Production
Poblenou
The old Catalan Manchester. Warehouse space and light-industry zoning host the big machines: Cal Nomad, Three Marks' roastery inside a design studio, and the cupping labs.
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City · Spain
How a torrefacto town grew a specialty coffee scene of its own: the roasters, the neighbourhoods, the prices, and where to start.
Updated September 2026 · tracking 17 Barcelona roasters and 117 coffees, live
For most of the last century, coffee in Barcelona meant one thing: dark, sugar-glazed torrefacto, pulled fast at a neighbourhood bar and drunk with a sachet of sugar. The city has since become something else, a specialty market with real depth, where a family roaster from 1962 moved to modern standards, a barista champion came home from London, and an architect put single-origin coffee in a takeaway window the size of a garage.
It did not arrive quietly. The early specialty bars set rules that annoyed as many people as they delighted, the light roasts tasted sour to anyone raised on torrefacto, and the roasters kept going anyway. Now Barcelona roasters supply cafés across Spain, turn up as guest roasters in Northern Europe, and one of them sells coffee from more than forty windows around the country.
The friction never quite went away, and that is part of the charm. In summer the specialty places pour cold brew and a mazagran, espresso over ice with lemon, next to the cortados, and the argument about what coffee should taste like continues at the counter.
La Portorriqueña starts roasting in the Raval, the old-town roaster that will still be going a century later.
Cafés El Magnífico is founded in El Born by the Sans family, the firm that becomes the bridge between traditional Spanish coffee and the specialty movement.
Salvador Sans starts selling single-origin coffees that nobody else in the city was offering. Terroir arrives on a Barcelona shelf.
Sans and a group of Spanish roasters found the Fòrum Cultural del Café in Barcelona, the association that goes on to run the national barista championship from 2006.
Jordi Mestre starts a coffee cart in London's street markets. He is coming home soon.
Mestre wins the Spanish barista title and places fifteenth in the world; Joaquín Parra founds Right Side Coffee in Castelldefels with €2,000 and a second-hand roaster from an Italian restaurant.
Mestre wins the national title again. Marcos Bartolomé opens Satan's Coffee Corner in the corner of a Gothic Quarter bike shop.
Nomad opens its Coffee Lab in Passatge Sert: no sugar, no seats, no Wi-Fi, and the city's third wave begins in earnest.
Architect Yassir Rais opens the first Syra window on Carrer de Siracusa in Gràcia, built in ten days from surplus wood; Nomad opens its roastery in Poblenou.
Three Marks opens in Fort Pienc; El Magnífico buys La Portorriqueña and keeps the Raval roastery alive.
Nomad opens Cal Nomad, a roastery built for wholesale, cuppings and training.
The first Barcelona Coffee Awards at Nau Bostik: a coffee festival that behaves like a rave.
The festival, now My Coffee Awards, reports nearly fifteen thousand visitors.
Four generations of business model share the city. Cafés El Magnífico carries the legacy line, roasting micro-lots on hot-air machines and still serving across the counter in El Born. Nomad is the third-wave catalyst turned B Corp exporter, roasting in Poblenou and shipping abroad. Right Side works with farmers on fermentation and drying from Castelldefels, run by a three-time Spanish roasting champion. Syra scaled the takeaway window across Spain and sells its beans through its own counters and to offices.
Around them: design-led Three Marks, which roasts in a design studio in Poblenou and hosts guest roasters; Hidden, which sorts its coffees into Funky, Exotic and Traditional and gives each an animal; slow-food SlowMov in Gràcia with its Geshas and thermal-shock lots; Morrow
Every part of the city does coffee its own way. The roasting machines live where the old warehouses are; the drinking happens where the people are.
Production
The old Catalan Manchester. Warehouse space and light-industry zoning host the big machines: Cal Nomad, Three Marks' roastery inside a design studio, and the cupping labs.
Historic showcase
Medieval streets and boutique retail. El Magnífico's home since 1962, Nomad's tasting lab in Passatge Sert, Satan's Coffee Corner. Flagships and tasting rooms rather than roasteries; the rents see to that.
Old town roasting
La Portorriqueña has roasted here since 1906, Nomad's Every Day shop opened here in 2016, and Dalston started in a room the size of a cupboard.
Neighbourhood cafés
The residential core of the movement: Syra's first window, SlowMov, Onna, Morrow, Kafenion, Bonsai. Daily-driver cafés for locals, remote workers and the brunch crowd.
A cortado or a café con leche at the bar, still, and the specialty places keep the sizes and change the coffee. The shelf tells the current story: Ethiopia, Colombia and Brazil lead Barcelona's listed origins, washed leads the processes with natural close behind, and experimental lots sit at the premium end of nearly every catalog. Filter came in with the third wave, and the current listings roasted for filter or for both methods number 30.
The top shelf is where Barcelona gets adventurous: anaerobic and thermal-shock lots, and varieties like Gesha, Sudan Rume and Chiroso from the roasters who chase them, Dalston and SlowMov among them. Hidden labels its coffees Funky, Exotic or Traditional so you know what you are getting into. Onna pours nothing but Costa Rica. Decaf is no longer an apology: sugarcane-process lots sit in the main ranges, and the live decaf count stands at 9.
