Spanish Grocery Store to Charge Tourists Who Come in Just to Look

Fed up with tourists who only come in to check out the scenery, the owners of Queviures Múrria, a centennial grocery store in Barcelona, have put up a sign announcing a 5 euro fee ($5.6) for coming in just to look.

Queviures Múrria has been in business since 1898 and is one of the most eye-catching locations in all of Barcelona. The vintage look of the store and the traditional design of the interior draw in hundreds of tourists every day, but the problem is that many of them aren’t actually interested in the products sold inside – all kinds of traditional Spanish cured sausages, cold cuts, cured cheeses, oils, wines, etc. According to one of the managers, many tourists enter the store without even muttering a simple ‘hello’, wander around taking pictures, and then simply leave without buying anything. So he decided to charge people for ‘just looking’ just to discourage them.

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Man Sentenced to Prison for Systematically Terrorizing Neighbors with Loud Music

A Barcelona man was sentenced to one year in prison after a court found that he had been terrorizing his neighbors for at least 5 years by playing loud electronic music almost non-stop.

A court in Mataró (Barcelona), Spain recently ruled against a man who had reportedly been driving his neighbors crazy by playing electronic music at a loud volume. The nightmare of the man’s neighbors began 2012, when he started playing his unbearably loud music all day and night. Despite repeated requests to turn the volume down, as well as visits from the local police, the man refused to comply and people had no choice but to put up with it. In 2015, 3 neighbors who lived in a house attached to that of the accused filed a complaint against him, after having endured nearly 3 years of electronic music at full volume. They claimed that the constant banging music was causing them both physical and mental issues.

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El Bosc de les Fades – Barcelona’s Fairy Tale Cafe

If you’re looking for an other-worldly experience in the Catalonian city of Barcelona, look no further than El Bosc de les Fades (The Fairies’ Forest), a unique cafe decorated as an esoteric land of fairies.

Tucked away off Las Ramblas, on Pasatje Banca next to the Wax Museum, El Bosc de les Fades is one of the most unusual attractions of Barcelona. As the name suggests, this offbeat venue was inspired by a fairy forest, complete with an artificial woodland of snaking branches, trickling waterfalls, will-o-the-wisp lights, weird demons lurking in mirrors, various optical illusions  and, of course, fairies. It’s kitschy, yet original, and most people enjoy the novelty of it. The main room of the cafe offers plenty of seats under the lush artificial vegetation, or at the bar that’s also been decorated to fit the fairy tale theme, but for visitors who want the full-immersion effect of this place, there’s the private grotto where they can get lost in the very depths of the mysterious forest. And if you’re looking for a creepier fantasy setting, El Bosc de les Fades also features a “haunted house” room complete with eerie mannequins and a magic mirror in which apparitions suddenly appear and then vanish again.

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Castellers – The Human Towers of La Merce

Every year, towards the end of September, the Spanish town of Barcelona hosts its largest street party – the “La Merce” Festival. One of the highlights of the event is the building of impressive human towers, by acrobats known as “castellers”.

Translated as “castle builders”, castellers are the people that take part in the building of the human towers, in the middle of Placa de Jaume. Surrounded by thousands of people who come to see them at work, the teams of castellers create impressive tower formations, several meters high. As you might imagine, this kind of exercise requires quite a deal of practice and planning, but if successful, their human structure is truly a sight to behold.

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