Blog

Sometimes you stumble upon a place that looks like it’s been designed by Instagram themselves. Somewhere that’s just a bit too cool for its own good. Plaça dels Àngels is one of those places. Students sip vermuts here to the soundtrack of skateboards clanging and the hollering that greets every perfected trick. Welcome to the epicentre of alternative Barcelona. Welcome to El Raval.

The bike-share industry is exploding and for good reason. Bicycles are essential to solving a persistent, everyday problem, traffic. My – call it bold – prediction is that bike-share companies will eventually become bigger than car-based services such as Uber. This, however, depends highly on getting the regulatory framework for bike-share systems right.

El Born is a barrio of contrasts. At times it seems very modern, while at other times it feels like you’ve travelled back in time. It’s trendy, but it’s traditional too. It’s quite an international neighbourhood, but sometimes it feels very local. And while there are lots of tourists, you can also find some hidden Barcelona spots in El Born, if you know where to look.

Similar to many urban agglomerations around the world, Spanish cities are facing increasing levels of traffic congestion, pollution, overpopulation and related issues of health and wellbeing. In an effort to address these issues, quite a few of them are looking, among other things, at alternative mobility solutions and find in the humble bicycle an unlikely hero of public transportation. In this comparative infographic, we analyse the current state of the cycling culture and infrastructure in the biggest Spanish cities to have promoted cycling as a means of transportation in recent years.

As international students, expats and professionals we are spread around the world, aiming to make our chosen city feel like home. We often find ourselves strolling around town on our own, searching for authentic places and experiences, we find our favourite local spots and merge in with the locals and their culture. However, our curiosity and discoveries don’t end there, as well as we often need to guide around our (sometimes too frequent) visitors – our folks, friends and lovers.

Have you ever travelled to a well-known tourist destination city and fell in all the tourist traps? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to have a friend in each city you visit so you would get a real insight into the local culture and what’s new in town? Yeah, us too! So we invented that friend.