Internet and wifi at Barcelona
Barcelona is full of cybercafés where you can go, during your vacation, to check your mails, to chat with your friends, to search for specific information, to send your first pictures to your family… The price goes around between 1€ and 4€ per hour and depending of the places, the connection can be fast or not. Additionally, in some places, you can also buy food. Below some good places where I suggest you to go but be careful of pickpockets, they are everywhere, so keep very well your bags at sight.
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- Bornet Internet Café, c/ barra de ferro 3. You can either plugin your own laptop or use their computers.
- Comunicat Ramu, c/ tigre 22. You have at your disposition webcam, microphone, VoIP international calls.
If you don’t want to spend your time looking for those places, around plaza catalunya there is a lot of cyber coffees - in fact, in each neighbourhood, it is very easy to find one.
In case if you brought your laptop, you may want to connect to internet using your wifi. Not a problem, in this city, there are more or less 500 wifi locations.
The city hall had put in place a project called “sensefils” which allows everyone to have free access to internet via wifi. To use it, you have to select the connection “Barcelona WIFI” and you will be able to surf to public administration pages and websites except the ones which have contents considered as doubtful ethically.
Some connection points have hours to respect like market places (from monday to saturday from 8h to 14h) but also you will have a time and speed limit (for example 1h per day and 200 kbps maximum). Those information will be displayed when you will connect, below some sensefils locations:
- Ciutat Vella, c/ ramelleres 17
- Gràcia, plaza de la vila de gràcia 2
- Horta-Guinardó, c/ lepant 387
- Eixample, c/ nàpols 80
- Les Corts, plaza comas 18
- Nou Barris, c/ doctor pi i molist 133
- Sant Andreu, plaza orfila 1
- Sant Jaume, plaza sant miquel 3
- Sant Marti, plaza valentí almirall 1
- Sants-Montjuïc, c/muntadas 5
- Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, plaza consell de la vila 7
Moreover, they put an useful service called “wifi sms”. This service allows everyone, who sends from his mobile phone a SMS message, to know where there are sensefils locations in his area. So imagine you are at plaza catalunya, and you want to know where there are connection points in this area, you will have to send a message to the number 7010 with this sentence “WIFI 08001” (“WIFI” “space” “zip code”).
OK you will have to know the zip code and for a tourist even for a local guy like me, I don’t know all zip codes of Barcelona but you can get this information by asking someone on the street, in a shop, in a bar… If not consult this map (click on it to be redirected to its official website):
And if you need more time and/or to search other kinds of information ??? First, check if your hotel has a wifi connection. In case not or if you don’t want to pay the additional fee, most of the Starbucks have wifi for instance. Below a little list of places you can go, just get in and ask them the code - some are free, some not so keep in mind that in some places, you may need to order something like a simple tea in a restaurant to get access to internet !!!
- La Central del Raval, c/ d’elisabets 6. A bookshop with wifi and if you are hungry, you can try one of its pies.
- La Fourmi, c/ de l’alba 2. A quiet bar with wifi, music...
- El Born, passeig del born 26. You can eat a fondue/raclette or just a drink meanwhile surfing freely.
- El Foro, c/ princesa 53. It is a restaurant but you can just enjoy a coffee meanwhile using their wifi.
- Be & Artist, avinguda diagonal 337. A bar with a particular design where you can take a cocktail meanwhile using their wifi.
- Dostrece, c/ carme 40. A cool cocktail bar where you can enjoy a lounge space meanwhile surfing internet freely.
- Copa Café, santa creu 5. A bar I go often to take a tea and where people come to use only the wifi.
- Farggi, plaza catalunya 4. Located inside the FNAC, just order a tea or stand near the entrance for a free connection.
- Restaurant Prims, gran via corts catalanes 640. Near the big Zara store at passeig de gracia street, you can enjoy its wifi by eating a pizza or just taking a coffee.