red wine.
Barcelones can also let you into another little-known secret. At daybreak, when the bleary-eyed multitudes stumble out of the clubs, bakeries slip their surplus products into ovens, ready to sell to vodka-fuzzy tongues. If you know where to look—which often involves knowing which rolled-down shutter to bang on—you can buy warm, sugary rolls and then, if your legs allow it, walk down Las Ramblas to the awakening port. The mint-fresh morning sea air can be just the thing to clear the head and ensure that memories of Barcelona’s nightlife are less about raging hangovers and sleep deprivation, and more about good music, superlative food and drink, fun crowds, and an atmosphere of merriment so viscous you could slice it up and sell it for profit. Surrealism never had it so good.
The information
The tapas culture: Arguably the best town for tapas in Spain is glitzy San Sebastian, where tapas preparation is almost considered a fine art. But Barcelona surely boasts just as much variety and creativity, and the Gothic Quarter’s restaurants are ample testimony to that. The best tapas bars—or tascas—are the ones where you sit at the counter, order a drink, and jab a finger in the direction of what you want. The older bars still operate by this grazing principle, allowing diners to taste multiple dishes and keep their palate hopping. If you like a dish, order a racion—a full plate—of it. Tapas are usually had with wine, beer or sherry, and not cocktails with their own interfering bouquets of flavours.
Getting around: Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter is home to a number of hotels, cafés, restaurants, bars and pubs, all squeezed into a small area. So walking is the best way to navigate, especially through the wide, tree-lined pedestrian avenue known as Las Ramblas. Keep one eye on your valuables, though. Outside the Gothic Quarter, Barcelona is well served by taxis and buses, as well as a good Metro. On weekends, the Metro operates until 2am; other days, the last train leaves at midnight. Taxis are inexpensive but in the crowded city centre, often unviable.
Where to find it:
—Euskal Etxea, 1-3 Montcada. Located near the Picasso museum, this is a stylish, expensive tapas bar. Their speciality is pinchos, a Basque version of tapas, with hams, cheeses and other meat and seafood on a slice of bread, all held together on a cocktail stick.
—Txakolin, Carrer Marques de l’Argentera 19, opp. Estacio de Franca. Named after a fizzy, dry Basque wine, Txakolin replenishes plates even before you ask. Specialities include ham topped with a red pepper stuffed with mushroom and cod, all impossibly balanced on a small piece of bread. The bill is determined, as in many other bars, by the number of cocktail sticks left on your plate.
—Café de L’Opera, Las Ramblas 74. Forget the classically English décor. Café de L’Opera serves some great cocktails to go with the tapas, not to mention a doozy of a carajillo—a liqueur-coffee infusion—to wind down a long night.
—L’Ovella Negra, Carrer Sitges 5 (adjacent to Las Ramblas). One of the area’s more inexpensive places, L’Ovella Negra (literally, ‘The Black Sheep’) has the interiors of an old-world tavern and prices to match. Hit this bar early in the evening and stock up with pitchers of sangria and wonderfully zesty jamon iberico.
—El Xampanyet, Carrer Montcada 22. A classic Spanish bodega, this is a leisurely and very authentically local tavern. Visit for the cava, the distinctive Spanish sparkling wine, which is sold by the bottle, as well as the simple but wonderful pa amb tomaquet—toast rubbed with tomato and drizzled with olive oil.
—Travel Bar, Carrer Boqueria 27 ( www.travelbar.com). The Travel Bar runs tapas and wine tours, but their biggest seller is the pub crawl. And if you’re actually all right the next day, you can stagger back and sign up for a Barcelona walking tour.