Why do people keep coming here? What do they see in this place?

>>1220462
If you live in a post-apocalyptic american sprawl nightmare maybe. For euro standards it's quite meh. We have some of the worst traffic and pollution in all of europe, sidewalks are tiny and plagued with motorbikes parking illegally (but cops don't do shit because motorbikes are above the law), those same motorbikes go around fucking up everyone's hearing, and now people have started riding bikes and they can't even be arsed to have a bare minimum of respect towards pedestrians. To top it all off I can't even find a place to have some eggs benedict that isn't an overpriced tourist trap or hipster shithole. What's supposed to be so nice about this place? PLEASE TELL ME

>>1220453
what are the best places to visit in spain then?

>>1220467
I don't know that many places I could recommend. Haven't seen that much of Spain. Cadaqués is a classic, untouched by massified tourism and a retreat for wealthy Barcelonians, although last time I went there were a lot of frenchies around and it was more crowded than I'd ever seen it. A shopkeeper told me it was apparently because of recent terrorist attacks.
Also I love the Pyrenees mountains, just a few weeks ago I took a day trip up the rack railway to Vall de Nuria. Really nice.

But most places I've visited ended up being pretty shit. They're either tourist traps, or just tacky, badly maintained and impractical to visit. Best case scenario usually is that it's a sleepy little village that neither has delusions of grandure nor lots of tourists. Such was the case of pic related. There's an old church, some cute old streets, the square you see which has a nice view (that gets ruined by a highway viaduct), and next to it there's the village bar where you can have a beer. Took me like 3 hours to get there from Barcelona.

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>>1220468
forgot pic dammit

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>>1220467
>>1220468
Oh, also Portbou is nice, again a sleepy village right on the border to france. Has some cute beaches which are, as is usual for the costa brava, located in small, natural bays, and the beaches themselves have stones instead of sand. Not at all worth it to go there from far away, but if you live in Barcelona it's a good option for a day trip, it's about 3 hours by train, and it's far away from the noise and grossness of mass tourism.

>>1220453
Barcelona is awesome, you stupid fuck.

>>1220524
Nice rebuttal, those were some great points, you convinced me that it isn't a shithole

Not OP btw

>>1220467
Granada, Donosti, Santiago, Barcelona and Bilbao. Probably in this order IMO.

IDK OP, I've been living here for 4 years and and I kinda like it. The cultural offer is amazing and the city is undeniably pretty. I come from a far more touristic and tiny place so let me tell you you don't have it half as bad as you think.

>>1220543
What do you think about Malaga and the vicinity? Thinking of going there this summer.

Alright you geniuses.

What about Madrid? Is that an amazing place to visit or is it as bad as Barcelona?

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>>1220453
The National Museum of Catalan Art has the best Romanesque art collection in the world, and overall a great collection of medieval art. That was my main reason for coming. Santa Maria del Mar and the cathedral have some pretty distinctive features for someone who likes gothic architecture. Aside from that, all the catalan modernism stuff is pretty unique: the Palace of Music, the Saint Paul Hospital, and of course all of Gaudi's works. I especially liked the Güell Palace, but the Casa Batllo is also worth seeing. As for the Sagrada Familia, I don't really like the overall aspect of the exterior, but the inside is unlike any other church (and I've been in hundreds of them).

But while I think you underestimate what makes your city interesting, I also agree with all the negative aspects you listed. There are tons of places in Europe that are equally worth a visit but where the experience is much more pleasant because it's not completely overrun by tourists. I really wouldn't like living in Barcelona.

pic related is a rather unique painted baldaquin from the early 13th century in the national museum

>>1220543
You come from a tiny place where there are far more than 8 million visitors a year? I'm genuinely curious, where is that?

>I really wouldn't like living in Barcelona.

That's what threads like this are usually about. Visiting somewhere vs. living somewhere.

