The 100 Best Places to Drink and Do in Spain

You get in through the freezer door at the back of a pastrami shop, which tells you most of what you need to know about Paradiso's priorities. The narrow wood-panelled cocktail bar beyond it has a DJ, elaborate glassware that borders on theatrical, and a second secret room behind the bathroom mirror, because one hidden bar was apparently not enough. It sits at number four on the World's 50 Best Bars list.

The bar is an island in the middle of the room, bartenders working every side of it with no stools, no counter, no customers in the way. That setup tells you something: this Eixample cocktail bar takes the craft seriously enough to rearrange the furniture around it. Rotovap stills and custom glassware do the heavy lifting, and the whole project landed Sips at number three on the World's 50 Best Bars list.

The Santiago Calatrava roof ripples like a wave above the vines, making Bodegas Ysios one of the more photogenic reasons to rent a car in Rioja Alavesa. It's a working winery open for guided tastings and vineyard walks, with a wine bar perched above the barrel room for anyone who'd rather just stare at the Sierra de Cantabria with a glass in hand. Ranked third on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, and the vines out front have been at it for over a century.

Ribera del Duero sits at around 850 meters, which explains why the Tinto Fino ripens the way it does across Carraovejas's 180 steeply terraced hectares. This is a working winery visit, ranked 18th on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, where tours wind through the gravity-flow cellars and the vineyards before landing at a tasting. The on-site Ambivium restaurant pairs dishes to each wine, for those who consider a three-hour tour with seven pairings a reasonable Tuesday afternoon.

A near-perfect horseshoe cove tucked between limestone cliffs and pine forest on Menorca's southern coast, ranked twelfth on the World's 50 Best Beaches list. The enclosed bay produces glassy, calm water even when the rest of the Mediterranean is choppy, which explains why everyone seems to end up here eventually. A protected area designation keeps the development at bay, so it still looks the way you'd want a Mediterranean cove to look.

A miniature train carries you through one of Jerez's great sherry houses, past casks that have been quietly doing their thing for generations. The tour is the draw here, though the estate also offers spa treatments using wine byproducts, a roof terrace looking up at the cathedral, and a pool when the weather cooperates. Ranked 21st on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, this is the place to start if sherry still feels like something your grandmother kept on a dusty shelf.

Sandwiched between the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, this sprawling estate in Empordà is one of Spain's oldest wine regions, and it takes that heritage seriously enough to have built an entire world around it. Tasting tours wind through a modern winery with raised walkways, then pause at a candlelit space called The Temple for guided pours. The castle, Gothic cloisters, wine spa, golf course, and summer opera festival suggest the family never quite learned to underdo anything. Ranked 22nd on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list.

A Museum of Wine Culture with 4,000 square metres of permanent exhibition space anchors this Rioja winery, alongside a Garden of Bacchus planted with 220 grape varieties. It lands at number 24 on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list. The museum, the gardens, a gastrobar, and a restaurant sit inside a sprawling modern complex, making it the kind of place you arrive at for an hour and leave several hours later, marginally wiser about terroir.

A Cava producer in Alt Penedès, about 30km south of Barcelona, where the vineyards are still ploughed by horses and sheep wander between the rows. Gramona is a family house known for extended-aged cavas, some resting for well over a decade before release. Guided visits let you ride through the vines on horseback, which is either charmingly old-world or the most relaxing afternoon you'll have in Catalonia. It ranks among The World's 50 Best Vineyards.

The bar counter runs along stainless-steel fish scales, with a fluorescent seascape glowing behind it, which tells you everything about the commitment level here. Salmon Guru is a serious cocktail bar on one of Madrid's liveliest streets, ranked among the World's 50 Best Bars, with a menu that runs from impeccable classics to stranger, chipotle-forward originals. Grab a counter seat if you can; the booths are fine, but the bar is the point.

Infusing jars line the walls and the menu is organized by production technique, which tells you everything about the kind of cocktail bar Dr. Stravinsky is. Fermentation and distillation are the house obsessions, so expect kombucha, kefir, and a vodka distilled with soil turning up in your glass. It has a spot on the World's 50 Best Bars list, and the lab-equipment decor makes that feel less surprising than it should.

