Barcelona

The name goes back to Baŕkeno, an Iberian settlement; tradition credits Phoenician or Carthaginian traders, even Hamilcar Barca, with the founding, but the evidence is thin. Around 15 BC the Romans laid out a walled colony, Barcino, on the low hill of Mons Taber, and its grid still shapes the Gothic Quarter, with Roman remains displayed beneath the Plaça del Rei. After Visigothic and Muslim rule the city became the seat of the Counts of Barcelona; in 985 it was sacked by Almanzor. The counts expanded their territory across Catalonia, and after the union with Aragon Barcelona became the main economic and administrative centre of the Crown of Aragon, a Mediterranean power. Its Jewish community, the largest in the Crown, was devastated in 1391.

The city lost political weight under the Spanish monarchy and suffered repeated wars, ending with the siege and assault of 1714. It grew from about 30,000 to 100,000 people in the 18th century, and in the 19th Barcelona became Spain's industrial capital; Catalan merchants' involvement in the Atlantic slave trade helped finance the industrialisation and building boom. Ildefons Cerdà's Eixample was laid out beyond the old walls, and the Universal Exposition of 1888 and the International Exposition of 1929 reshaped whole districts.

Barcelona became the capital of autonomous Catalonia in 1931, was a Republican stronghold in the Civil War and was bombed by Italian and German aircraft in March 1938, before falling on 26 January 1939. Franco suppressed Catalan public life. After his death, more than a million people marched for autonomy in 1977. The 1992 Olympics transformed the city; in 2017 a van attack on La Rambla killed 13 people, and the independence referendum of October 2017 set off a constitutional crisis. In 2026 the Sagrada Família's central tower was completed, a century after Gaudí's death.

Catalan is at the heart of the city's identity. Repressed under Franco, it has been promoted since the return of democracy; about 95 per cent of residents understand it and most can speak it. The city calls itself the Ciutat Comtal, the City of Counts, and its festivals keep Catalan traditions in public view: on Sant Jordi, 23 April, the streets fill with book and rose stalls, and La Mercè in September, an official holiday since 1871, brings out giants and big-heads, the sardana dance, correfocs of fire-runners and a fireworks show on Montjuïc.

Architecture defines Barcelona's image. Modernisme, the Catalan form of Art Nouveau, left the city Gaudí's buildings, Domènech i Montaner's Palau de la Música and Sant Pau, and many lesser-known houses across the Eixample; the city was named World Capital of Architecture for 2024–26. Picasso spent his formative years here, Miró is honoured with his own foundation, and Els Quatre Gats café was the meeting place of the artists of the Modernista years. The Grec festival and Primavera Sound keep a busy summer calendar of theatre, dance and music.

Football is close to a civic religion. FC Barcelona — Barça, a nickname used only for the club — plays at the Camp Nou, and its fixture with Real Madrid, El Clásico, carries the weight of the Catalan question. Mass tourism is a constant subject of debate: residents have protested that it is pushing up rents and changing their neighbourhoods, and the city has stopped issuing licences for new hotels and holiday apartments.

About 1.7 million people lived in the city in 2024, on just over 100 square kilometres, and around 5.7 million in its wider urban area. The population peaked at about 1.9 million in 1979, fell as families moved to the suburbs, and has grown again since 2000; more than a fifth of residents were born outside Spain. Much of the city is very densely built, above all in the Eixample, the most populous district, and around the Sagrada Família.

The port is one of Europe's leading seaports and its busiest for passengers, the airport handles more than 50 million passengers a year, and the city is a major centre for trade fairs and conferences as well as tourism, services and design. The pressures of success are part of everyday conversation: housing costs have risen sharply, and the effects of visitor numbers on rents and on neighbourhoods such as Barceloneta and the old city drive local politics.

The day runs late. Lunch is the main meal, often a set weekday menu between two and four, and dinner comes late; in summer the beaches and squares stay busy into the night. Many people take a vermouth and snacks before a meal, and the hills of Collserola and Montjuïc are the city's green escape.

Catalan cooking mixes sweet and savoury and relies on botifarra, a pork sausage, and on picada, a paste of ground almonds, hazelnuts or pine nuts, sometimes with garlic and herbs. The simplest staple is pa amb tomàquet, bread rubbed with tomato and oil, sometimes with garlic. Escalivada is a dish of grilled vegetables, esqueixada a salt-cod salad with tomato and onion, mongetes amb botifarra beans with sausage, and suquet a seafood casserole. Allioli, a thick sauce of garlic and olive oil, comes with grilled meat and vegetables, and romesco, made from nuts, garlic, bread, tomato, oil and dried red peppers, comes from Valls. Calçots, a specially grown onion, are grilled for a calçotada.

The fishermen's quarter of Barceloneta is the place for rice dishes — paella in many forms and arròs negre, coloured black with squid ink. Crema catalana, a yellow custard of egg yolk, milk and sugar, is the classic dessert, and mató de Pedralbes, a similar cream, originated in Barcelona itself.

Markets anchor every neighbourhood, from La Boqueria off La Rambla to the local halls of the outer barris, and fer el vermut — taking a vermouth with a snack before lunch — is a pre-meal habit for many Catalans.