I'd very much like to visit Barcelona, and I'm sure it has all the problems OP describes but I'm less likely to be bothered by them because I get to leave after a few days.

>>1220558
Better museums, actually has a cool green area unlike Barcelona. Has tapas culture, which doesn't exist in Barcelona. It's a lot dirtier, noisier and uglier than Barcelona though. For all the shit OP is giving to Barcelona, its urban planning is bloody amazing and pedestrians/bikes flow more or less seamlessy with a well regulated traffic. Also, as a personal opinion, I like the people more in Madrid.

Both have their strenghts and drawbacks, but I think Madrid is a nicer place to live, and Barcelona is a nicer place to visit.

>>1220566
See, I am planning to go somewhere Spanish speaking later this year for some weeks maybe, to finish work on my Spanish..

OP here I'm back

>>1220524
>ask why people like it
>"it's awesome you stupid fuck"
drink bleach

>>1220543
>The cultural offer is amazing
HAHAHAHAHAHA OH WOW
The cultural offer is utter SHIT. It's one of the things that pisses me off so much. People are ignorant bastards and the cultural offer reflects that. You must be some uncultured mongrel if you think the cultural offer is good here. All we get is those dumb hipster music festivals, that's not "culture", that's an orgy of degeneracy.

>>1220558
I find Madrid somewhat better as a place to visit, not because it's a nicer city (it's one of the european cities with the worst urbanism imo, it seems torn between trying to be a second-rate Paris, and trying to be an american city), but since there's not that much mass tourism it's all more relaxed. There's lots of historic sights, palaces, museums. I will say that they get this by spending ridiculous amounts of money on it, while Barcelona attracts tourism without needing to "buy" them. Rather, Barcelona lives off those tourists by ripping them off. kek.

>>1220561
Fair points. I guess you're right, modernist architecture is one of those unique things that are quite worth it to see.
But for the museum, there may be a few that are ok, but all I've heard from people, even people who were visiting, is how disappointing most of them are, especially the popular Picasso museum. I haven't been to the one you mention, but all others I visited went from "meh not too bad" to "absolute horseshit".

>>1220565
>Visiting somewhere vs. living somewhere.
Actually, I like living here, despite it's flaws. What I precisely don't get is why there's such a huge draw to come here. Again, it's by far not the worst place, but if someone were coming from far away like burgerland, china, japan, so on, Barcelona, or even Spain as a whole, would certainly not be my first choice.

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>>1220561
>Santa Maria del Mar and the cathedral have some pretty distinctive features for someone who likes gothic architecture
There's precious little gothic architecture in Barcelona, basically just those two examples. The rest of the "gothic" quarter was built in the early 20th century literally as a tourist attraction. There's extremely few pre-19th-century buildings in the old town, one of them, which is rarely noticed by tourists, is the Palau de la Generalitat, where the autonomous government is housed. It's current façade is from the 16th century.

>>1220562
Ibiza.
Obviously we don't get the same amount of tourists in gross numbers, but per capita we (sadly) blow you guys out of the water.
Just as an example: there's 130k inhabitants in winter, but this July we had 582k tourists. This is 4'5x the population in just ONE month. Barcelona has 1'6 milion and got 8 milion which is 5x the whole population in a whole year. The season is more spread out, there is not a problem with infrastructures, public services or lodging. All of these are a huge problem in Ibiza during summer. People working in bars and sleeping in campings for the whole season are very common. Water is about to become a fuckhuge problem if we keep increasing the number of tourists. Police stations, public transports, hospitals and roads simply cannot handle this increase in population...