A raw stretch of Fuerteventura coastline backed by the volcanic ridges of the Jandía Peninsula, Cofete runs for kilometers without a hotel, a chiringuito, or a parking lot in sight. Getting here means a long, bone-rattling dirt road, which is precisely why it stays quiet. The Atlantic hits hard and the wind rarely lets up, but that's the whole point. It ranks among Europe's 50 Best Beaches, and the scale alone explains why.

The Ygay Estate is one of the largest single vineyards in La Rioja, a few kilometers outside Logroño, and this is where modern Rioja wine effectively began. Visits take in both the working winery and the original cellars, now a museum. A wine bar handles the casual end; a seven-course tasting menu with the estate's limited releases handles the less casual end. It landed on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, if you need a reason to book ahead.

The shelves behind the bar hold more jars of powdered acids than bottles of spirits, which tells you a lot about what kind of cocktail bar this is. Tucked beneath a wine bar in Centro, Angelita runs on the bartender's own four distillates and a small roster of bottled cocktails, with rotary evaporators doing work alongside the shakers. It landed on Europe's 50 Best Bars list, and the crowd dresses accordingly.

The name borrows from Foreign Correspondents' Clubs, the idea being that you turn up, order a drink, and trade stories with whoever's next to you. It's a cocktail bar in Gràcia with an industrial-leaning interior that somehow feels relaxed rather than try-hard. The team built their reps at bars elsewhere before landing here, and the drinks lean into classic structures with a modern spin. It ranks on both Europe's and the World's 50 Best Bars lists.

The martinis at this old-school Barcelona cocktail bar have been poured the same unhurried way since Hemingway was a regular, which is either comforting or slightly intimidating depending on what you order. Tucked just off Las Ramblas, Boadas is a proper stand-up drinking room, all bow-tied bartenders and no-nonsense glassware. The team behind Sips now runs the place, ranked among Europe's 50 Best Bars, giving its storied bones a quietly confident new life.

SHA is less spa day, more full diagnostic workup with better lighting. Expect intake testing, a roster of onsite doctors, and a multi-page menu of IV drips and hyperbaric chambers before anything resembling relaxation appears. The premise is cellular-level optimization, the kind where "longevity treatments" means intermittent hypoxia, not a hot stone massage. Vogue named it among the 100 best spas in the world, which is one way to describe it.

RoseBar, the longevity clinic inside Six Senses Ibiza, runs on the premise that aging is more of a suggestion than a rule. The setup is minimalist cream and jute, the equipment decidedly less serene: hyperbaric oxygen chambers, automated ice baths, red-light panels, and genetic screening sent off to an actual lab. It's biohacking with a five-star thread count, and Vogue named it among the 100 best spas in the world.

Wild boar and deer roam the La Planta estate while you taste your way through the cellar at this Ribera del Duero winery, which also runs a hotel, two restaurants, and a spa built around vinotherapy. Tasting workshops come with tapas, and cellar tours wind past thousands of bottles laid down in the dark. A named spot on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, it makes a convincing case for spending an entire day without leaving the property.

A rotary evaporator behind the bar is either a red flag or a very good sign, and at this cocktail bar on an El Born corner, it's the latter. The team uses the lab-grade distiller to pull flavor from oyster shells, nachos, and roasted peppers, then serves the results in quietly classic glasses. Ranked among Europe's 50 Best Bars, Aldea drinks like a science project that remembered to be delicious.

White marble counter, dark wood, a bartender in a white jacket who used to pour in London, and sherry quietly showing up in most of the cocktails. This intimate cocktail bar in Gràcia has the feel of a place that has always been here, even if it hasn't. The back room is tucked behind twin ship-like doorways, which is a detail that earns its keep. Ranked on Europe's 50 Best Bars list, it draws people who came for one drink and stayed for the education.

A cocktail bar in Malasaña where the menu arrives with the casual aside that they can also make most other classics, in case the several pages of signatures and standards weren't enough. The room is rustic and worn-in rather than sleek, and the regulars who prop it up on weeknights give way on weekends to curious out-of-towners, at which point the basement opens up, high tables, banquette, and a caged stockroom as decor.

