Barceló Montserrat

overcrowding, stretches 1.5km (1mi) north, east and west of Plaça de Catalunya. Montjuïc begins about 700m (763yd) southwest of the southeastern end of La Rambla, and Tibidabo, with a landmark television tower and golden Christ statue, is 6km (4mi) northwest of the city. The Ciutat Vella, a warren of narrow streets, centuries-old buildings and budget accommodation, spreads on both sides of La Rambla. Barri Gòtic (Gothic Quarter) is at its heart, on the lower half of the eastern section of the boulevard. West is El Raval, where travellers need to be alert; this vibrant, ethnically diverse neighbourhood is a great place to find quirky cafés and unique shops, but it's also an easy place to get mugged, especially at night. Port Vell has an excellent modern aquarium and two marinas, and at its northeastern end is La Barceloneta, the old sailors' quarter. Beaches and a pedestrian promenade stretch northeast from there to Port Olímpic, a harbour built for the 1992 Olympics and now home to lively bars and restaurants. Hide.

Jordi, also the Day of the Book, is a local festival celebrating Catalunya's patron saint. The Berbena de Sant Joan (also known as La Nit del Foc, or Fire Night) kicks off midsummer celebrations on 23 June with drinking, dancing and fireworks. Barcelona brims with music, dance and theatre during Festival del Grec, held from late June to August, and around 15 August the Festa Major de Gràcia sees the streets of Gràcia decorated and full of dancing and music.The last huge hoorah of the summer is the Festes de la Mercè, celebrated around 24 September, which includes concerts, dancing, a swimming race across the harbour, and a correfoc (fire race). During the International Jazz Festival from late October through to the end of November, the city finally cools with some jazz and blues. Hide.

the Muslims in AD 801. At the time, the plains and mountains to the northwest and north of Barcelona were populated by the people who by then could be identified as 'Catalans' (although surviving documented references to the term only date to the 10th century).In the 12th century, Catalonia grew rich on pickings from the fall of the Muslim caliphate of Córdoba. The Catalans managed to keep their creative beacon alight through to the 14th century, when Barcelona ruled a mini-empire that included Sicily, Malta, Sardinia, Valencia, the Balearics, the French regions of Rousillon and Cerdagne and parts of Greece. But by the 15th century, devastated by the plague, spectacular bank crashes, and the Genoese squeezing its markets, the empire ran out of steam. While the Catalans may have hoped that union with the kingdom of Castile would pump cash back into the coffers and vitality onto the streets, heirs to the crowns of Castile and Aragón were more interested in juicing Catalonia to finance their own imperial ambitions.A 1462 rebellion against King Joan II ended in a siege in 1473 that devastated the city. Barcelona was more or less annexed into the Castilian state, but was excluded from the plundering of the Americas that brought fantastic riches to 16th-century Castile. By now, the peasants had started to revolt. Disaffected Catalans resorted to arms a number of times, and the last revolt, during the War of the Spanish Succession, saw Catalonia siding with Britain and Austria against Felipe V, the French contender for the Spanish throne. That was their undoing. Barcelona fell in 1714 after another shocking siege, and as well as banning the Catalan language, Felipe built a huge fort, the Ciutadella, to watch over his ungrateful subjects.After 1778 Catalonia was permitted to trade with America, and the region's fortunes gradually turned around. Spain's first industrial revolution, based on cotton, was launched there, and other industries based on wine, cork and iron also developed. By the 1830s, the European Romantic movement virtually rescued Catalan culture and language just as it was in danger of disappearing. The Catalan Renaixença, or Renaissance, was a crusade led by poets and writers to popularise the people's language. A fervent nationalist movement sprang up around the same time, and was embraced by all parties of the political spectrum. Hide.

Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (CNT) by the end of WWI, and industrial relations hit an all-time low during a wave of strikes in 1919-20 when employers hired assassins to kill union leaders.Within days of Spain's Second Republic forming in 1931, a coalition of leftists and Catalan nationalists under the moniker Esquerra Republicana di Catalunya won the election and soon declared a republic within an 'Iberian Federation'. In 1934 the regional ERC government proclaimed a Catalan state, triggering the arrest of key government figures. In 1936, in the face of rising ultra-right popularity, the ERC joined forces with other leftist groups across the country to form the Popular Front, which convincingly won elections of that year. In May 1937 infighting between factions of the municipal government - notably communists, anarchists and the POUM - exploded into a three-day street fight that killed at least 1500 people.The Republican effort across Spain was troubled by similar infighting, which destroyed any chance they may have had of defeating Franco's fascist militia. Barcelona, the last stronghold of the Republicans, fell to Franco's forces in January 1939, and the war ended a few months later. Thousands of Catalans fled across the border to France, Andorra and further afield.Franco wasted no time in banning the Catalan language and flooding the region with impoverished immigrants from Andalucía in the vain hope that the pesky Catalans, with their continual movements for independence, would be swamped. But the plan soured somewhat when the migrants' children and grandchildren turned out to be more Catalan than the Catalans. Franco even banned one of the Catalans' joyful expressions of national unity, the sardana, a public circle dance.But they'd barely turned the last sods on El Caudillo's grave when Catalonia burst out again in an effort to recreate itself as a nation. Catalan was revived with a vengeance, the Generalitat, or local parliament, was reinstated. Catalonia was granted limited autonomy in 1980 and today people gather all over town several times a week to dance the sardana. While there's still talk of independence, it remains just talk. Meanwhile, Barcelona is the country's most happening town, and seems set to stay that way. Hide.