The best clubs in Barcelona, from Zeleste to Razzmatazz

Zeleste, Razzmatazz and the room that grew out of a live venue.

Zeleste opened in 1973 on Carrer d'Argenteria, in Barcelona's old town, as a live-music venue rather than a club. It ran there for close to three decades before it closed.

Razzmatazz opened in 2000 as Zeleste's named heir, in a former industrial building in the Poblenou district on the other side of the city, and it is now Barcelona's biggest club: five separate rooms, each running its own music policy on a given night, from techno and house to indie and pop. It takes its name from the Pulp song, and Wikipedia records the Flaming Lips as the first act to play the venue. Razzmatazz's scale, not any single genre, is what makes it the head of Barcelona's current club scene: no other room in the city runs five different nights under one roof.

Sala Apolo and Nitsa.

Sala Apolo, on Carrer Nou de la Rambla, has been changing use since the early twentieth century. Sources agree the building has passed through several identities as the city around it changed, and settle on one certain date: it operated as a public ice rink, officially inaugurated in September 1951, before becoming the concert hall it is now.

Nitsa, one of Barcelona's first electronic club nights and still one of the best techno clubs in Barcelona, began as a weekly party in 1993 (some sources give 1994), then moved into Sala Apolo in September 1996, where it still runs. It is still listed on DJ Mag's Top 100 Clubs, not for the building but for the night itself: a room that has kept a serious electronic booking policy inside a much older concert hall for three decades.

Macarena Club: a flamenco tablao that became a dance-music room.

Macarena Club, just off La Rambla, has kept its name since the 1920s, when the same address operated as a flamenco tablao rather than a nightclub. It was refurbished in 2001 into what Resident Advisor calls one of the smallest, most tightly run rooms in the city: a single dance floor, capacity of about 300, and a DJ booth close enough to the crowd that a set there feels closer to a house party than a club night. Its music policy today is electronic dance music, a full turn from the room's flamenco original.

The best clubs in Barcelona now.

These are the best clubs in Barcelona open now, drawn from the venues that repeat across Resident Advisor's, Tripadvisor's and barcelona.com's current guides, plus the history above.

Opening hours and door policy change often. Check each club's own listings or its Resident Advisor page for the week you are going.

Where to go: Gothic Quarter, Eixample and the beach clubs.

Barcelona nightlife splits by district as much as by venue. The Gothic Quarter and the old town around Razzmatazz's Poblenou neighbour hold the bar-first, club-later crowd. Eixample runs later and more upscale. Port Olímpic, along the beachfront, is where the city's beach clubs sit, a category of their own that runs on daylight as much as on darkness.

That is Barcelona's club scene from the outside, filmed for a touring series rather than a single room. From the inside, here is one more route through the same night.

For the rest, the Selector plays a set at random from all 62,824 in the catalogue behind this site, which is a faster way into a night out than one more ranked list.