The Oldest Bars in Barcelona

Barcelona has been rebuilt, bombed, boomed and touristed more thoroughly than almost any city in Europe, and its oldest bars survived all of it by being too small and too loved to bother closing. Most sit in El Raval and the Old Town, in rooms carved out of ground floors long before anyone thought of a bar as a business plan.

The absinthe bars came first. Bar Marsella opened in 1820, when Carrer de Sant Pau was a working street and absinthe was simply what people drank. When the drink was banned across much of Europe in the early twentieth century, Spain never followed — which is why the bottles behind the bar are still there, and still poured.

The modernista era gave the city its most beautiful rooms. Casa Almirall opened in 1860 and kept its carved wooden bar, etched glass and marble counter through every remodelling fashion since. Walk in and you are standing in the same room a Raval factory worker stood in a hundred and sixty years ago.

Then came the cocktail. Miquel Boadas came back from Havana, where he had worked at El Floridita, and opened Boadas in 1933 just off the Rambla. It is still a narrow triangular room with no menu, and the bartenders still shake the Cuban way, elbows out.

The most reliable way to have a bad time in a historic Barcelona bar is to order the wrong category of drink. These rooms each do one thing, and they have had a century to get it right.

In an absinthe bar, order absinthe. At Marsella it arrives with a sugar cube, a slotted spoon and a small bottle of water — you pour the water over the sugar slowly and let the glass cloud. It is strong, and one is usually enough.

In a bodega or vermuteria, order the house vermut — un vermut de la casa — on the rocks, rojo rather than blanco, with an olive and a slice of orange. Add a tin of conservas: cockles, mussels in escabeche, or anchovies.

In a cava bar, order the house sparkling by the glass rather than anything by name. At El Xampanyet the house cava is slightly sweet and served very cold, and the boquerones are the reason to be there. At Can Paixano they pour cava a granel — from the barrel — for a couple of euros, taken standing with a sausage sandwich.

At Boadas, ask for a classic and let them choose. There is no menu and no signature list. A daiquiri or a well-made martini is the entire point.

Bring cash. Several of these bars still do not take cards, and the ones that do would rather you did not.

Expect no reservations and, often, no seats. Quimet & Quimet holds about twenty people standing, and Can Paixano is a scrum by eight in the evening. Both are best at opening or in the early afternoon.

Watch the rhythm. The historic bodegas run on Barcelona's daytime clock — vermut hour is late morning to two in the afternoon, strongest on Saturday and Sunday. The absinthe bars are the opposite: Marsella does not really come alive until eleven at night.

Check the calendar. Several family-run bars close for part of August — Quimet & Quimet has traditionally shut for the month — and many keep short or split hours. Confirm the day before you build an evening around one.

Four of these are close enough to do in a single evening, and there is a right order to them.

Start at Casa Almirall on Carrer de Joaquín Costa around seven, while light still comes through the etched glass and you can get a seat at the back. Walk ten minutes south to Bar Marsella for absinthe once it is properly dark — the room only makes sense at night.

From there it is roughly fifteen minutes east into the Gothic Quarter for a classic at Boadas, which closes earlier than the cocktail bars around it. El Xampanyet keeps early hours too, so if you want its cava and anchovies, run the route in reverse and take it as an aperitivo instead.

Cask can build this route for you with the right arrival time for each room, or send the whole evening to someone as a gift.