Elephant tusks curl around a carved mahogany fireplace that looms behind the bar, which tells you immediately what kind of room this is. The lounge bar and roof terrace above Boca Grande's ground-floor café lean hard into opulent boudoir territory, all oversized pendant lamps and high shelves of serious spirits. The crowd dresses for it, which seems only fair given the room dressed first.

A cocktail bar in El Born that spent decades as Gimlet before the current team renamed it Marlowe, a nod to Raymond Chandler's gimlet-sipping detective. The Philip Marlowe connection is a bit of a wink given the original bar's legacy, and regulars still order gimlets even though the drink rotated off the quarterly menu. Small, unhurried, and staffed by people who clearly enjoy what they're doing.

A brass porthole in an otherwise blank door is the only tip-off that this rum bar exists, tucked down a narrow back lane in a building that's been standing since the Middle Ages. Inside, the dark wood paneling is lined with glass cases of antique cocktail shakers and Cuban souvenirs, and the room is barely wide enough to change your mind. Order rum, and embrace feeling like you found something.

Sherry bars don't come more committed than this one: no beer, no wine, no water, no tips, and absolutely no photos. The ban on cameras dates, according to local lore, to the Franco era when spies used them to identify enemies. A chalk tally on the bar keeps track of what you've drunk. Order fino, manzanilla, or oloroso, let the black cat wander past, and don't ask for anything that isn't sherry.

A cocktail bar in Madrid's Centro that bills itself as liquid theatre, invoking the Greek god of sarcasm and mockery, which turns out to be a surprisingly honest mission statement. The drinks lean avant-garde, and the room keeps things spare and minimal so nothing distracts from what's in the glass. Honey from a beekeeping collective in the Sierra Norte mountains finds its way into the drinks, which is either poetic or ironic, probably both.

Graffiti walls, mismatched furniture made from recycled odds and ends, and a cocktail menu where the drinks have names like Wasabi Wan Kanobi. Two Schmucks, tucked down a side street in El Raval, calls itself a five-star dive bar, which is both accurate and the best possible pitch. Ice-cold beers go out as fast as cocktails, and nobody is keeping score either way.

The azulejos tiles and carved wooden facade have been pulling people off the street in Las Letras since forever. Up front it reads like a classic Madrid taverna, wine and fino and all the rest; out back, Diego Cabrera of Salmón Gurú runs a cocktail bar that gives the old bones something to talk about. The crowd arrives for tapas and stays longer than planned, which is more or less the idea.

The kitchen calls it "Bastard Italian Cuisine," which at least tells you upfront this won't be a Nonna's-recipe situation. The chef, who once cooked at the Argentine presidential residence, runs a tight à la carte that pulls Italian cooking toward something more personal and Argentine-inflected, keeping the flavour while ditching the trattoria formula. The rice-base pizza alone is worth the detour to Chamberí.

The two rooms share a connecting off-licence, which is about the most Barcelonan arrangement imaginable. Bar Brutal is a wine bar in El Born where the list leans hard into natural, biodynamic, and non-interventionist producers from Spain and beyond, with bottles also available to take away through that little shop in the middle. It landed on The 50 Discovery list, and the crowd drinking here on a Tuesday night suggests nobody needed the endorsement.

Frank Gehry's rippled titanium roof catches the light above one of Rioja's oldest estates, which makes for a slightly surreal arrival at what is, underneath it all, a nineteenth-century bodega with cellars full of aged wine. Winery tours go by foot, bike, or horseback through the vineyards, and the grounds spread into medieval villages, a spa, and golf. The kind of place that earns a second day without trying.

A mini luggage rack runs under the bar, a nod to the old design bones this cocktail bar chose to keep when it refurbished. Shingo Gokan's fingerprints are all over it: Japanese precision meets New York swagger, with the Sixty Forty on the menu, a drink that opens as a Martini and quietly becomes a Manhattan by the end. The room has enough hotel polish to feel intentional without losing the neighbourhood ease that keeps regulars coming back.

Parés Baltà is an organic and biodynamic winery sitting on one of the prettier stretches of Penedès, where the family runs tastings that pair wine and cava with chocolate or cheese, 4x4 tours through the countryside, and vineyard walks that end with a glass on the patio. It's the kind of place that treats guests the way it treats its land, which is to say with some actual care.

