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Much like the jutting breast of the Pyrenean mountains and the pubic swell of Mediterranean Sea that frame the city, Barcelona is a land of stark polarities. For every world-class style bar, there’s a tapas bar with withered hams hanging from the ceiling and a whispered anarchist history. And for every gorgeous bright young fashion thing blazing a trail in the city’s hormone-fuelled clubland, there’s a priapic middle-aged man with oil-slick hair and over-tight chinos.

Of course, this unique marriage of disparities is exactly why Barcelona holds its own at the vanguard of European bar culture. Its bars run the gamut: from ancient wood-panelled cellars to sharp-edged DJ bars (bar musical) and the aircraft-hangar aesthetic of the Olympic port. Here, like almost nowhere else, the thoroughly modern and the quaintly parochial - in architecture, engineering, gastronomy and bar science - meet.

As Catalonia’s favourite adopted Brit George Orwell put it: the price of liberty is eternal dirt. After all, this is an after-hours culture that spawned legends such as that of Bar Che, notorious for its prostitution rackets and 7ft Frankenstein’s monster of a doorman – who famously won an unprecedented jackpot on the Spanish lottery and eloped with one of Che’s accommodating young dames.

So, for the true Barcelonan bar crawl, avoid the Little Britain-themed bar trails of the EasyJet marauders and head off the flip-flop scuffed tracks, where graffitoed doors are the portal to a uniquely Catalonian drinking experience. Salut!

Café Schilling Barri Gothic
Ferran 23 08002 Mon-Sat 10am-2.15am Sun: 12pm-2.15am
Recommended: Fruity, throat-stripping sangria

If it weren’t for the preponderance of sexy young gay boys vacuum packed into ball-bothering jeans, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’d stumbled into the Bodleian library. This hip, dark-panelled style bar with its lively, gay-leaning clientele is cited by many style guides as the dernier cri in cosmopolitan Barcelona. But don’t let that put you off.

Located in the perennially popular Barri Gothic drinking district, the former cutlery shop is scented with resinous timber. Wine bottles are serried in obedient ranks in floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, angle-poise lamps are trained at Botox-flattering angles onto blood-red banquettes and treble clef stencils punctuate the ceiling; a visual signifier of the early American jazz piped through the state-of-the-art speakers above. Single gay men propping up the bar sway to the rhythms, surreptitiously scouting the rich waters for a catch. The bar staff are English-speaking and deft in their construction of petrol-strength reinterpretations of Spanish favourites, from a list of over 100 cocktails, such as the irrepressible sangria. As my new-found gay pal put it: ‘it’s verrryy, verrryy fashion, darling’. Quite.

La Concha
C/Guardia 14, Le Raval Mon-Sun: 4pm-4.30am. Shows on Sunday 12-2am
Recommended: Cocktails. Aromatic teas. Arabic pastries.

A long-standing Barça drag bar institution, La Concha is a dank, dirty-dancing dive that sputters to life after 2am. After a change of ownership, the bar’s emphasis has shifted slightly from prosthetic tits to horny dance kids making complete tits of themselves on the chequered, hanky-sized dancefloor (drag shows on Sunday only). But La Concha retains its tattered and variegated charm. Hundreds of photographs of feline Spanish screen and drag icon Sara Montiel – imagine a Spanish Liza Minelli-cum-Barbara Cartland – clutter the walls of the bar. And, much like the esteemed lady herself, La Concha is no stranger to a sub-standard paintjob – the bar’s nicotine-yellow droplights conceal a multitude of sins, décor-related and otherwise. Not that any of this bothers the motley assemblage of drag boys, lesbian posses and savvy tourists; who jiggle to rai, flamenco and middle eastern pop classics in until dawn, tanked up on La Concha’s cut-price spirits and cocktails.

Bosc de les Fades
Pasaje de la Banca, 08002 Mon-Thurs, Sun: 10.30am-1.30am Frid-Sat: 10.30am-2.30am
Recommended: Malty black beers.

