Barcelona Online | Shopping in Barcelona

Our second favourite Barcelona shop
FNAC
FNAC describes itself as "Europe's leading distributor of cultural leisure products". Selling books, records, DVDs, computers and software, digital cameras and so on, it is conveniently located in Plaza Catalunya, with a second branch in the Illa (below) on the Diagonal. Online shopping is possible – but this site doesn't exactly make it simple.

We have to confess to fantasizing constantly about being given €1 million to spend inside 60 minutes inside FNAC. Our second favourite Barcelona store.

•We liked: The PC games…! The laptops…!! The digital cameras…!!!
•Not so hot: Navigating the site. We can never find what we are looking for
•Languages: Spanish

Our favourite Barcelona store
Probike

Probike (Villaroel 184) started out in a miniscule shop with their first batch of bikes stored in the back of a van on the street, but has become one of the best Barcelona bike shops in Barcelona, selling mostly mountain bikes. You can probably get a bike cheaper in Barcelona if you punt around, but the customer service is absolutely unmatched.

Probike also organises (among other rides) a superb TransCatalunya ride, bringing you (off-road) 190km down from La Molina in the Pyrenees to the top of Tibidabo.

•We liked: The taste of that Powerbar when we got to Tibidabo
•Not so hot: Hey! You cannot bringing all that mud in here!
•Languages: Currently only Catalan

Espaibici
Barcelona bike shop
At Espaibici (Bruc 63) they specialise in city and folding bikes, including Bromptons, and genuinely believe that the bike makes for a better world.

A folding bike maybe your answer to the problem of what to do with a bike in Barcelona if you believe that too and want to use it as a means of transport: leave it chained to a lamp-post and it will get nicked, possibly piece by piece (see image, above).

A Brompton (the real McCoy of folding bikes) doesn't come cheap: at Espaibici they start at €659 and go beyond €1,200, though they also have cheaper Dahon's that retail at under €400.

•Languages: Spanish, Catalan
•We liked: The excellent customer service
•Not so hot: Not the easiest of sites to navigate

Love it or hate it... it's Barcelona's number one store
El Corte Inglés
As you might expect from the retail kings El Corte Ingles (5 stores in Barcelona, including one in the Plaza Catalunya), it's a pretty impressive website, easy to navigate and use and has you just itching to get out your credit card... Not, actually. People we know who use the supermarket to shop online seem happy with it.

You're coming to Barcelona? You could always arrange to meet the wife outside the front entrance six or seven hours - or days - later…

•We liked: We're impressed. We spent 45 minutes in the cycling section – and that was online!
•Not so hot: Try the (real) Corte Ingles in Plaza Catalunya at 23.59 h on December 24th. Mad!
•Languages: Spanish

Shopping and leisure complex
Maremagnum
If you've really had enough of so much blinking culture, having grossed out on Gaudí and what not for a week, and you've just got to get to some shops and get a major doss of tack, and it's Sunday, Maremagnum is your place. It's open 365 days a year (366 in leap years) and it's got everything you could possibly want (or not).

The website is dreadfully uninspiring, but don't let that put you off going while you are here! Amazing what they've done with the port area.

•Languages: English, Spanish, Catalan

Spanish Habitat?
Pilma
Pilma (Valencia 1 and Diagonal 403) sells furniture and lighting, accessories for the kitchen and bathroom, tables and interior decoration in general. Like Vinçon (below), it's sort of like, well, a retail outlet for all that "design" that we do here.

The site gives you a taste of what you'll find when you go, but you'll be disappointed if you were hoping to go on an online shopping spree.

•My Mum liked: Pilma when she visited it
•Not so hot: Wot! No online catalogue?
•Languages: English, Spanish, Catalan

Computers and computer components
Pricoinsa
Pricoinsa sells computers and computer components and is a good bet if you are checking out prices or you really know what a motherboard is and want a new one. FNAC guarantees it will beat any price you can find around town, but Pricoinsa is still worth a shot, particularly if you speak Geek.

It also has probably the worst designed Barcelona site we seen. Don't be put off by that and go check out the shop, the most central branch of which is just down the Ronda San Antonio (49-51), off the Plaza Universitat.

Down the same road you also have any number of other electronic goods shops.

•We liked: A 24-inch flat screen... Think I'll ask for one of those for Christmas
•Not so hot: €2,264... Ouch!
•Languages: Spanish

Designer shopping
Vinçon
Vinçon (Paseo de Gracia 96) essentially sells kitchenware, but also beds and bed linen and so on – and is also the kind of place you'll find half of Barcelona doing its Christmas shopping… It's like, sort of, well, like Pilma, a Spanish Habitat.

•We liked: Kids drum set, €117... No, it's for myself, actually.
•Not so hot: Beechwood ironing sleeve €26.71
•Languages: English, Spanish

Amazing chocolate, shocking design
Xocoa
We include Xocoa (Petritxol 11-13, and other branches) for two reasons. First of all, it sells the most delicious chocolate, I mean really pig-out, mouth-munchingly gorgeous chocolate like what I can't afford on my salary… [Stop thinking these thoughts! Dr.]

And secondly it's a very serious contender for our annual Plonker of the Year award, for the most crassly stupid web design. I guess it just didn't occur to whoever "designed" it that your average user (me) just wants to drool over the stuff, not get some stoopid disco beat Flash 7 nonsense and no pix of the chocolate…!!!!

•Languages: Spanish only
•We liked: Oooooh! The dark round ones with the nuts n' raisins on
•Not so hot: This is truly web design at its very worst

Barcelona's top cheap fashion store
Zara
Zara has got to be one of the major success stories in Spanish business of the last, what, twenty years. It sells cheap, fashionable clothes to approximately 96.55 percent of the population of Barcelona, it sometimes seems. An absolute must visit if you are going to be here in Barcelona.

•We liked: The wife can't buy anything online
•Not so hot: About these trousers I bought a couple of weeks ago... I've only washed them once and... oh, forget it!
•Language: English, Spanish