There is a bag for every budget here: friendly espresso blends from the classic houses, everyday single origins, and rare lots at the top. These numbers come from every Barcelona coffee currently listed with a price, not a sample we chose. The going rate today is €63 per kilogram, which works out at about €16 for a standard bag.
The ladder reads like this: the classic houses' blends and washed Latin Americans at the everyday end around €53 per kilogram, washed East Africans and the first experimental lots from about €85 per kilogram, and the most expensive listing right now at €215 per kilogram. 78 coffees carry a price today. Most roasters ship free within mainland Spain once you have a couple of bags in the basket, and Three Marks, Dalston and SlowMov all run subscriptions.
Every year · Nau Bostik, La Sagrera
Spain's flagship coffee gathering, born as the Barcelona Coffee Awards in 2022: official competitions wrapped in food trucks, DJs and free coffee, with nearly fifteen thousand visitors reported in 2025. A Seville roaster took the top roasting prize in 2024, which tells you how national it has become.
Regional qualifier
The friendly way in: recipe swapping and brewing battles instead of strict judging, feeding the Spanish final.
Association · since 1997
The Barcelona-based non-profit behind Spain's national barista championship, which it has run since 2006, and much of the country's coffee education.
Morning
Start in El Born at the 1962 house that taught Spain single origins, then cross into the Gothic Quarter for Nomad's lab and Satan's.
Midday
Head to Poblenou, the old factory district, where the big machines run and the roasteries open their doors for cuppings.
Afternoon
Finish among the plazas of Gràcia and the Eixample grid: takeaway windows, neighbourhood counters, and beans to bring home.
Second morning
A train to Castelldefels for the roasteries that supply the city, or to Badalona for two long lists.
It has the longer head start. Single origins were sold here from 1987, the Fòrum Cultural del Café has been based here since 1997, and the city hosts My Coffee Awards. Madrid's scene is excellent and growing fast, and the two swap guest roasters more than they compete, so read that as a difference in history rather than a verdict on the cup.
Daily Roast currently lists 17 verified roasters based in Barcelona, with 117 coffees between them. Castelldefels and Badalona, just outside the city, add roasters that supply much of it.
Salvador Sans turned his parents' shop towards single origins in 1987 and has judged Cup of Excellence competitions since. Jordi Mestre won the Spanish barista title twice, came home from London and founded Nomad, with Fran Gonzalez as his head of coffee and partner. Joaquín Parra, from the Mareterra importing family, founded Right Side and won the national roasting title three times; Lara San Miguel runs its quality work. Marcos Bartolomé gave the city Satan's Coffee Corner and its rules. Yassir Rais, an architect, built Syra's first window himself. Anahí Páez opened Onna on her family's Costa Rican coffee. And Marc Aguyé, Marco De Rebotti and Marco Paccagnella founded Three Marks.
Satellite roasteries
Lower rents outside the city fund the sourcing and the lab work. Right Side and Café de Finca roast in Castelldefels, Bofarull and Amauta in Badalona, Dalston in La Garriga.
8 with mapped locations
Locations come from each roaster's public information. Daily Roast does not show Google ratings or reviews.
Based on the 78 Barcelona coffees currently listed with a price.
The live median across Barcelona's listed coffees is €63 per kilogram, about €16 for a standard bag. A quarter sit at or below €53 per kilogram, and the most expensive lot listed in the city right now works out at €215 per kilogram.
Eixample and Gràcia for café density, El Born and the Gothic Quarter for the historic flagships, the Raval for the old roastery, Poblenou if you want to see roasting happen.
A cortado is an espresso with a splash of milk; a café con leche is half and half; a tallat is the Catalan cortado. Ask for it sense sucre and you will get a nod. In summer, a mazagran is espresso over ice with lemon.
Café de especialidad in Spanish, cafè d'especialitat in Catalan; a roaster is a tostador or torrador; café en grano is whole bean. The Catalan terms find the local scene, the Spanish ones the national shops.
Nomad and Right Side ship across Europe and beyond. Shipping destinations and thresholds are set by each roaster and change often, so Daily Roast doesn't restate them; every roaster's profile links straight to its own shop.
The traditional Spanish way of roasting beans with sugar until they wear a dark, shiny glaze. It dominated Spain for decades, and specialty roasters define themselves against it, roasting lighter to let the bean's own flavours through.
Poblenou is the roasting district, and several roasteries there run cuppings and open days. Castelldefels, down the coast, hosts the wholesale operations, and La Portorriqueña in the Raval has roasted on the same spot since 1906.
Both. Espresso still rules the counters, but the specialty generation brought V60, Chemex and batch brew with it. On Daily Roast's live count, Barcelona's listed coffees marked for filter brewing or for both number 30.
Some through Mareterra, the Barcelona importer that has worked the port since 1978 and whose founding family started Right Side. Others buy direct from farms, and Right Side works with growers on how the coffee is fermented and dried before it ships.
The My Coffee Awards weekend at Nau Bostik, when the whole Spanish scene turns up. Any other week, the cafés don't exactly suffer either.
Yes. The live count of decaf coffees from Barcelona roasters on Daily Roast stands at 9. Where a roaster names the method, sugarcane process is the one to look for; it keeps more of the coffee's own flavour than the older solvent methods.