IT’S NO SMALL BEER

Size matters when it comes to beer in Barcelona. 

In most bars you can order a small or large beer. A “pequeño cerveza” is usually anything between .25 litres to .33 litres, an unpretentious and innocuous little refresher.

A “grande” is half a litre, and is often served in some preposterously shaped glass that is supposed to enhance the “experience” of the particular blend of water, hops and fermented grain juice that you have selected.

However if you go into one of the many English and Irish bars and ask for a grande cerveza the bar staff will usually respond: “you mean a pint”, and a pint you get in a traditional British pint glass. No truck with the new fangled metric system in the theme pubs!

Generally the price of beer is reasonable. Cheap even, by taxed-out British standards.

But beware; wander down to the tourist trap bars and restaurants at the bottom end of La Rambla and the system changes. Here small means a half litre and a large is a full litre, served in the sort of glass that is usually only to be seen photographed against the bosoms of buxom wenches in Munich during October.

The price, rarely advertised in advance, is also considerably larger, pushing €13; which suddenly makes the €12 set menu (excluding drinks) a lot less value than it looks at first glance. By the time the bill comes the happy holiday makers are usually too tipsy to put up an argument.

It is a tourist rip-off that has invoked the ire of the local newspaper ‘La Vanguardia’. Not that the restaurateurs are paying attention.  

If that is a bit rich for your wallet, there is always supermarket larger at a very reasonable 25 cents a can.