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Barcelona is like Paris or Rome —only smaller and a fraction of the price. It’s the chicest city in Spain. All the trendy European and American designers have shops here. It’s also safe, cheap…and easy to get around. And it has some excellent,  if bizarre,  architecture. I spent a few days in Barcelona recently and am trying to figure out a way to spend more time there. It would be the perfect place to take Spanish classes… studying by day…and putting your new skills into practice until the wee hours of the morning in the city’s many bars, restaurants, and late-night hot spots.

"Barcelona is like Paris or Rome —only smaller and a fraction of the price. It’s the chicest city in Spain." So begins this article from International Living Magazine. Indeed we have gotten a lot of feedback about Barcelona and it seems to be one of Spain's hottest expat destinations. Each month we feature an article from International Living Magazine, the original expat magazine. For subscription information visit our International Living Archives section where you'll find hundreds of articles on living overseas, jobs overseas, real estate overseas and much much more.  Note: The opinions of Michael Palmer regarding the work of Antoni Gaudi are his own and do not reflect the opinons of EscapeArtist.com

In addition to being a great place to live, Barcelona makes good investment sense. Apartments here are a fraction of what you’d pay in other European cities...  and I believe the prices will go up dramatically in the not-too-distant future. More on that in a moment.

Art Nouveau

The guy who gets most of the credit for the crazy looking buildings in this town is Antoni Gaudi. He devoted his life to the style that would later be known as Catalan Modernisme. His most famous project is the Sagrada Familia cathedral, which he started in 1883. Gaudi lived on site for 16 years while working on it. At the time of his death (he was run over by a tram) the cathedral was only partially finished. Work was delayed for the Spanish Civil War, and it’s still under construction today. Gaudi is buried in the crypt.  When you look at his work you’re not sure if it’s brilliant…or something your fifth grader would have come up with in pottery class. (The city’s most famous artist, Picasso, hated Gaudi’s work, by the way.) In addition to Gaudi’s collection and many other excellent buildings, though, the city has its fair share of ugly ones, built within the past 50 years.

Casa Batlló - Antoni Gaudi

Late-night Living

But most of the city is a pleasure to look at and be in. There are wide, tree-lined boulevards, clean streets and sidewalks, first-class shopping, many theaters and restaurants, a bullring, large city parks, and a port packed with sailboats. Museums and monuments dot the city, many dedicated to the city’s two most famous artists—Picasso and Joan Miro—although both left for Paris to avoid the Franco government.

Like the rest of Spain, Barcelona stays up late.

And it’s not just teeny-boppers in skimpy outfits heading to the discos (although there are plenty of those). It’s also regular middle-class folks exercising their dogs, eating ice cream, walking the streets, sitting on park benches, sipping coffee…all at 2 o’clock in the morning. They even collect the trash late at night. As I walked around the city at 2 a.m., twice I had to get out of the way of garbage truck workers in orange uniforms.

. Plaza Reial - La Rambla de los Capuchinos

. Clowns, cafes, and transvestites Barcelona’s most famous thoroughfare, La Rambla, is a mile-long, 50-yard-wide street that dissects the old part of the city. It’s one of the best streets in the world for strolling…or watching people from an outdoor café. In addition to too many foreign fast-food joints, you’ll find  an excellent food market (where they sell all kinds of local goodies), newsstands, flower markets, a porn shop, drunks, clowns, street performers, shops selling birds, an opera house, artists, the occasional transvestite, hotels, and dozens of good cafes and restaurants. .

Compared with other major European cities (London, Paris, and Prague, for example), Barcelona is downright cheap. Even in the over-priced tourist spots you can get a good meal for two for around $25. At a  café on La Rambla, Spain’s most famous street (see the sidebar above), we had an early-evening meal consisting of two pizzas, a 1/2 liter bottle of wine, a 1/2 liter jug of sangria, bottled water, and a Coke. Our bill, including a 375 peseta cover charge, was Ptas4,400 ($25). In the half-dozen bars where I drank beer and wine, I never paid more than $2 a glass. In Paris, just a few weeks later, I paid more than three times as much for the same drinks. In Barcelona’s local market, Merchat de Sant Josep (known locally as “La Boqueria”), you can buy fresh salmon for $2.50 a pound, fresh strawberries for 35 cents a pound, bananas for 39 cents a pound, pistachios for $4.50 a pound, and good local wine for less than $3 a bottle.

