BARCELONA
Why I don’t like Barcelona
* * *
Waiting all day for our bus to Andorra, Peter and I adventured place to place in Barcelona: from the world-famous attractions to random neighborhood side-streets and college buildings that caught our eye. It was after about 20 kilometers that we turned to each other and said,
“This is... fine? I guess? It’s not Madrid.”
![]()
Given that we spent less than 10 hours in the city and that I’ve never been back to explore since, I’m going to caveat that my first impressions could be wrong. Unlike books, however, I think that sometimes you can judge cities by their covers, and that you can learn a lot from walking 20+ kilometers across a place.
If you’ve lived in or spent lots of time in Barcelona, you might read the below and think: Hey, that’s not fair! And it’s not supposed to be. This is not an academic essay about the objective bad-ness of Barcelona. It is just my opinion (and a few statistics).
Speaking of opinions, here are a few.
I. Naked Lunch
Barcelona felt chaotic in more ways than one.
In a literal sense, things felt more disorganized and dirtier and and louder than they did back in Madrid, where Peter and I had just come from. There was more trash, more obvious social unrest, more evidence of a local government struggling to deal with the challenges of its city.
And in a different way, the city did not feel cohesive: instead of a city with a specific vibe, Barcelona felt more like you reached your hand into a bag of randomness and scattered your findings all across the city. Contrast this with Paris, which has a consistent and tasteful aesthetic over large swaths of the city. Barcelona had nothing of the sort.
I may be wrong—I was only there for a day—but Barcelona did not feel like a place that knew what it wanted to be.
II. The Old Man And The Sea
There is, technically, a beach in Barcelona. It’s not a very good one.
I don’t care much about beaches in general, but if I am going to be in a city that has a beach, I’d much prefer it be a good one. Otherwise you get all the downsides of a beach without any of the positives.
I’ve heard that there are some wonderful beaches close to Barcelona, but we’re talking about the city itself here, and the city’s beach is not good.
III. City of Thieves
You never want getting robbed in your city to become something people record humorous TikToks about. When people stealing stuff is so common it’s a meme, something is wrong.
In Barcelona, something most definitely is wrong.
Ask anyone in Spain and they’ll tell you that Barcelona is dangerous. Visit the city itself and most of its own residents will confirm this rumor. But we don’t need anecdotes: Barcelona is Spain’s most dangerous big city by a wide margin.1
Still, you’re unlikely to get robbed in Barcelona on any given day. And it’s safer than a number of other places I enjoy, like most Brazilian cities, Buenos Aires, and Latin America more generally.
There’s a difference, though: when I am in Latin America, I expect that it will be dangerous. It’s just a fact of life—the whole continent faces similar (albeit not exactly the same) problems.
No, the problem with Barcelona is that it is in Western Europe. One of the best things about Western Europe is that it is a rare place in the world where you can take your phone out in public and not worry that someone is going to steal it; a place where you can drunkenly wander streets far past midnight; a place where you could very well fall asleep in a busy park with your wallet on the ground next to you, and wake up with that wallet still by your side. Barcelona breaks this stereotype—it asks you to have Latin America-level vigilance in a place that usually doesn’t require this of you. In doing so, it loses one of the things that makes Spain (and the countries surrounding it) so wonderful.
IV. Independence Day
Hot take: I like Spain. I like Spanish culture and Spanish food and Spanish traditions. I like how it feels to spend time in Spain.
Most people in Barcelona do not agree with me.
This is because Barcelona is part of Catalunya, a region of Spain with its own language, culture, traditions, and food. Catalunya has never been truly independent, but they have wanted to be for quite some time—in 2017, 92% of voters in Catalunya voted to become an independent republic. It did not work, but it was a clear signal: most people in Catalunya do not view themselves as Spanish and do not want to be part of Spain.
Voting for a secession doesn’t signal a mild dislike of the country you’re seceding from—it signals a fundamental difference in philosophy, a deeply rooted hatred. Which, if you talk to Catalans, is often a true description of how they feel about Spain.
Barcelona is hardly Spain in any other sense than a technical one. And while I don’t want to take a stance on Catalunyan independence, I will say that this distinct un-Spanishness, coupled with an often vitriolic dislike of Spain, is not a positive for me.
