A poc a poc, meaning “little by little,” is one of Barcelona’s favorite Catalan expressions, and it ideally characterizes a proceed a specialty coffee theatre is solemnly rising in a Mediterranean city. Known for world-class gastronomy, singular art, and an well-developed peculiarity of life, Barcelona leaves few things to be desired. Yet, until unequivocally recently, if Barcelona were to accept low outlines in one sold area—good coffee was unequivocally it.
Indeed, until about dual years ago, a specialty coffee partner could count their options on one hand. Today, however, a city seems to finally be throwing adult with its European counterparts like Berlin and London, as new coffee shops are popping adult any few weeks, and events such as a Independent Barcelona Coffee Festival and CoLab: Barcelona are lifting Barcelona specialty coffee’s form nationally and internationally.
The expansion is a credit to a tough work of Barcelona’s coffee community—a tiny organisation of rarely dedicated (sometimes obsessed) professionals, who have spent years operative abroad in a coffee industry, have won Spanish and general barista/roasting championships, or who grew adult enthralled in their family’s coffee businesses. And while appreciation for specialty coffee is increasing, Barcelona is still a city where it pays to do your coffee homework, as a normal cafeteria will still offer we a inexpensive crater of burnt robusta beans. But as bad as a bad coffee can be, a good coffee is equally remarkable. If we compensate a revisit to a places on this list, design solemnly roasted coffees, gifted baristas who take their qualification seriously, and a village of coffee professionals prepared to rivet with we and a rest of a coffee world.
Cafés El Magnifico

Your initial end in Barcelona should be Cafés El Magnifico, that you’ll find amidst a desirable Gothic backstreets and boutiques of a Born neighborhood. To entirely know anything in Barcelona, we need to place it in chronological context, and there’s no improved place to know a story of Spanish coffee than during El Magnifico. Pioneers of a specialty coffee courtesy in Barcelona, El Magnifico is a third-generation family business that has seen a Spanish coffee courtesy by a Spanish Civil War, a dictatorship, inhabitant financial crises, and more.
“My father was innate on this street,” El Magnifico’s owners Salvador Sans, tells me as we travel from their tiny categorical emporium in a Born to their business bureau opposite a street, where a infancy of their coffee is now roasted in a 30-kilogram spit that allows them to accommodate flourishing inhabitant demand. Their success is due to their concentration on a scholarship and art of peculiarity coffee that sensitively speaks for itself and provides an permitted pleasure to a normal Barcelonian.

Magnifico boasts a desirable location, an glorious preference of coffees from around a world, and a unequivocally associating staff to advise we on any of a coffees they sell. However, like many coffee venues in Barcelona, what they do not have (at their flagship cafe, anyway) is seating. If you’d like to suffer your coffee and dawdle for a while, we should devise a revisit on a weekend when their sister store and preparation space, El Mag, is open usually around a dilemma in a stylish boutique space.
At possibly store, we can suffer a accumulation of espresso-based drinks or filter-based methods as good as Cafè Fred, a internal cold decoction done from Magnifico’s coffee. If we have a option, Sans’ favorites embody a Kenya Nyeri, Colombia Colamina, or a Chelbesa from Ethiopia.
Satan’s Coffee Corner

Despite a name, owners Marcos Bartolomé assures me that he is glorious with Jesus. “I had some unequivocally concerned, well-meaning Christians from a US come to revisit me once,” he tells me. He also confirms that he does indeed like babies, though enforces a despotic no hiker order during Satan’s, given of a proceed they clog a transformation in his shop.
Despite a array of these form of modern, no-nonsense coffee emporium manners (no syrup, no decaf, no special milk, no Wi-Fi), that hang on a wall, environment a tinge for nearing customers, Satan’s has turn a renouned and successful coffee end for locals and tourists alike.
Indeed, a peculiarity of a coffee, that is roasted locally in tiny batches by Satan’s internal roasting partner Right Side Coffee, will substantially make we forget any duration discomfort. Bartolomé, who comes from a timeless coffee roasting family in Spain’s La Rioja region, has a purist’s proceed to coffee that has tangible Satan’s given 2012, when Bartolomé’s original takeaway dilemma non-stop in a El Raval neighborhood.

