Barcelona local Maria Saura Martinez, 19, is most at home in Gràcia.  

“There are always people in the streets and there’s a lot of movement,” Martinez says.

We are in this barrio, located on the northeastern edge of Barcelona, during a Medill trip to Spain in September. In the Middle Ages, Gràcia was a small village outside the city walls. Though Barcelona formally annexed the neighborhood in 1897, Gràcia has retained its own distinct traditions, like the Festa Major de Gràcia, where residents decorate the streets during the month of August.

Martinez and her family moved to a flat in Gràcia from Sarrià, another neighborhood in Barcelona, when she was 15. Martinez loves lingering in the plaças, shopping on Gran de Gràcia and grabbing a coffee at the Suís & Bowls café.

We are on a trip learning about thoughtful, sustainable travel and travel journalism at a time when people in communities worldwide, including Barcelona, are protesting mass tourism. Many of us know friends who studied in Europe, bouncing around to different cities each weekend, taking pictures to post on Instagram, failing to truly know a place.

Our trio of student reporters wanted to do something different during our 10-day trip, especially once we saw several graffitied messages reading “Tourists Go Home” on buildings throughout the city. We returned to Gràcia almost daily, and we, too, fell in love with the independent shops and local tapas restaurants.

Here are some of our favorite moments, people and places from our time in Gràcia.

Most interviews were translated from Catalan or Spanish to English.

Platinum memories of Gràcia

Rosa Maria Baró has spent all 64 years of her life in Gràcia.

“In the beginning it was a working class neighborhood,” she says, gesturing with hands adorned by chunky rings. “Now it’s a neighborhood with more people. They’re trying to make a hipster neighborhood when it’s always been a working class neighborhood.”

She recounts one of her favorite Gràcia memories at Plaça de la Vila de Gràcia from when she was a child. “I saw a lot of actors and actresses who were filming, and most of them were from this neighborhood,” she says.

Sipping her café con leche under the shade of the patio umbrella, Baró gently shoos away a persistent pigeon. She leans back on her chair listening to the laughter of children playing in the plaza and the clinking of espresso cups from the tables next to her.

Gaudí’s garden party

We arrive at a house on Carrer de les Carolines on a Friday morning.

Spanish architect Antoni Gaudí’s first masterpiece, Casa Vicens, stands before us like a fever dream–a riot of green, white and yellow ceramic tiles adorned with marigolds. Wrought iron palmetto palms line the balconies.

“Nature is very present in this house,” says Pilar Delgado, who has served as chief digital officer of Casa Vicens since 2018.

Delgado’s long black hair cascades over her blue and white striped shirt. As she turns, we catch a glimpse of her earrings–delicate blue flowers that mimic the marigolds on the tiles of the house.

“This is a dream because it’s very difficult to work in a cultural space, and especially a Gaudí space,” she says.

Before starting her career at Casa Vicens, Delgado worked at Casa Batlló, a building in the center of Barcelona also designed by Gaudí.

“I like my work here, trying to communicate the features of the house to the press and to social media, and it’s easy because it’s Gaudí,” she says.

Since we are early, there are only a few visitors admiring the paper mâché stalactites in the smoking room and the painted tower piercing a painted sky in the sitting room.

Stacking up

On Carrer de l’Alzina, we approach a building covered in dark metal panels. We enter and walk down a blue stairwell that leads us to a circus gym, where a few people practice aerial silks. A large, dark green net hangs from the ceiling in the center. It has four holes that fit perfectly around the top of a castell, or human tower, to prevent falls during rehearsals.

In Barcelona, and in many other cities across Catalonia, castellers perform in festivals and events throughout the year. The tradition originated in Camp de Tarragona and was listed among the UNESCO Masterpieces of Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity in 2010. Various groups across Catalonia represent different neighborhoods and can be as large as 200 people.

Roger Gispert, 48, leads us through the gym, explaining to us that the building is home to the Castellers de la Vila de Gràcia. A lifelong Gràcia resident, Gispert can’t imagine living anywhere else. He expresses this local pride by participating in Gràcia’s castell team, and documenting its history as the designated historian of the group.

We pass photos from the team’s early performances; Gispert knows precisely the year each one was taken. He is former president of the Castellers de la Vila de Gràcia and former president of the Coordinadora de Colles Castelleres de Catalunya. He points out the castells increase in difficulty and size since he founded the team in 1996. The group’s castell performances now include 150 to 200 people.

Gispert leads us into a small room housing personal bins for each of the group’s child members. We see a self-portrait of his son, Joel, drawn with squiggly green glasses and short brown curls. Joel, who is 13, also participates in the towers alongside his father. Team members range from ages five to 80, and socializing is a core part of the practice. The group organizes parties after performances and members gather around a bar in the gym after practices.

Gràcia’s castellers embody the community bond that Gispert feels in the neighborhood.

“My life is here. All my friends are here,” Gispert says.

She’s giving Gràcia

Maria Saura Martínez is a student at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and lives in a room at her parent’s flat in Gràcia.

Many young people can’t afford the lofty rent prices of Gràcia and choose instead to live in a more affordable neighborhood like Sants, a primarily residential area in the southern part of the city, or stay with their parents.

Martinez leads us up to her apartment, which is naturally lit from the terrace balcony that looks right onto Carrer Gran de Gràcia. The first thing we notice is her jewelry: a silver nose ring, large, thick silver hoops, silver engraved rings, a necklace with an iridescent shell pendant and two armfuls of colorful threaded bracelets. She collected the shell from a vacation in northern Spain and made the bracelets herself.

She recommends the plethora of shops and boutiques in Gràcia for unique pieces like her silver jewelry.