The gin and tonic arrives in something closer to an aquarium than a glass, garnished with the kind of care usually reserved for fine dining. Bobby Gin is a cocktail bar in the Gràcia neighborhood that has made the G&T its entire personality, stocking a dizzying spread of gins and tonic waters and pairing them with obsessive precision. Sitting at the bar while the bartenders work through the combinations is basically a short course in why Barcelona lost its mind over this drink.

Dark wood paneling sets the mood at this quietly serious cocktail bar on Aribau, where the Pernia family, long-running operators of the nearby Tandem bar, took over and kept the formula intact. Classic cocktails, made properly, served to people who know what they ordered and aren't in a hurry. The kind of room where the conversation stays low and nobody's performing for the door.

The white-coated staff here have been shaking their namesake martini since forever, in a room of dark wood, leather, and brass that makes you feel like you've stepped into a movie set someone forgot to strike. This is a classic cocktail bar, and the dry martini, mixed to a precise equal-parts ratio with French vermouth, orange bitters, and a green olive, arrives on a tray with some ceremony. There's also a hidden speakeasy below for food and cocktail pairings.

Especiarium is a cocktail bar in El Born that builds its drinks around spices, which explains the Cardamom, served in a bowl shaped like the pod itself. The currykiri arrives crowned with a giant fruit vapor bubble that's best popped with your nose, at some risk of sneezing. The staff are chatty and unhurried, and nobody minds if you just want a Negroni in the low-ceilinged room, which stays busy without getting packed.

Galileo is a cocktail bar on Carrer d'Aribau that has quietly started serving a full Italian dinner, which is how you end up ordering octopus over potato foam between negronis. The staff will steer your drink toward whatever you're eating, with a house rule of nothing too strong or too sweet. It works for a solo drink, a date, or a bachelorette weekend, and it appears in Difford's Guide and The Infatuation's Barcelona bar list.

The glass bar counter at this El Raval cocktail bar is etched with what looks like idle doodling until you notice it's the story of Paris and Helen of Troy playing out from one end to the other. The street outside has a rough-around-the-edges reputation, but inside things run elegant: polished decor, considered cocktails, and a crowd that dresses accordingly. Negronis are, unsurprisingly, the move.

A cocktail bar no wider than a one-car garage, with a varnished dark wooden counter that stretches so far back you half expect it to end in another city. Two bartenders hold down either end of the bar, which is how Tandem earns its name. The shelves run the full length and groan with whiskies, rums, and gins. Dark wood panels line the opposite wall, broken up by mirrors so you can watch yourself make excellent decisions.

The Alchemix is a cocktail bar in Barcelona that also runs a tasting menu, and the two sides of the operation take each other seriously. The drinks arrive in miniature and in costume, including a gin infusion poured from a teapot that looks borrowed from a cartoon. The food leans Southeast Asian and Mediterranean, a nod to the owner's years in Thailand, and it's been on The Infatuation's list of the best bars in Barcelona.

The queue snaking down Calle de Tudescos is how you find this cocktail bar, since there's no other obvious sign. The owner has gone on record saying you probably won't remember the drinks a year from now, which is either a refreshing admission or very good marketing, depending on your mood. What people do remember is the night itself. Check Instagram for the password before you go, or just join the line and hope for the best.

The wine bottles lining the walls aren't decoration so much as inventory, and on a busy night you'll be standing among them. This compact little wine bar sits across the square from Santa Maria del Mar, and the room is refreshingly scruffy for a place with a list this good, cavas and sherries alongside an eclectic international rotation. Grab a stool at the marble counter if one opens up; otherwise, glass in hand, you're on your feet.

The bar counter here was custom-built to one level so every bartender works the same station, which tells you something about how seriously Kevo Jacoby runs the room. This snug cocktail bar in the Salamanca neighborhood is built around classics, with signatures that riff and twist rather than reinvent. The owner is usually your bartender, which, after stints pouring drinks across several countries, makes him someone worth talking to.