Post-Franco Recovery

Real estate and rentals in Barcelona are surprisingly inexpensive…and a very sound investment, particularly right now, if you’re paying with dollars or sterling. Prices are relatively low because Spain is still digging itself out of General Franco’s socialist mess. The country has been steadily improving since its plunge into democracy after Franco’s death in 1975, but it still has a way to go to catch up with the rest of Europe. The economy grew 3.7% last year (and has grown more than 3% per year for the past four years). The government has done a good job cutting taxes…and promises, as do most governments, to do even better. More than 100,000 small businesses were started last year in the city, and unemployment is down to 15% or 20%, depending on who you believe. I was told by one Spaniard that the unemployment rate is actually much lower than this because many Spaniards work but claim not to in order to collect unemployment checks. Despite these improvements, on the whole, the average Spaniard is still poorer than the average Frenchman, Brit, or Italian, for example. So property prices, even in bustling Barcelona, lag behind comparable European cities.
We expect prices to rise considerably here in the coming years. The government is stable, the economy is prosperous, and Spain is increasingly gaining in popularity. I read recently that Barcelona and Paris are the two most visited cities in Europe. Prices should certainly rise in the next few years.

Apartments from $120,000

In Barcelona Metropolitan, a free English monthly about living in the city, the most expensive flat I found was a 777 square foot apartment on Meridiana Avenue, in the center of the city, for Ptas85,000 a month (US$485). It has three bedrooms and is fully furnished.  Another good place to look for apartment listings is La Vanguardia, a local (written in Spanish) newspaper (www.lavanguardia.es). Here I found a three-bedroom apartment in L’Eixample, the city’s famous historic district, with a balcony and a full kitchen. Price: Ptas55,000  a month (US$314). You could certainly rent a nice two-bedroom apartment in one of the best parts of town for $450 to $750 a month. And you can buy an apartment, in the old part of town, for less than $150,000. I saw a 3-bedroom, 1 1/2-bath apartment with a dining room and a kitchen for Pts21,000,000 (US$120,000)…and a huge 4-bedroom, 1,200-square-foot apartment with two bathrooms, an office, and a kitchen for Ptas40,600,000 (US$230,000). 

Barcelona would be a perfect place to spend a few weeks every year. You could brush up on your Spanish at one of the city’s many language schools, catch up on your late-night partying, or go to some of the nice beach towns, such as Sitges, no more than a 20-minute drive away. 

Here are some more properties on offer right now:

•  A 3-bedroom, 2-bathroom, 914-square-foot apartment with a large terrace, a storage room, a dining room, a pantry, and a fully-equipped kitchen, and an elevator, for Ptas 18,200,000 ($105,236).

•  A 2-bedroom, 1-bathroom, 656-square-foot apartment with a dining room, a kitchen, central heating, a storage room, and parking, costs 13,300,000 pesetas ($76,903). Contact Qualitat 2000; tel. (34-93)8711-736, fax 970, e-mail: rialbi@retemail.es, website:www.partal.com/cardedeu

•  A third-floor, 914square-foot apartment, in a 40-year-old building, has 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a lift, a kitchen, a living room, and a dining room. There are parquet floors throughout the entire apartment. It costs 25 million pesetas ($144,509). 

•  A 645-square-foot penthouse apartment, close to the plaza de toros (bullring), with a sea-view, windows with mosaics, and a 323-square-foot terrace. It comes fully furnished and has 2 bedrooms, 1 bathroom, a kitchen, and a dining room. Price: 29.5 million pesetas ($170,520). Contact Van Den Hout Enterprises; tel.(34-93)2653-515,
e-mail:office@vdhenterprises.com, website: www.vdhenterprises.com. -
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