Universitat de Barcelona

A survivor's guide to finding a shared flat in Barcelona

A couple of weeks ago the 2016 host woppers got together with one of the coordinators of the Master at the University of Barcelona to provide feedback on how our experience had been so far. One of the topics that came up was the difficulties of finding accomodation in Barcelona. It's not easy so your very best bet in the first place would be exchanging rooms with your fellow woppers that have Barcelona as home university and that are leaving for their respective mobility periods. Usually the coordinators in Valencia send an e-mail with every students' contact information in order to favor those exchanges. If for any reason it's not possible then keep reading...

This post is not about offering specific accommodation possibilities but will give important tips to new students on how to look for their dream auberge espagnole. We will not give you the fish but teach you how to fish instead.

So what do our future woppers need to know?

When I started to look for lodging in Barcelona one of the first things I researched was the neighborhoods. Not only it allows to have an understanding of the city layout but also to better read the adds on the different webpages where shared flats (pisos compartidos) are on offer. But who are we kidding? What we really want to know is where we will end up living: how far is it from the city center? How far is it from the campus? Are there bars/clubs nearby? Is there a park where I can do some exercise or a library where I can study? Are the streets charming enough to rejoice for being in Barcelona every time I come back home stumbling from a party?

All of them are very important questions.

So let’s begin by pointing out where the Faculty of Psychology is located:

No, it’s not the red cross. I’ve drawn that one to point out what could be agreed to be the exact center of the city (at least all of my flatmates agree on that being a good point of reference and I believe them because they’ve been in Barcelona for a while). If you are looking for the Faculty of Psychology you’ll find it marked in the upper-center part of the picture. That is Campus Mundet. Kind of far right? Well if your home university is in Coimbra or Cesena then yes, it’ll be farther away than you are used to. If you are in Paris probably not. But one thing to bear in mind is that the city of Barcelona is not as big as you would expect when taking a look at the map. I mean it is big, but the area in which you’ll move, and where you’ll find most of the things that matter, is not that big.

But anyways, the metro’s green line will take you right to Mundet (that’s the name of the stop). There you can walk to the Faculty (uphill) or take a free bus for less than five minutes. The Campus is beautiful and the views are amazing!

So when you are looking for accommodation a first piece of advice is to try to be near the green line or have easy access to it either by another metro line or by a bus (tip: if you click on the menu icon on the upper left corner in google maps and select “Public transport” it will show you the metro network).

Now you have a first idea of where ideally you’d wish to find an appartment. After three months in Barcelona I can say that one of the best neighborhoods is probably Gràcia (specifically Vila de Gracia) but I can’t complain at all about my own: “Esquerra de l’Eixample”.

For you to understand how the neighborhoods are organized you should visit idealista.com which is, in my opinion, the best website to look for a room in a shared flat. Check this map out http://www.idealista.com/alquiler-habitacion/barcelona-barcelona/mapa . Ideally you’ll try to find a place in Ciutat Vella, Eixample or Gracia. Some areas of Sant Martí, Horta Guinardó or Sarria Sant Gervasi may also work if the apartment is worth it. Each one of the aforementioned neighborhoods has different areas delimited inside of them. Use the map in idealista and you’ll learn them. One such example is the one I already mentioned about Gracia (the neighborhood) and Vila de Gracia (one of the smaller areas within it).

Some things you should know. Ciutat Vella (“Old city” in Catalan) is probably the most touristic part of Barcelona, specifically El Gótic, El Born (Sant Pere) and Barceloneta. El Raval is mostly about immigrants and it’s supposed to be “dangerous”. Honestly I can’t give you any information about it because I’ve never had to really go there. I only crossed it once by foot and I can understand why some people would say that, especially if you are a girl on your own, as there are several small groups of guys drinking on the corners. There are also a lot of prostitutes offering their services.

When looking for an apartment in Ciutat Vella you should keep in mind that unless you are a heavy sleeper, or you are constantly drunk, you may have trouble with noises from bars and from the street. The buildings are beautiful though, and you’ll be in a very centric position (tip: it’d be good being near Mercat de la Boqueria, Barcelona’s most famous market).

