Casa Bonay

If you walk down the streets of the Eixample neighborhood in Barcelona, you can’t help but notice that there’s a lot of local pride here. Catalan flags hang from the French-style balconies on every street, and you half expect the locals to greet you with “Visca Catalunya” rather than hello. So when you arrive at Casa Bonay, if there’s one thing the team here will impress upon you, it’s that this hotel was a community effort. From the furniture to the blankets to the soap, this is Barcelona — and Catalan culture — on full display.

As a result, you’ll live like the locals do at Casa Bonay. This part of town isn’t the tourist traps along Las Ramblas. Rather, it’s tucked away on a thoroughfare of a largely residential neighborhood, and the hotel’s courtyard looks out onto the everyday Barcelona of laundry lines and gardens. Most of the rooms include outdoor space from which to enjoy the view, including a full private terrace with outdoor shower if you book the courtyard large terrace option. The rooms aren’t exactly enormous — you’re living like a local, remember — but they’re cleverly arranged in a way that highlights the tasteful décor: stunning mosaic or terracotta tiles, high ceilings, cream-colored walls and blue and teal accents.

Equally distinctive are Casa Bonay’s food and beverage offerings. The primary restaurant, Bodega Bonay, is devoted to hyper-local food products and carefully selected natural wines. Libertine, the more casual restaurant and lounge, is the venue for everything from daytime remote work to after-dinner drinks. Chiringuito, on the rooftop, serves barbecue and tapas with a beach-club vibe. And the café is an outpost of Barcelona’s original specialty coffee shop, the forbiddingly named Satan’s Coffee Corner.