There’s an equation that sums up Barcelonan nightlife culture. Something along the lines of: Inscrutability of bar entrance x (kitsch levels + daft paraphernalia) = fun factor. El Bosc de les Fades, measured by these highly scientific parameters, scores top marks. Tucked away down a dark alleyway behind the Museu de Cera (Wax Museum), the windowless El Bosc is the sort of OTT eurotrash concept-joint that locals bring visitors to, reliant on its immediate wow! factor. As you might have guessed, the bar is fairy-forest themed: but why the forest constructed of gnarled tree trunks, Secret Garden paper foliage and running water sound-effects and the fairies being anyone’s guess – the crowd is determinedly hetero.

Despite the few am-dram style misses, such as the lanterns reminiscent of radioactive snot, El Bosc is a beguiling Lord of the Rings-esque drinking experience. Grab an excellent, malty black beer from the lantern-strewn bar, sit on a toadstool and observe the ghostly shadow playing the on the beer-warmed faces of the good-looking locals and Spaniards who come down here on the pull. Just make sure, in these dimly lit surroundings, that your Goldilocks doesn’t become Gollum at the strike of 12.

DosTrece
C/Carne 40, Le Raval Mon-Weds, Sun: 11.30am-2pm Thurs-Sat 11.30am-3am (4am for special promotions)
Recommended: Margaritas and flavoured vodkas.

A mere Manolo-heeled hop from Carmelitas, Dos Trece dominates a bourgeois street corner in the Raval district. The warm, welcoming glow emitted from its full-drop glass windows is matched by an even warmer welcome when you step inside and take a pew at one of Dos Trece’s orange-lit, thick cedarwood tables. It’s said that Catalonians stuff their maws with upwards of 30 whole pigs each in a lifetime. DosTrece is perhaps one of the only bar-snack sanctums for the 0.5% of the population who eschew the revered swine: try the buttery vegetable chips in thick, sesame-spiked humus. The booze is pretty good too: martinis, margaritas and fruity Brazilian cocktails served up by pretty boys with Hoxton mullets. Follow the dirt-dusted, reclaimed saloon doors down to the dancefloor, where Sonar festival regulars such as Strictly Jazz and Straight No Chaser pump out grooves beneath a glittery discoball. A stylish segue between a late drink and staying out all night.

Bar Mirinda
Xuclà 7 • Mon-Thurs: 11.30pm-2am Frid-Sun: 11.30pm-3am
Recommended: Fresh melon juice cocktails

Nestling beside a huge graffiti wall bearing legends such as ‘Baby Chick’ and ‘Vomit Yourself’ and 10 paces down a piss-sodden alleyway from Barcelona’s main strip – La Ramblas – Mirinda is a bright, al fresco bar with all-pervasive fruit theme. The cheap orange plastic seating and staple-gunned plastic fruit tablecloths of the outside terrace abrade the well-proportioned limbs of young Euro sophisticates, who sip on fruit shakes and fruit liqueur cocktails from an impressively exotic range. Favourites, so the personable cocktail barman informs me, are the guava and melon concoctions, alongside the more pedestrian Estrella, the only beer on tap. Inside, the phone-booth sized bar is a slightly classier operation, with ochre walls adorned with pop art-style daubings and papier-mâché lightboxes in all shades fruity; bound around by the schizophrenic Gaudi-esque tiled murals for which the city is famed.

Lupino
C/Carne 33 08001 Barcelona 93 412 36 97 Mon-Thurs, Sun: 1-4pm, 9pm-12am Fri-Sat: 9pm-1am
Recommended: Frozen Mohito; white Russian.

