Platja de Sant Sebastià: Where Barcelona Learned to Swim
Why is it significant?
Take your shoes off for a moment and stand on the sand. Behind you, the low buildings of a sports club; in front, swimmers in caps doing steady lengths beyond the waves, whatever the season. This is the Platja de Sant Sebastià, and it is where Barcelona first went into the sea for pleasure.
Key Facts
| Place | Platja de Sant Sebastià: Where Barcelona Learned to Swim |
|---|---|
| Address | Platja de Sant Sebastià, Passeig del Mare Nostrum, 08039 Barcelona, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.37200, 2.18950 |
| Part of Walk | Barceloneta and the Sea: Barcelona's Fishermen, Bombas and Beaches |
| Generated | Generated |
Take your shoes off for a moment and stand on the sand. Behind you, the low buildings of a sports club; in front, swimmers in caps doing steady lengths beyond the waves, whatever the season. This is the Platja de Sant Sebastià, and it is where Barcelona first went into the sea for pleasure.
For most of history, nobody here swam for fun. The sea was for work. Then, in the nineteenth century, doctors began recommending sea bathing for health, and bathing houses appeared on this beach: wooden pavilions and platforms, some standing on stilts in the water, with separate areas for men and women, and cabins where you changed into a woollen costume that covered almost everything.
In 1907 a group of enthusiasts founded the Club Natació Barcelona right here, one of the oldest swimming clubs in Spain. And that same year they invented a very Barcelona tradition: the Copa Nadal, the Christmas Cup, a race in the cold water of the port on Christmas Day. More than a century later it is still held every year, and hundreds of swimmers, some of them in Santa hats, plunge into the December sea while their families cheer from the quay.
Over the twentieth century, though, the city turned its back on its beaches. Railway lines, factories, warehouses and sewage outlets lined the coast, and by the 1980s much of it was a place you avoided rather than a place you swam. The decision to host the Olympic Games in 1992 changed that. The tracks were moved, the outfalls redirected, new sand was brought in and breakwaters were built to hold it, and Barcelona, almost overnight, rediscovered that it was a city by the sea.
Every beach you will walk along now was shaped, or reshaped, in those years. Head north along the promenade, the Passeig Marítim, with the sea on your right. In a few minutes you will see four rusty steel cubes stacked on the sand, as if they were about to fall.