V. The Sun Also Rises
This is almost a copy-and-paste of the titular section in my Lisbon essay, and for good reason: I think Lisbon and Barcelona have similar problems with overtourism (and over-nomadism, and in general an overpresence of people who aren’t committed to truly living there).
Barcelona gets roughly 9M tourists per year. Madrid gets roughly 10M. Now consider that Madrid has double the population of Barcelona, and the relative amount of tourism is ~90% higher in Barcelona than in Madrid.2 There are a lot of tourists.
Lots of tourists means lots of things catering to tourists, which means less normal, local Spanish things—which to me, sort of defeats the purpose.
Somewhat related, there’s also a large clubbing and party scene in Barcelona, which isn’t interesting to me, and is somewhat of a negative. Typically, the type of people who travel to a city specifically to get drunk and stay up all night at clubs are not the kind of people I like spending time with. More of those people in a place is usually a bad thing for me.
Recap:
• Barcelona felt chaotic, random, and dirtier than comparatively large European cities. This is totally a subjective feeling based on a small sample size of hours in the city, though.
• Barcelona is the most dangerous big city in Spain. This is especially bad because a benefit of Western Europe is usually peace of mind about safety—Barcelona does not offer this.
• The beach is not good. If a city is going to have a beach, I want it to be good.
• Barcelona is hardly Spain in any sense other than a technical one. I like Spain, so this is a negative for me.
• There is a lot of tourism in Barcelona. This alone has negative effects, but one contingent of the tourism is people who travel there specifically to get drunk and high and party—which are typically not the kinds of tourists I like being around.
* * *
Footnotes
1. When adjusted for population size, Barcelona’s crime rate is significantly higher in most categories than in Madrid and other large Spanish cities. (Source). (Source).
2. There is also a key difference between tourism to these two cities: if you go to Barcelona, it is because you explicitly wanted to visit there. If you go to Madrid, it might be because you wanted to see Madrid, but it also might be because Madrid is the most popular airport in Spain—and so you decide to spend a couple days checking out the city, since you’re already there. Barcelona is more of a destination visit than Madrid, in my opinion.
* * *
Waiting all day for our bus to Andorra, Peter and I adventured place to place in Barcelona: from the world-famous attractions to random neighborhood side-streets and college buildings that caught our eye. It was after about 20 kilometers that we turned to each other and said,
“This is... fine? I guess? It’s not Madrid.”
Given that we spent less than 10 hours in the city and that I’ve never been back to explore since, I’m going to caveat that my first impressions could be wrong. Unlike books, however, I think that sometimes you can judge cities by their covers, and that you can learn a lot from walking 20+ kilometers across a place.
If you’ve lived in or spent lots of time in Barcelona, you might read the below and think: Hey, that’s not fair! And it’s not supposed to be. This is not an academic essay about the objective bad-ness of Barcelona. It is just my opinion (and a few statistics).
Speaking of opinions, here are a few.
I. Naked Lunch
Barcelona felt chaotic in more ways than one.
In a literal sense, things felt more disorganized and dirtier and and louder than they did back in Madrid, where Peter and I had just come from. There was more trash, more obvious social unrest, more evidence of a local government struggling to deal with the challenges of its city.
And in a different way, the city did not feel cohesive: instead of a city with a specific vibe, Barcelona felt more like you reached your hand into a bag of randomness and scattered your findings all across the city. Contrast this with Paris, which has a consistent and tasteful aesthetic over large swaths of the city. Barcelona had nothing of the sort.
I may be wrong—I was only there for a day—but Barcelona did not feel like a place that knew what it wanted to be.
II. The Old Man And The Sea
There is, technically, a beach in Barcelona. It’s not a very good one.
I don’t care much about beaches in general, but if I am going to be in a city that has a beach, I’d much prefer it be a good one. Otherwise you get all the downsides of a beach without any of the positives.
I’ve heard that there are some wonderful beaches close to Barcelona, but we’re talking about the city itself here, and the city’s beach is not good.
III. City of Thieves
You never want getting robbed in your city to become something people record humorous TikToks about. When people stealing stuff is so common it’s a meme, something is wrong.
In Barcelona, something most definitely is wrong.