>>1220566
This is pretty spot on. The only thing I differ is that I'd much rather live in Barcelona than Madrid, while I think the latter is more comfy to visit. I mean we have problems improving urbanism in Barcelona, but Madrid is practically africa in that regard. Last christmas there was a huge uproar because Madrid's mayor closed Gran Via to most of the traffic to gain more pedestrian space. If anyone has ever been there, that's like the main street of modern madrid, and it has literally SIX LANES while sidewalks are fucking tiny, and it gets totally crowded with people, plus the restaurant's terraces (though I wonder who'd enjoy sitting next to what is essentially a motor highway) making it extremely uncomfortable to walk around. And so the mayor comes around and tries to improve this and people fucking revolt. It was on the news like every day for a whole week because they were making such a huge deal of it. It's amazing that spanish cities aren't way shittier than they are, considering how absolutely retarded spaniards are about urbanism. I've rarely seen such a selfish, unsupportive people so bloody worried about not being to drive their goddamn cancermachines right through the fucking middle of the old town.

>>1220568
>The cultural offer is utter SHIT.
I'm learning German. Last week i went to a screening of a Schipper film (in the original german) with a date for a whooping total of zero (0) euros. There's plenty of great cinemas in VOSE aswell.
Next week my father is coming to visit, and I'm taking him to a concert in the palau de la música, then he's taking me to the teather. He's really into opera so he's eyeing some function in Liceu.
Barcelona is BOOMING with designers, illustrators and musicians. You may not be a festival kind of guy but Primavera consistently puts out one of the best lineups of any festival in the world every year. Sonar is also a reference for electronic music. There's a fuckload of venues for smaller gigs in Grácia, and you can find interesting people playing in the mid sized ones like Apolo, my firends are seeing the Jesus and Mary Chain this moth in Razzmatazz for instance.

Like I said, I come from a tiny as fuck place, if you can't find something interesting to do here then I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you boy.

>>1220578
>There's plenty of great cinemas in VOSE
There's two original version multiplexes playing current movies, there's the Filmoteca which used to be good but lately only plays pretentious crap, and then there's the Phenomena cinema which is breddy gud. There may be occasional showings elsewhere, but they wouldn't be regular showings.
>concert in Palau de la Musica
oh yay, you can go listen to Pachelbel for the gorillionth time, or some crappy guitar concert, that's the usual fare.
>function in Liceu
Liceu is the most pathetic opera house I've ever seen. They either play some kids version of the Magic Flute some shit like that, or they go full Wagner which runs for like 5 hours. And most of the time it's some pretentious modern interpretation of classic operas which I find absolutely unbearable, they seem like they cater to people who don't actually like opera and need to be entertained by some flashy imagery.

>BOOMING with designers, illustrators and musicians
oh, you mean those that all end up emigrating because they can't even make a living off their trade? How do those people benefit the average joe? They just sit in their backrooms far away from prying eyes.

Yes, I get that it's a hipster mecca, that's precisely the reason I don't get why anyone that isn't one of those disgusting shitheads would bother coming here.

>if you can't find something interesting to do here then I don't know what the fuck is wrong with you boy.
I don't have terrible taste, that's what's wrong with me.

>>1220580
Oh, and I forgot to mention one more thing that bothers me about the cultural offer, it's that it's completely detached from the local residents. Locals barely even go to the vast majority of cultural venues. To me, the local community support is essential to a truly great cultural offering. Otherwise these things just exist in their little bubble, catering to tourists and consequently having a boring and repetitive programming that isn't at all interesting to those that live here.

Barcelona has top shemale escorts from Latin America.

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>>1220580
>tfw too intelligent for art and entertainment

>>1220580
Sorry anon. You've been schooled. Albeit not the best place in Spain, there is a shit-load to do in Barcelona. You're bitter, I can tell. Maybe you should move?

I'd love to see Barcelona because the architecture is fascinating to me. I've always loved it.

>>1221023
I used to think there was nothing to do for tourists in my city then when I sat down and thought about it I realized there was a good weeks worth of stuff I could plan out for tourists to do if I really tried (in Birmingham UK), I think people tend not to understand the draw of certain things to people where they live, I get people saying there's nothing to do in their city because they live there they take certain things for granted and forget for someone to the area it is still a novelty.