Fast Facts

“No, not Spanish, Catalan”—this rebuke echoes all over Spain’s northeastern corner, startling a visitor primed for flamenco, sangria, and tapas. A country within a country, with its own language, complex history, and a wealth of artistic traditions, Catalonia—Catalunya to the natives—has more in common with neighboring France than with the arid, macho Castile. One can spend an eternity in Barcelona, the region’s buoyantly cosmopolitan capital, admiring the brooding medieval quarter, the wacky architecture of Gaudí, and one of the world’s greatest food markets, La Boqueria. But this would mean missing Catalonia’s other attractions, among them ramshackle Romanesque churches surrounded by snow-capped Pyrenean peaks, some 250 miles of lyrical Mediterranean coastline, walled medieval villages, Roman ruins, and Dalí’s outlandish museum in Figueres.