Gràcia was an independent town until 1897, and it has never quite stopped behaving like one. Annexed to Barcelona against the wishes of many residents, it retains a fiercely local identity, a tangle of narrow streets too small for the Cerdà grid that surrounds it, and a string of intimate squares where neighbours still gather over a beer. Long a stronghold of anarchists, artisans and free-thinkers, it is now the city's most relaxed and bohemian quarter.
Life here revolves around the plazas: Plaça del Sol, the liveliest at night; Plaça de la Vila de Gràcia with its solitary clock tower, focus of a 19th-century revolt against military conscription; and the leafy Plaça de la Virreina. Gaudí's early career is written into the neighbourhood — his first commission, the Casa Vicens, stands on Carrer de les Carolines, and the terraced gardens of Park Güell climb the hill at its upper edge. Every August the streets erupt in the Festa Major, when residents compete to decorate their blocks with elaborate handmade displays.
The mood is small-scale and creative: independent cinemas and theatres, vegetarian cafés, vintage shops and tiny tapas bars where you are as likely to overhear Catalan as Spanish. It is the part of the city that feels most like a neighbourhood rather than a destination.