“There’s a street by the Fontana metro stop that has all the hippie shops,” says Martínez. “They sell flowers and bags and cushions. It’s very beautiful.”

Her favorite memories of Gràcia are of the placas, and especially Plaça de la Villa de Gràcia, which is only a five-minute walk from her home. When Martínez was a girl, her parents took her to the plaza for ice cream. Now, she gets a coffee at shops around the square like Nabucco Tiramisu with her mother, sitting down to chat for an hour or two.

Local teens gather in the placas at night.

“I love going out, but it’s not the clubs,” says Martínez. “I go and see concerts at the plaza. It’s free, and I see my friends from university. There is a DJ and they play songs in Catalan, Spanish and English, and there is food and drinks for sale. I think going to these plaza concerts is a way to know Gràcia.”

Secondhand style

We pop into Revolviendo 1000 Armarios, a small second hand boutique, where mannequins are clad in flowy patterned dresses and walls are decorated with gold-framed prints. The rack features clothes with familiar trends from Zara and Mango as well as bohemian-style dresses and skirts from Spanish brands we don’t recognize. The owner sits behind her desk, a black dog leashed onto the leg of the table displaying funky and colorful jewelry. We muddle with our broken Spanish and her limited English to discover the dog is named Josefine, and that the shop opens at 11 a.m. and closes at 8:30 p.m. with a siesta in between for weekends. When we scan the QR code to the shop’s Instagram, we learn that it has a trade-in system for clothes and is pet-friendly. One of us buys a white and blue floral dress off the rack for €14.99.

Paperback sunset

We are surprised to find a secondhand English bookstore in the heart of Gràcia on Carrer Del Robí. How did London’s Charing Cross Road end up in the land of sangria and siestas? Inside, the colorful spines of countless books fill floor-to-ceiling shelves. Most are secondhand paperbacks, their pages yellowed and softened with time. We spot a hefty psychology textbook, its margins peppered with scribbled notes. Towards the back of the store one of us finds her favorite memoir: Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit.

Behind the counter, a brunette with glasses greets us in perfect English. We ask her if the store is destined for tourists. She tells us the store has also become a sanctuary for the growing expat community that’s taken root in Gràcia over the past decade.

“It’s for both tourists and locals,” she says.

Sweet treat o’clock

Stuffed from a dinner of tapas at La MiniPepita, we walk next door to Xurreria Trebol. A line forms down the sidewalk on Carrer de Corsèga, but moves quickly. The cozy churro shop has a grab-and-go glass counter, featuring an array of warm churros with fillings like dulce de leche, Kinder Bueno and strawberry jam. A traditional churro is €1.90 and a stuffed churro is €2.75. We pick different flavors, but pass them around to taste. We savor the warm doughy inside and crunchy sugar-coated exterior of the churros while walking back to our hotel.

Donut men

Boldú, located on Gran de Gràcia and Pas de l’Àngel, is a popular bakery among locals and travelers–the shop’s Instagram has nearly 24,000 followers. A brother and sister with the surname Boldú started the bakery in Gràcia, but now there are 15 locations in Barcelona. We contemplate our choices at the glass display box filled with sweets: croissants, donuts, fig pastries, magdalenas. Boldú is known for its big gingerbread-esque donuts. Dubbed “boldumen,” these pastries are the size of our palms and stuffed with sweet fillings such as dulce de leche, hazelnut and dark chocolate. Some are dipped in chocolate and sometimes nuts, but all are topped with imperfectly piped frosting smiles. We buy a dark chocolate-covered and filled bolduman so large we split it between three people.

Naps, wine and beach

On the corner of Carrer del Torrent de l'Olla and Career del Robí, we stumble across a scene right out of a beach town–umbrellas lined with string lights, Bohemian straw fringe and streaky-wash artisan tables outside a shop with all the windows open. L’Intrépide is a bistro that serves traditional French cuisine such as pain au chocolat in the morning or terrine de canard à l’armagnac and rosé for apéritif before lunch.

We meet up with owner Emmanuel Wagnon, 58. Reclined on his chair and taking a drag of his cigarette, he says he moved from the north of France to Barcelona for the slower pace, lively spirit and of course, siestas.

“I have another business that makes money,” said Wagnon. “This restaurant is just for my pleasure. I can share the pleasure of good food and wine to other people.”

His other business is woodworking, which he puts to use in the furniture and decor of the restaurant. Wagnon typically comes into the restaurant after a day in the woodworking studio to sell wine and cheese to customers.

“I love wine,” said Wagnon. “I’m French, so it’s in my blood. People who come in and try the wine say ‘wow, wow, wow.’”

The beach theme comes from his time living in the beach town of Sitges, a one-hour commute from Barcelona by public transportation.

“At 7:00, you can take a sangria and watch the sun fall with a song in the background and I don’t know, I've always loved that kind of ambiance,” said Wagnon. “The chiringuito, Ibiza, beach bar–that's my style. I love that. So that's what I wanted to create here.”

We come back for dinner that night. A large gathering of people are wearing party hats underneath a garland that reads “feliz cumpleaños.” Wagnon says L’Intrépide patrons are loyal and return often, especially for big celebrations.

The party fills the air with chatter and laughter. A French couple playfully photobombs our selfies and then strikes up a conversation with us, offering a bite of their duck pâte. We chat until our food comes: hearty plates of croque monsieur, boeuf bourguignon and fricassée de volaille à la crème et crozets. Wagnon floats through the restaurant, conversing with customers. He makes his way to our table with a big smile.

“Bon appétit,” he says, clinking his wine glass against ours.