Carved pharmacy panels salvaged from near the Alhambra line the back bar, giving this basement cocktail lounge a feel that's part Moroccan souk, part Andalusian apothecary. It sits beneath Ocaña on Plaça Reial, past the busier bar upstairs and down into a vaulted, double-height catacomb hung with Persian rugs. The kind of room that makes you order a second drink just to keep looking at it.

A cocktail bar on the 26th floor of the W Hotel, with the kind of panoramic sweep across Barcelona that makes you forgive the scene happening around you. Ricardo Bofill handled the interiors, and the crowd arriving after dark is exactly who you'd expect. Go early enough to catch the sunset before the DJs and the queue in the lobby below make the whole thing feel like a very stylish inconvenience.

Blue-tiled walls, marble tables, and a zinc bar that has been pouring house cava since before anyone can remember: El Xampanyet is an old-school tapas bar on one of the prettiest streets in the Born. Anchovies in vinegar and fat green olives are the moves here, paired with cold glasses of cava. The kind of place where tourists and regulars agree for once, which is its own small miracle.

Wood paneling, a mahogany counter, worn seats, and a cut-out of a bowler-hatted man peeping through blinds: GMT lands somewhere between a Fleet Street pub and a noir detective's waiting room. The cocktail bar took its name from a shortening of Gimlet, not the time zone, which tells you something about how seriously they take the bit. Soft jazz and low lighting keep the mood intact for anyone who shows up in a trench coat, ironically or otherwise.

The curved white marble bar, brass rail, and pressed linen make this basement cocktail bar feel like it's been here since the trams ran. Jazz drifts through a room that reads like the lower deck of a very elegant ship, and the bartenders match the setting, efficient and serious about their craft. The entrance, garish enough to give you pause near Plaça de Catalunya, is doing nobody any favors, but the room below it is the whole point.

The reception desk, the bar, and the restaurant share one open floor at Hotel Omm, so Moo Bar is less a room than a mood: metal-mesh curtains, rough stone walls, and low lighting that makes the whole lobby feel like an afterparty you stumbled into with a good sense of direction. The cocktail list keeps to the classics, made carefully and brought over by staff who seem to mean it. A quietly confident hotel bar.

Ordering a beer here would probably count as a minor offense. Old Fashioned is a compact cocktail bar tucked into Gràcia, where the gin and tonics flow freely and the house cocktails lean vintage without feeling costume-y. Swing, Charleston, and old-school jazz play low enough to still hear yourself talk. The room is small, the bar team is passionate, and showing up with a vague "something classic" request is genuinely all the invitation they need.

A cocktail bar in the La Torrassa neighborhood of L'Hospitalet, well past the tourist radius and closer to the airport than the Ramblas. The owner runs the local bartenders' guild, which explains both the quality of the drinks and the off-duty industry crowd that fills the wood-paneled rooms on a given night. Friendly locals make up the rest, and nobody seems to mind that you found the place.

Crystal globe lamps hang from a pegboard ceiling washed in lilac light, and the whole room reads like a design-school brief that actually worked. Valuart is a cocktail bar in the Eixample that leans into its own aesthetic without apology. After midnight, tables get pushed aside and a DJ takes over downstairs, so the line between cocktail bar and club is more of a suggestion than a boundary.

Pink marble pillars rise from black granite floors to a gold-leaf vaulted ceiling inside this cocktail bar at the Hotel Casa Fuster on Passeig de Gràcia. The effect is somewhere between a grand European café and a very well-appointed crypt, softened by wavy burgundy banquettes and chairs that look lifted from a Paul Smith window display. A good spot for a drink when you want the room to do most of the talking.

Pinball machines and dart boards share space with serious cocktail making in this converted Barcelonan townhouse a taxi ride from the centre. Torre Rosa is a cocktail bar that wears a social club costume convincingly, with bright, garnish-heavy menus that undersell what's actually coming out of the bar. The room is enormous and loud in the best neighbourhood-hangout way, which makes the craft feel like a happy accident rather than a performance.

The name is a nod to the old cotton-beating process, which is a clever way to remind you that you're drinking in a converted mercantile palace. Inside, though, the cocktail bar skips the grandeur for something quieter: timber, leather, and low light while the Eixample buzzes outside. The list runs classic to seasonal signature, the kind of bar where you can order either without embarrassment.