Kelly Robertson
The capital of Spain’s Catalonia region is one of the world’s leading tourist, economic, trade fair, cultural and sports centres. It is also the 16th-most-visited city in the world, and the fourth most visited in Europe after Paris, London, and Rome. Here are some facts about Barcelona you may haven’t heard before:
1. Founding
It is not clear who founded Barcelona. According to one legend, it was the mythological Hercules 400 years before the building of Rome. The other legend attributes the foundation of the city to the historical Carthaginian Hamilcar Barca, who also happens to be the father of Hannibal. Apparently he named the city Barcino after his family in the 3rd century BC.
2. Sagrada Família
Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí’s best-known work, has been under construction since 1882, and its competition is (as of 2007) planned for 2026.
3. Beautiful architecture
As of 2009, Barcelona is the first and only city to win the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for the architecture. This award is usually given to architects (rather than cities).
4. Great for pedestrians
Barcelona is a pedestrian friendly city with walking space occupying more than 130 hectares, which is an equivalent to 260 full sized football pitches. Over 35% of journeys around the city are walked or biked, with 70% of the city residents see themselves as pedestrians and not motorists. The most walked street in Spain is in Barcelona – Portal de l’Ángel, which is walked down by some 3500 pedestrians every hour.
5. Awful drivers
Contrary to this, drivers in Barcelona (and the whole Spain for that matter) are one of the worst, with accidents occurring on average every 19 seconds from Monday to Thursday, only to rise to one every 16 on Fridays. Weekends are “better” at an average of 10 a second.
6. So many green spaces
Barcelona has 68 municipal parks covering 10% of the city area. 12 of these are historic parks, 5 – thematic (botanical), 45 – urban, and 6 are forest parks. Moreover, the total park surface grows about 10 ha (25 acres) per year, with a proportion of 18.1 square metres (195 sq ft) of park area per inhabitant. Montjuïc is the largest park in Barcelona, occupying 203 ha located on the mountain of the same name.
7. Those beaches are new
Although the city has 4.5 km of sandy beaches, none of them existed until 1992, when that space was owned by the local industries. As soon as Barcelona was named the Olympic Games host, the seaside was converted into a leisure zone.
8. Foreigners
At the moment, there are almost 300,000 foreigners living in Barcelona. It is also visited by more than one million tourists every week.
9. Business friendly city
According to the European Cities Monitor conducted by Cushman & Wakefield, Barcelona is the 4th best European city in which to locate a business, trailing only London, Paris and Frankfurt.
10. Football
FC Barcelona is one of the world’s largest football (soccer) teams. Its Camp Nou stadium is largest in Europe with a capacity to seat 100,000 people. Additionally, there’s also the smaller, publicly owned Estadi Olímpic Lluís Companys, which was used for the 1992 Olympics.
There’s so much to tell about Barcelona but we had to limit our list somehow. Do you think we missed some other thing most folks haven’t heard about before?