This Parisian-influenced bar and restaurant is like a Le Corbusier wet dream, assimilating all that is most austerely po-faced in modern-day bar design trends. Long, beige and very thin, Lupino carves a swathe between two streets, fronting out on the east to a narrow Ramblas contributory and on the west to a terraced area behind the Mercat de la Boqueria (the central Barcelona market). The décor betrays all the trappings of pretension most beloved by the style-bar sluts: Spartan, tunic-wearing waitresses with the demeanour of nurses administering an enema; an airport landing strip, back-lit wall design; cream leather pouffes; and retina-scorching-white table cloths stacked with pristine glassware. Step out onto the front terrace, however, and it’s a different story. As the flat, filtered brew of Barcelonan air hits you you’re suddenly back in the Med, with trailing ivy, dried flower arrangements and deckchairs. The perfect setting for kicking back with one of Lupino’s sinfully creamy white Russians.

La Vinya del Senor
Address: Plaça Santa Maria 5 Tues-Thurs: 12-1am Frid-Sat 12pm-1.30am Sun: 12pm-12am
Recommended: De Venoge Brut.

As yesterday’s trendy quarter – the Barri Gothic – becomes dogged with fun-seeking stags, the El Born region near to the Olympic port is coming into its own as a style-setter’s sanctuary. The heart of the area is the tree-lined, Hampstead-like Paseig del Born. In the 13th century this was Barcelona’s main square – witness to jousting tournaments and the burning of heretics during the inquisition. Proceedings are much more civilised in the modern-day Vinya del Senor, a secluded terrace bar overlooking the monstrous gothic Eglesia de Santa Maria at one end of the Passeig. With over 300 wines available, and every staff member a Sommelier, this is Barcelona’s best wine bar. As such it attracts an equal measure of romancing couples and pipe smokers with overly short trousers and well-tended beards. Hence the emphasis on French crooners and inventive global tapas.

Mendizbal
C/Junta de Comerç 2 (no phone Mon-Sun 12pm-12am
Recommended: Sangria, fabulous juices and bottled beers from

About as typically Catalonian as a bar-going experience gets, Mendizbal is a hatch opening onto a crossroads, with seating set out ten or so metres away, across an exhaust-fugged road junction. Artists and musicians hang around the hatch – which is brightened up with acrylics of coconut-palmed seascapes – grasping their beers by the scruff of the bottleneck and talking socialism, or striking up an impromptu song (the bar is a favourite of global folk-funk hero Manu Chao). Tourists, a smattering of dreads and a few trendies dressed like a game of consequences louche about on the seating area underneath cream parasols, munching on the Bocadillos specialities (try the pungent cheeses) and watching Barcelonan life careering past.

Bar Ra
Address: Carrer de les floristes de la Rambla Mon-Sat: 1.30-4pm, 9pm-12am Sun: 10.30-6pm
Recommended: Caipirinha

Straddling a shopping arcade like two foliage-veined thighs, Bar Ra is a refreshingly hippy antidote to the forlorn municipal architecture of many of the bars of the Raval district. Dedicated to all things solar, Ra’s centrepiece is a huge, many-breasted sun mural – which looks much as if a horny teenaged boy has been charged with redesigning classic Hindu iconography. Phallic incense holders, cold beaten-steel seating and a few more udderous breast paintings complete the masturbatory experience. Checked-shirted men and pairs of mid-20s girls sporting Bardot eyeliner chatter on the buzzing terrace outside, or wedge themselves into a dark corner inside for a quick smooch. The snacks – which include Mexican, Thai and West Indian specialities – are not at all bad, but rarely a match for the clientele or atmosphere.

Carmelitas Calle Doctor Dou, 1/ Calle del Carmen, 42 Mon-Sat: 1pm-12 Sun: 12pm-12am
Recommended: Excellent martinis

With its globe-plundering selection of dishes, towering ceilings, swinging bare lightbulbs and sparse cream décor shot through with menstrual-red detailing, this former Carmelite nunnery is a favourite with stylish urban couples seeking an escape from the maddening crowds. Drinks – including an excellent range of martinis – are meaty, but then so is their price tag. Food is slightly better value for money and is Catalan-inspired, yet friendly to the international palate, with pastas, robust soups and salads. Irritating global musak drones in the background like a bovine mating call, but the punters – largely mobile-wielding uptowners – are too busy making mooey eyes to care.

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