Ask anyone in Spain and they’ll tell you that Barcelona is dangerous. Visit the city itself and most of its own residents will confirm this rumor. But we don’t need anecdotes: Barcelona is Spain’s most dangerous big city by a wide margin.1
Still, you’re unlikely to get robbed in Barcelona on any given day. And it’s safer than a number of other places I enjoy, like most Brazilian cities, Buenos Aires, and Latin America more generally.
There’s a difference, though: when I am in Latin America, I expect that it will be dangerous. It’s just a fact of life—the whole continent faces similar (albeit not exactly the same) problems.
No, the problem with Barcelona is that it is in Western Europe. One of the best things about Western Europe is that it is a rare place in the world where you can take your phone out in public and not worry that someone is going to steal it; a place where you can drunkenly wander streets far past midnight; a place where you could very well fall asleep in a busy park with your wallet on the ground next to you, and wake up with that wallet still by your side. Barcelona breaks this stereotype—it asks you to have Latin America-level vigilance in a place that usually doesn’t require this of you. In doing so, it loses one of the things that makes Spain (and the countries surrounding it) so wonderful.
IV. Independence Day
Hot take: I like Spain. I like Spanish culture and Spanish food and Spanish traditions. I like how it feels to spend time in Spain.
Most people in Barcelona do not agree with me.
This is because Barcelona is part of Catalunya, a region of Spain with its own language, culture, traditions, and food. Catalunya has never been truly independent, but they have wanted to be for quite some time—in 2017, 92% of voters in Catalunya voted to become an independent republic. It did not work, but it was a clear signal: most people in Catalunya do not view themselves as Spanish and do not want to be part of Spain.
Voting for a secession doesn’t signal a mild dislike of the country you’re seceding from—it signals a fundamental difference in philosophy, a deeply rooted hatred. Which, if you talk to Catalans, is often a true description of how they feel about Spain.
Barcelona is hardly Spain in any other sense than a technical one. And while I don’t want to take a stance on Catalunyan independence, I will say that this distinct un-Spanishness, coupled with an often vitriolic dislike of Spain, is not a positive for me.
V. The Sun Also Rises
This is almost a copy-and-paste of the titular section in my Lisbon essay, and for good reason: I think Lisbon and Barcelona have similar problems with overtourism (and over-nomadism, and in general an overpresence of people who aren’t committed to truly living there).
Barcelona gets roughly 9M tourists per year. Madrid gets roughly 10M. Now consider that Madrid has double the population of Barcelona, and the relative amount of tourism is ~90% higher in Barcelona than in Madrid.2 There are a lot of tourists.
Lots of tourists means lots of things catering to tourists, which means less normal, local Spanish things—which to me, sort of defeats the purpose.
Somewhat related, there’s also a large clubbing and party scene in Barcelona, which isn’t interesting to me, and is somewhat of a negative. Typically, the type of people who travel to a city specifically to get drunk and stay up all night at clubs are not the kind of people I like spending time with. More of those people in a place is usually a bad thing for me.
Recap:
• Barcelona felt chaotic, random, and dirtier than comparatively large European cities. This is totally a subjective feeling based on a small sample size of hours in the city, though.
• Barcelona is the most dangerous big city in Spain. This is especially bad because a benefit of Western Europe is usually peace of mind about safety—Barcelona does not offer this.
• The beach is not good. If a city is going to have a beach, I want it to be good.
• Barcelona is hardly Spain in any sense other than a technical one. I like Spain, so this is a negative for me.
• There is a lot of tourism in Barcelona. This alone has negative effects, but one contingent of the tourism is people who travel there specifically to get drunk and high and party—which are typically not the kinds of tourists I like being around.
* * *
Footnotes
1. When adjusted for population size, Barcelona’s crime rate is significantly higher in most categories than in Madrid and other large Spanish cities. (Source). (Source).
2. There is also a key difference between tourism to these two cities: if you go to Barcelona, it is because you explicitly wanted to visit there. If you go to Madrid, it might be because you wanted to see Madrid, but it also might be because Madrid is the most popular airport in Spain—and so you decide to spend a couple days checking out the city, since you’re already there. Barcelona is more of a destination visit than Madrid, in my opinion.