This apartment was in a great location with plenty of sleeping space, but we did encounter a few issues.
First, the check in process is absolutely horrifying. You are required to set up an exact time for arrival and check in and are told to arrive within an hour of that time. We arrived 5 minutes before the hour was up and our host was not present. This apartment is run by a rental company so there’s no personal connection, and there’s no one present in the apartment regularly. Coming from another country, we don’t know much Spanish and didn’t have any capability to use our phones to make an international call to the rental company. We had to ask local shopkeepers and the other tenants in the building if we could borrow their phone. After being laughed at a few times, we were finally lucky enough to run into a very kind woman who knew no English, but we were able to communicate that we needed to use her phone. We got ahold of the company, and ten minutes later we were let in. Then we were told that no one was there to meet us because we were late and on top of paying a tourist tax, we would have to pay a late fee. But then the representative told us that the shower had just been redone that day and could not be used for the night, so he would not charge us the late fee because of the inconvenience of the shower. This was the most embarrassing and frustrating experience I have had traveling internationally.
We experienced three other small problems - a dirty towel was left behind in one of the bedrooms, the floors in the bathroom were pretty grimey in the corners, and we ran out of hot water after two 8-10 minute showers every day.
I would not rebook this apartment because of the check in process and the requirement of paying in cash a “tourist tax” upon arrival. Extra fees should be built into the cost of rental on Airbnb, not a shady cash payment upon arrival. The apartment was otherwise nice, updated, had spacious bedrooms, and the shower renovation was well appointed. We’ve stayed in Barcelona before and love staying so close to the beach, but there are several other rentals in the area to choose from that have a much more standard check-in where a key or code is left for arrival, and a personal connection with a legitimate host is far more welcoming than trying to deal with a large rental company.