Barcelona Estació de França (Barcelona França Railway Station), Ciutat Vella, Barcelona

Arriving at this station early on a recent Thursday morning on my way to Primavera Sound festival was a highly confusing experience, entirely because I thought we were going to arrive at Estació de Sants (a station further north).

Imagine my concern when I picked up a map from the information desk, found Estació de Sants on it, went out on to the street and couldn’t make head nor tail of where I was! Thankfully after 10 minutes of confused wandering I asked a passerby for help and was surprised and very pleased to discover I was already near the guesthouse. Perfect!

Estació de Franca was very convenient for my trip - just a few minutes walk away from Barceloneta Metro station, close to where I was staying and not far from the Barri Gothic and La Ramblas either. It’s not a massive station either so finding my train home was easy…handy when there’s only one overnight train per day to Paris - missing it would have been a calamity!

Nice to see the photos. I used to pass through there often in the 1940s and 1950s on the way to and from France. It was much busier in those days, because it was the main station of Barcelona. Now it’s been lovingly restored but much of the life has gone out of it. The restaurant, run then by the Regas family, father and son, was a great meeting place.

Eclipsed for the past thirty years as Barcelona’s main station by the subterranean sprawl of Barcelona Sants, the França terminus station is nevertheless the much more attractive of the city’s two main stations, and worth a look in its own right as a piece of early 20th-century architecture.

Built in the 19th century as the main terminus for trains arriving from France (as the name suggests), it was rebuilt and reopened in 1929 for the International Exhibition held in Barcelona that year. With two huge, curving train sheds covering 12 platforms and a grand vaulted concourse with a polished marble floor, the whole project was conceived on a grand scale in a restrained fusion of the art nouveau and classical styles (although the external façade is a little too restrained for my taste).

The construction of the east - west line through the centre of Barcelona via the modern Sants station in the 1970’s rendered França somewhat redundant. Although it is close to Cuitadella Park and the trendy Barceloneta sea-front quarter, it is rather further from the current commercial centre of the city, although it is more convenient for the old Gothic Quarter. It isn’t even connected to Barcelona’s metro system – Barceloneta station is a good five minute walk away, via the back streets to the west of the station - but the half hourly airport shuttle (line C10) will also take you into the centre.

To-day, the station is the starting point for express trains to Madrid, Valencia and other Spanish cities, medium-distance services to other parts of Catalonia, the half-hourly train to Barcelona Airport (all which also pass through Sants) and a few overnight trains to and from France. The main concourse contains the ticket office, information centre, left luggage facilities and an incongruously huge cafeteria. The platform concourse also contains a quaint scale model of the station, complete with toy trains.

Although beautifully maintained, the small number of passengers who use the station seem completely lost in its vast, echoing public spaces. But that also makes it easier to appreciate as a piece of public architecture, and the absence of crowds and queues makes arriving or departing by train a rare and pleasurable experience.