I must emphasize to anyone planning on going to western to plan on staying for a while in Barcelona... I also hear Madrid is awesome but haven't been.

 

Madrid is over-rated IMO... if you go as far as Madrid get down to the south!!!

Its out of the way so not many people make it but cities like Cadiz, Marbella, Cordoba, Granada, Jerez....

I love southern spain, excited to see Barcelona.

 

This is too late for the OP, but when in Barcelona I found a really cool bar called "El Petit Toro." Its your standard bar, and the cool feature is each table has its own beer pump! Overhead in ceiling corners, are LCD TV's that show how many Litres of beer each table has consumed. The patrons ranged from 20-40 years of age, and mostly groups of guys -- it didn't take too long for the atmosphere to become a contest of alcoholic drinking ability!
The downside though, was that smoking was allowed inside the premises.