Leyla Falkenau
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Leyla's Barcelona

Gràcia first, because that's where the cortado is. Then the city, in the order I'd take you if you had a weekend and no patience for queues.

Leyla in a pale blue shirt mid-sentence at a café terrace in Barcelona

I’ve lived in Gràcia since 2022, which makes me a newcomer by the standards of the woman at the market and a veteran by the standards of everyone on my street. It used to be its own town, with its own town hall and its own clock, and it still behaves like one: the squares are living rooms, the bars are kitchens, and the city down the hill is something you visit. So we start up here, with the people who know my name, and we go down slowly. Bring shoes for cobbles and an appetite for eleven in the morning, which is when this neighbourhood actually eats.

Gràcia

Plaça de la Vila de Gràcia

The square with the clock tower, thirty-three metres of it, built when Gràcia was still a separate town and wanted everyone to know what time it was. Twelve zodiac plaques around the cornice; mine is Leo, which the tower seems to agree with. The square has had four names and the neighbours ignore all of them and call it the clock square. I sit on the far side from the town hall, at the table nearest the tower, and the waiter brings the cortado before I ask. That took two years.

Practical: Metro Fontana or Diagonal, then up. Any time; Sunday mornings for the slow version, festa major in August for the loud one.

Mercat de la Llibertat

Gràcia’s market, iron and glass from the 1880s, the one that never went anywhere. Fish on the left as you enter, a flower stall that will sell you three stems because you look like you need them, and an old man at the olive counter who has opinions about my Spanish. I buy anchovies here on Fridays and the vendor asks after my grandmother, whom she has never met and knows everything about.

Practical: Plaça de la Llibertat 27. Weekdays till evening, Saturday till three, closed Sunday. Go before eleven and then stay for breakfast across the square.

La Pubilla

Directly across from the market, and most of what’s on the plate came from it an hour ago. The specialty is the esmorzar de forquilla, the fork breakfast, which is a lunch that happens at ten in the morning and involves things my mother would call dinner. I had tripe once by accident and ordered it again on purpose. Marta says this is where I’m most Austrian, which she means as an insult and I take as a compliment.

Practical: Plaça de la Llibertat 23. Breakfast from half past eight, weekday lunch menu; closed Sundays. Fork breakfast before eleven, or it’s gone.

Mercat de l’Abaceria

The other Gràcia market, the one that’s been in exile. Since 2018 it has lived in a temporary hall on Passeig de Sant Joan while the old site on Travessera de Gràcia gets a new building with a coloured ceramic roof and a covered square underneath. The target was summer 2026; builders here, like builders everywhere, have their own calendar. Wherever it is when you read this, it’s where the neighbourhood actually shops, and where I learned the word for “a little less, please” by pointing.

Practical: Travessera de Gràcia 186 if it’s home, Passeig de Sant Joan if it’s not; check before you go. Weekday mornings.

Bar Bodega Quimet

A bodega on Carrer de Vic since 1954, barrels on the wall, vermouth on tap, anchovies that arrive whether or not you’ve decided. Not to be confused with the other Quimet across town; this one is quieter and doesn’t want to be found. The vermouth hour here is Sunday at one, and I’ll defend that. The tiles behind the bar are the green of my grandmother’s kitchen, which is not a reason to go but is the reason I went back.

Practical: Carrer de Vic 23. Daily; closed mid-afternoon. Weekend vermouth before two.

SlowMov

A roastery in a former workshop where they roast what they pour and refuse to let you open a laptop, which is the only rule in Barcelona I obey without arguing. The cortado comes in a small glass, hot enough to hold and not to hurt. I wrote most of the Menton letter here. The roasters know the farms by name; I know the roasters by name; it’s a food chain of sorts.

Practical: Carrer de Luis Antúnez 18. Mornings and early afternoon, closed Sunday and Monday. Go at opening, when the roaster is still warm.

Casa Vicens

Gaudí’s first house, before he started melting things. Tiles with marigolds, iron palm leaves, a smoking room that looks like a Persian box, which is why my mother went quiet in it. It was a private home until not long ago and still feels like one; you expect to be asked to take your shoes off. Go to the roof last and look back towards the hill, which is what the family would have done in 1885 when this was still the edge of town.

Practical: Carrer de les Carolines 20–26, metro Fontana. Daily, shorter hours in winter; last entry about forty minutes before close. Weekday afternoon.

Cinemes Verdi

A cinema on the street of the same name that has shown films in their own language since 1983, with subtitles, which in Barcelona was a political act before it was a taste. Five screens here, four more round the corner at Verdi Park. The seats are tired in the way good cinemas’ seats are tired. I saw a French film about a summer here and had to leave before the end, for reasons unrelated to the film.

Practical: Carrer de Verdi 32, and Torrijos 49. Evenings; the early show on weekdays, then the bars of Carrer de Verdi.

Down the hill

Hotel Casa Fuster

The one hotel. Domènech i Montaner finished it in 1908 for a family who wanted the top of Passeig de Gràcia to notice them, and it became a hotel in 2004 after a long life as other things. The Café Vienés downstairs does jazz on Thursday nights under a ceiling that would make my grandmother sit up straighter. A café called Viennese in Barcelona, written up by a half-Viennese girl who lives three streets away: nobody said this guide would be subtle.

Practical: Passeig de Gràcia 132, at the foot of Gràcia. Café Vienés jazz on Thursdays, dinner booking; the rooftop for a drink at dusk.

Llibreria Calders

A bookshop in a former button factory down a passage in Sant Antoni, named for a writer who lived round the corner. A bar at the back, a piano, dogs allowed, readings most evenings. They stock in Catalan and Spanish first and everything else second, and they let me sit for an hour with a book I didn’t buy, then sold me two I hadn’t planned on. It opens on Sundays, which in this city is a kind of love.

Practical: Passatge de Pere Calders 9, metro Sant Antoni. Daily into the evening, Sunday too. Late afternoon, then stay for whatever’s on.

Dry Martini

A bar on Aribau that has made one drink properly since before I was born and has a second bar hidden behind it in what used to be a storeroom, for when the first one is too visible. Green leather, low light, barmen in white jackets who don’t hurry. I came here the night I finished the last letter. I don’t remember what I ordered. I remember the ice.

Practical: Carrer d’Aribau 162, Eixample. Afternoons into the small hours; weekday evening around seven, before it fills.

Bar Marsella

The oldest bar in the city, 1820 on the sign, absinthe on the shelf, dust on the chandeliers that is older than most of the customers. It nearly closed a decade ago and the neighbourhood refused. You get a sugar cube, a fork and a carafe of water and nobody explains; you watch the table next to you and copy them. Marta took me here my first week in Barcelona and told me the truth about something. She does that once a visit.

Practical: Carrer de Sant Pau 65, El Raval. Evenings only, late. One absinthe, then walk home through the Raval with your bag closed.

— L.

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