Marcos Bartolomé
Nowadays, there’s copiousness of space to lay down and suffer a collection filter brew, V60, Kalita, or espresso from a La Marzocco Linea PB, and span it with some healthy food (or even a Bloody Mary) in a light-filled complicated emporium located usually behind a cathedral in a Gothic Quarter. In addition, Satan’s stretched final year to add a second plcae during Casa Bonay, one of Barcelona’s many beautiful boutique hotels in a Eixample neighborhood.
Nømad Coffee

The story of specialty coffee’s attainment in Barcelona can’t be told without Nømad Coffee, that was started by Barcelona internal Jordi Mestre in 2014. After several years during Nude Espresso in London, Mestre had turn a gifted barista, roaster, and even had operated a mobile coffee operation—thus a Nømad name—before returning to Barcelona.
When a former National Barista Champion came home, he had hopes of transforming Barcelona’s coffee scene, and to some border he already has. In usually dual years, a Nømad code has achieved an considerable repute for its strict importance on quality. Nømad is another cafeteria where we are not going to find special milk, decaf, or even sugar, though this doesn’t worry their constant following of customers. In further to their 3 locations, we will now find Nømad coffee served in restaurants opposite a city, as good as exported via Spain and Europe.

Nømad’s landmark plcae is its Coffee Lab located in a Passatge de Sert, an out of a proceed colonnade between a Born area and Plaça de Catalunya. Their roastery in Poblenou non-stop in 2015 and, as good as being a roastery, binds unchanging training courses for those wanting to urge their coffee knowledge. Their newest store, called Every Day, non-stop late last year circuitously La Rambla in a fast gentrifying El Raval neighborhood.
The community list during Nømad Every Day is a ideal place to lay and suffer your prohibited coffee or signature cold brew, and while a other dual locations have good energy, they’re not as befitting for settling in for a prolonged stay. Pick adult a Barcelona specialty beam and map from one of a cafes on this list—Nømad’s Born and El Raval locations can be formidable to find, though positively value a effort.
SlowMov

SlowMov is a desirable space in a Gràcia area that is both a coffee spit and a height for joining consumers with internal and tellurian producers. Inspired by a Slow Food movement, that focuses on locally grown, uninformed furnish that respects healthy ecosystems, SlowMov does a constrained pursuit of joining consumers with a farmers who grow their coffee.
The store, that was started in 2015 by Carmen Callizo and Francois Justet, has clever ties to Coutume Café in Paris, where Callizo formerly worked, and by whom they continue to source coffees in tiny lots directly from a farms Coutume visits. The coffee is afterwards brought to Barcelona, where it is roasted on SlowMov’s Giesen W6.
“The coffee series is function on a farms,” Justet tells me, as we lay in their simple, bright, minimalist showroom. “Traceability is a usually proceed for producers to progress, uncover quality, and turn some-more and some-more sustainable.”

Carmen Callizo
Indeed, traceability and ecologically sound products are a common threads between a shop’s specialty coffee and other internal products. SlowMov has a clever amicable component, operative with a Imperfect Program, that reduces food rubbish by compelling expenditure of “ugly” foods, and by organizing a internal colmena platform, that is like a producers’ cooperative, though with reduction joining required.
In further to coffee, SlowMov serves pastries with local, ecological mixture from Luna Limón and other internal fritter shops, as good as sundries like jam, olive oil, juice, fruits, vegetables, wine, and qualification beer.
Hidden Café

Hidden Café stays loyal to its name and is secreted off a beaten traveller trail in Les Corts, an undiscovered gem of a area not distant from Barcelona’s categorical Sants sight hire and a Camp Nou soccer stadium. At Hidden, they honour themselves in doing things a tiny differently; in further to their possess roasts, we will find well-respected general roasters such as Denmark’s La Cabra Coffee Roasters or France’s Belleville Brûlerie, prepared on a hulk Slayer machine.
One underline that creates Hidden singular among Barcelona coffee venues is a winning atmosphere they’ve managed to emanate that pulls we in with good coffee, good music, and a fresh, splendid locality that creates we wish to take a chair among a cacti and industrial décor and stay for a few hours.

