Located 30km north of Barcelona, up in the industrial heartland of Catalonia's Vallès Oriental, you will find the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. The hillside above Montmeló is a fine place to watch a race (especially if the onshore breeze is keeping things cool) but post-race – or even post-Qualifying or post-Practice, the city is the place to be.
Catalonia, like the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, works well with the modern F1 schedule. The track action may not finish until after 19:00 but given the restaurants and bars don’t really begin to fill up until after 22:00, that leaves plenty of time to get back, get changed and head out. If you're interested in the lively – and sometimes raucous – then the tourist trap of La Rambla is a good starting place, but if you've had enough of that at the track, head north from the tree-lined avenue into the gothic quarter: the pace is slower, the streets narrower and the architecture really quite stunning.
You don't necessarily have to go to Barcelona for a good meal and a fun night out. The towns further up the coast, adjacent to the circuit, offer promenades and dinner without the huff and the puff – and many of the teams choose to stay up here. When the Spanish Grand Prix was held in early May, they tended to be a little ghostly, but with calendar pressure moving the race back into June, everywhere is open.
If you have a little longer to stay in this corner of the Mediterranean, then a day or two in Barcelona is a day or two well spent. Any checklist of European greats will include the Sagrada Família and the Picasso Museum, but if it's the racing that's bought you to Barcelona, then a trip back into F1 history might be more your thing. There's not much left of the Pedralbes Circuit that held the Spanish Grand Prix in 1951 and 1954, but head up to Montjuïc Park and you can take a walk around the bones of the Montjuïc circuit that held the race in the late 1960s and early 1970s. You get a great view of the city as well. Montjuïc is also home to the Olympic and Sports Museum, which features plenty of motorsports content to indulge in.