Whole Earth Guide

Catalonia (Cataluña in Spanish) is in the north east of Spain and consists of the provinces of Barcelona, Girona, Lleida, and Tarragona offering everything from the Pyrenees mountains in the north to Barcelona in addition to numerous beach resorts.

Barcelona is by far the best known city in the region and it's where you'll find the greatest concentration of tourists throughout the year.

To the north the Pyrenees mountain range isn't as well known as the Alps but in many ways that makes it a better ski-ing destination as the slopes are much less heavily used.

Salvador Dali, the painter, made this region his home and you'll find the Dali Museum in Figures and Cadaques, where he did a lot of his painting, on the coast.

Catalán rather than Spanish is the language of the region and that's very much in evidence once you get out of the resort towns where you'll find that people will prefer to speak English rather than Spanish (known as Castellano here).

The resorts along the coast are much less developed than those in the south of the country but you'll find the full range of watersports on offer. For touristy resorts, you need to look to the coast south of Girona; those further north are much quieter. South of Barcelona the region becomes much more like the tourist traps in southern Spain, particularly around the Tarragona area which is home to Port Aventura.

The region offers a number of airport options including Barcelona (BCN), Girona (GRO) and Reus (REU).

The line for the high speed train to Paris is under construction at the moment so journies to the north are at a fairly sedate pace by train. International train journies tend to be more expensive than you'd expect and so your best bet to get to France is to take the bus.

A selection from Tarragona...

Port Aventura, Salou

Although now owned by Universal Studios, Port Aventura hasn’t, yet, had the full American makeover and overall has a much more laid-back feeling about it than the American parks usually do. Woody Woodpecker isn’t nearly so much “in your face” as Micky Mouse is for instance which is a big plus. On th...more

Barcelona - the Rambla area

The Rambla area is “the” place to go in Barcelona.

During the day there isn’t a great deal to see in the Rambla itself as it’s basically just a long wide street with an assortment of small kiosks selling newspapers and some souvenirs at one end and on-street restaurants at the other end. In among...more

Sitges

Sitges is a very lively resort in the Summer months but is a good deal quieter once you get into Autumn.

Although the majority of the shops are still open, the town has a feeling of closing down for the Winter about it with a number of the more upmarket shops already close up and the much lower n...more

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