Barceloneta has the advantage of having the beach at walking distance. For what I know apartments in this area are usually small (it’s where the fishermen used to live) so you’d be sharing with a small number of people.

Now, l’Eixample is very big and it’s supposed to be the least romantic of the three (the other two being, again, Ciutat Vella and Gracia). It’s usually about modern buildings and this is what it looks like from the air:

See how the blocks are shaped? If you have to go from A to B you should use the method of least consecutive blocks on a street: always zig-zag to your destination (believe me, you’ll save time).

But anyways, l’Eixample is where you’ll probably find the most offer and I’m very happy with my decision to live there.

However Gracia is beautiful! We often find ourselves going for drinks there, specially at Plaza del Sol. This is the neighborhood of the bohemians and the artists. Once you are there you feel a different vibe. Gracia was once a small town separated from Barcelona, but the metropolis incorporated it when it expanded. It has smaller streets and the atmosphere is more relaxed.

So there you have an overview of the neighborhoods. As I said, one of the best webpages to look for piso is idealista.com because the filters are really useful. But here are other ones that a catalan friend of mine adviced me to check: easypiso.com, pisocompartido.com, yaencontre.com, habitaclia.com, loquo.com

All of them work in a similar fashion, except maybe easypiso.com in which you have to create your own profile and you offer yourself as a potential flatmate. Loquo is as ugly as it gets. I hate it but it’s one of the most used by the locals (If I remember correctly I found my room there).

Another possibility suggested to me by a former wop colleague is uniplaces.com. In this webpage you can’t contact the owners of the apartments and you can’t see the place for yourself but the company has people in charge of making sure everything is real and they are also the ones that take the pictures that you can see on the website. For all this trouble they charge a one-time fee that varies according to the price you pay for the room. The user interface on this webpage is really good! They are also in other major cities of Europe such as Berlin, Madrid, London, etc.

While you are endlessly browsing these webpages you’ll realize that some adds look really similar and when you check it’s actually the same person that has a lot of rooms to offer. Beware with these persons. I’m not saying that all of them are scams, but their role of intermediaries is pretty suspicious. It hasn’t resulted to me mostly because they showed terrible or inexistent rooms. It’ll probably be a waste of your time to go check them out.

What other piece of information can I provide you?

- The caution is usually one month of rent but there are places that ask for two and some that ask for none.

- The normal price you should be paying for a normal room is in between 250 and 350 Euro (everything included). However it's not strange to pay almost 400 Euro depending on the apartment or the area.

- The shared flat market moves really fast! My advice is that, once you see a place that convinces you, keep it! Because chances are that the very next day someone has already taken it. There are a lot of people looking for a room at the same time than you.

- If you don’t smoke and can’t stand cigarette smoke in the house, still try not to use the correspondinng filter in idealista because you may be missing a lot of good opportunities of places that have a balcony or a terrace in which your flatmates would usually do their smoking. Write and ask about the house’s policy on that.

- "Exterior" means that the room has a window that probably has a nice view and receives fresh air and sunlight. "Interior" usually means smaller windows that point nowhere and darker rooms where you'll eventually evolve into a creature similar to Gollum. Besides the joke, seriously consider "interior" if you need peace and quiet to sleep, like myself.

- Never transfer money before seeing the room! There are a lot of scams! The usual one is about the owner living in another country and sending you the key but not showing you the room. Needless to say: they want the money first.

- Also, whenever possible try calling the advertisers and not just send them a whatsapp message. Try to call after 7pm unless otherwise stated. Bear in mind that these people receive a lot of whatsapp messages and may not respond to them immediately.

- If the pictures look to good and the price is too cheap then it's probably fake. I've seen whole appartments offered for 500 or 600 hundred euros.

I can’t think of anything else for the moment but if something comes to mind I’ll update the post.

Happy fishing!

Update 11/10/2016

This is the cellphone company that I recommend you guys for Spain: SIMYO (http://www.simyo.es/)
You can buy small packages of data and/or minutes and basically you just spend what you are going to use and not more. It's actually so good that for me it's more convinient to use SIMYO with roaming in Italy than to have Wind or Tim.
It also has interesting roaming package so that you can use it all over Europe: €2 for 100mb data and €1 for 20 minutes of calls.