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Characterized by originality and relative affordability, the shopping scene in Barcelona has become a jubilant fair of fashion, design, craft, and gourmet food. Different parts of town specialize in different goods, and you can explore parts of the city through shopping and browsing boutiques.
The Ciutat Vella, especially the Born-Ribera area, is rich in small-crafts shops, young designers, and an endless potpourri of artisans and merchants operating in restored medieval spaces that are often as dazzling as the wares on sale. Even the pharmacies and grocery stores of Barcelona are often sumptuous aesthetic feasts filled with charming details. Although the end of rent protection has seen many heritage establishments close, a new law will at least ensure that their unique architectural and decorative details will remain intact. Hat shop Sombrerería Obach and candlemakers Cereria Subirà are two old town traders who have remained charmingly unchanged over the decades.
Shopping for design objects and chic fashion in the Eixample is like buying art supplies at the Louvre: it's an Art Nouveau architecture theme park spinning off into dozens of sideshows—textiles, furnishings, curios, and knickknacks of every kind. Any specific shop or boutique will inevitably lead you past a dozen emporiums that you hadn't known were there. Original and surprising yet wearable clothing items are Barcelona's signature contribution to fashion. Rather than copying the runways, Barcelona designers are relentlessly daring and innovative, combining fine materials with masterful workmanship.
Browsing through shops in this unique metropolis feels more like museum-hopping than it does a shopping spree. Design shops like Doméstico and Jaime Beriestain delight the eye and stimulate the imagination, while the area around the Passeig del Born beckons young designers from across the globe. Passeig de Gràcia has joined the ranks of the Champs Elysées in Paris and Rome's Via Condotti as one of the great shopping avenues in the world, with the planet's fashion houses well represented, from Armani to Zara. Exploring Barcelona's antiques district along Carrer Banys Nous and Carrer de la Palla is always an adventure. The shops open daily around Santa Maria del Mar in the Born-Ribera district range from Catalan and international design retailers to shoe and leather handbag designers, to T-shirt decorators and coffee emporiums. The megastores in Plaça de Catalunya, along Diagonal, and in L'Illa Diagonal farther west sell clothing, furniture, furs, books, music, and more. The village-like Sarrià and Gràcia are filled with intimate antique and clothing shops, with friendly boutique owners who add a personal touch.
At the corner of Carrer de la Palla and Banys Nous, this café and shop sells wine and foodstuffs such as honey, biscuits, chocolates, and preserves made in convents and monasteries all over Spain. You can pop in to pick up an exquisitely packaged pot of jam, or linger over divine pastries and coffee in the tearoom.
Just up the street from Santa Maria del Mar, this coffee emporium is famous for its sacks of coffee beans from all over the globe and is said to serve the best cup of coffee in Barcelona, also available to go. El Magnífico's coffee is also available from Brunells bakery.
This shop is one of the most aromatic and picturesque in Barcelona, bursting with teas, coffees, spices, saffron, chocolates, and nuts. The star is an almond-roasting stove in the back of the store—purportedly the oldest in Europe, dating from 1851 like the store itself, so make sure to pick up a bag of freshly roasted nuts to take with you.
Choose from the vast selection of Catalan and Spanish wines at this high-ceilinged bodega, which also sells fancy cheeses, pâté, Iberian ham, and other gourmet fare to go. It’s also a wine and tapas bar, so you can sample a bit of everything before you buy.
Committed to sustainability and the welfare of animals, Casa Carot sources fresh cheese from local farms in the Catalunya region. Small but well styled, it’s the perfect pit-stop on your way to a picnic in Ciutadella Park.
This busy emporium next to the church of Santa Maria del Mar stocks excellent cheeses, hams, pâtés, and homemade sobrassadas (pork pâté with paprika). Catalan botifarra sausage is the main item here, with a wide range of varieties, including egg sausage for meatless Lent and sausage stuffed with spinach, asparagus, cider, cinnamon, and Cabrales cheese.
As you can guess from the name, which is decorated with cod-fishing memorabilia, this shop specializes in bacalao—salted and dried salt cod, which is used in a wide range of Catalan recipes (such as esqueixada, in which shredded strips of raw salt cod are served in a marinade of oil and vinegar). Slabs of bacalao can be vacuum-packed for portability, and there are lots of recipe books if you're looking for inspiration.
Barcelona’s wave of creative cake makers owe a lot to Antoni Escribà, a pastry chef who elevated the craft to an art form, especially in the field of chocolate sculptures. His three sons—Cristian, Joan, and Jordi—keep his spirit alive in the Casa Figueras, a jewel box of a shop awash in mosaic murals, curly copper work, and other fanciful Art Nouveau detailing. Tortes, chocolate kisses, and candy rings are just some of the edible treasures here that delight and surprise. A second Escribà shop, which has a café area, is at Gran Vía 546 in the Eixample.
Founded in 1890, this historic Moderniste shop, its windows decorated with reproductions of Catalan artist Ramón Casas paintings, has a superb selection of some 200 cheeses, sausages, wines, and conserves from Spain, Catalunya, and beyond. This work of art–cum–grocery store (queviures means foodstuffs, literally, "things to keep you alive") is definitely worth a stop.
Purveyor of fine hams in Spain and abroad for more than 30 years, Reserva Ibérica has a shop in the Eixample where it not only sells a selection of its best, all-acorn-fed products, but also offers the opportunity for customers to taste the hams, accompanied by a glass of wine.
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