Carlos Moral Guerrero, one of a owners, (who loves coffee so most he has a coffee supply sequence tattooed on his left arm) explains that they like to let a coffee take core stage. The artless plcae is intentional, as is Hidden’s low-profile selling strategy, given he prefers to prominence coffee peculiarity rather than be overshadowed by a brand. “Our goal is to disband a coffee enlightenment to a public—not to foster ourselves.”
Like many of a stores on this list, Guerrero came to Hidden with a lifetime of knowledge in coffee (his family owns one of Spain’s largest immature coffee traders) as good as low knowledge operative as a tutor for SCA and knowledge spending time during start in Nicaragua, Honduras, and Ethiopia. Continuing the mission of educating a coffee public, Hidden hosts weekly catas or “tastings” and other events such as barista training sessions.
Hidden’s menu includes a far-reaching accumulation of pour-over and espresso-based options, though if you’re over-caffeinated, try their matcha latte, with matcha that Guerrero’s partner Mateo González sources directly from Japan.
Onna Coffee

Onna Coffee (Onna definition “woman” in Japanese) is a tiny cut of pura vida in a center of Barcelona. The owners Anahi Paez, creatively from Costa Rica, sources all of a coffee from her internal nation and roasts it herself during Onna’s circuitously roastery.
After entrance to Barcelona in 2007, Onna’s initial emporium was located in a co-working space in a post-industrial area of El Poblenou, though has recently found a new home in Gràcia, a quintessentially desirable Barcelona area where we still feel like we are in Catalonia, divided from a touristy masses.

Paez tells me that there are those business that come in any day, and it’s easy to see why. “Good coffee, qualification care” is Onna’s motto, and it is seen in their courtesy to detail, accessible baristas, and even a guest book that sits on a coffee station. All of these supplement to Onna’s good appetite and gentle atmosphere, and as Paez says, “You are a initial chairman they speak to in a morning—that’s a large responsibility.”
“I unequivocally wish coffee to be viewed as something for everyone,” she continues. “It’s a unequivocally common product, it’s simple, it’s unequivocally honest. It brings people together, it generates ideas, people come here to think.”
Lest we consider that a cafeteria portion usually Costa Rican coffee competence get boring, a cafeteria prides itself on their many micro-lots and a farrago of their single-origin coffees. The accessible baristas will be some-more than happy to advise a new splash for you, or give recommendation or demonstrations on home brewing during their well-equipped coffee station. The cafeteria serves a accumulation of espresso-based and filter brews, and while a divert and sugarine options are larger than a few of a other cafes on this list, Paez cautions, “you won’t find decaf during Onna, given decaf doesn’t grow on plants.”
Black Remedy

Black Remedy is something totally opposite in Barcelona. Somewhere between Second Wave and Third Wave, it feels like Barcelona meets Brooklyn meets Starbucks. With a available plcae in a Gothic area, glorious specialty coffee, and peculiarity homemade food—this is a coffee emporium with a business strategy.
The lounge-y music, atmosphere, and use are a good reason to check out Black Remedy if we are looking for something with a somewhat some-more American feel. Along with all of these amenities also comes a somewhat some-more corporate vibe, that is not startling given that Black Remedy is owned by coffee apparatus company Compak, whose categorical bureau is located usually outward of Barcelona.

The coffee, however, is totally modern. Espresso drinks are done on a custom Slayer appurtenance with beans from a accumulation of internal roasters including Tusell Tostadores, a internal Barcelona spit who sources beans directly from El Salvador, as good as Right Side and Puchero Coffee Roasters, who are formed in Vallodolid. Additionally, there are house-made, cold-pressed juices, sandwiches done with roasted beef that’s smoked daily, and a opposite full of pastries. This creates Black Remedy an glorious choice for a good brunch, that is not easy to come by in Barcelona.
The attract of a specialty coffee theatre in Barcelona is that it is still tiny adequate that those concerned work in coffee because they adore it—not given of a renouned enlightenment that embraces a specialty movement. The outcome is a pleasant brew of stylish coffee shops, good educational opportunities, and a coffee enlightenment that feels like it is usually being innate and has nonetheless to be entirely defined. Like all else in a Catalan capital, specialty coffee is fast changing and will positively rise into something with a graphic season and an eccentric character—purely itself, and quite Barcelona.
Sara Mason is owner of SHIFT Social Impact Solutions, and a freelance author formed in Barcelona. Read more Sara Mason on Sprudge.






