This policy explains what Barcelona Tourism Guide (www.barcelonatourism.org) collects when you visit, why, and what you can do about it. It describes how the site works today, and is updated when that changes rather than written to cover every eventuality.
Last updated: 21 September 2026.
The short version
You can read every guide on this site without giving us anything. We have no login, no newsletter, no comment section and no shop. Some of the booking links in the guides earn a commission, which is explained below. The only time you hand over personal information is if you choose to fill in the contact form. Beyond that, we use Google Analytics to see which guides get read, and the site is hosted and served like any other website, which means the server records the technical details of your request.
Who is responsible
The site is run by the independent publisher of Barcelona Tourism Guide, who is the data controller for anything described here. The contact form is the route for any question about your data, including a request to see it or delete it.
What the contact form collects
The form asks for your name, your email address, a subject and your message. That is delivered to the editor’s mailbox and kept there so the conversation makes sense if you write again. It is used to reply to you and nothing else: it is not added to a mailing list, not used for marketing, and not sold or shared. Ask through the form and the correspondence will be deleted.
The legal basis is your consent, given by choosing to send the message, together with our legitimate interest in answering it.
Server logs
The web host records standard access logs for every request: IP address, the time, the page requested, the referring page and your browser’s user-agent string. These exist to keep the site running and to deal with abuse and attacks, they are not used to build a profile of you, and they are discarded on the host’s normal rotation.
Google Analytics
The site runs Google Analytics 4, which sets cookies in your browser and tells us how many people read each guide, roughly where in the world they are, and whether they arrived from a search engine or a link. IP addresses are truncated by Google before the data reaches us, and we never see individual visitors — only counts. This is used to decide which parts of Barcelona to write about next.
The site is also verified with Google Search Console, which reports the search queries that lead people here. Search Console works from Google’s own records and sets no cookies on this site.
If you would rather not be counted at all, Google publishes a browser opt-out add-on at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout, and most browsers can block analytics cookies outright.
Cookies currently set
Today the site sets Google Analytics cookies, the technical cookies WordPress uses to serve cached pages, and a cookie recording your response to the cookie notice. Stay22, the booking-link partner described below, does not set a cookie: it identifies your device from its characteristics and keeps an identifier in your browser’s local storage instead (visitor_id_id22 and cache_id22). Because that is storage rather than a cookie, the consent banner gates it at the script itself rather than by cookie name — Stay22 does not load unless you accept marketing, and withdrawing consent purges what it stored. You can delete or block cookies in your browser settings at any time as well, and every guide on the site will still work.
A cookie notice is shown on your first visit, produced by Aegis Consent. It explains what is set and stores your response in a cookie of its own (cookie_consent_7f64a3) so you are not asked again on every page. Which of them may run before you answer differs by country, and the next section sets that out. The Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reopens the choice whenever you want to change it. Your browser’s own cookie controls still work alongside it, though they are not the more complete of the two where Stay22 is concerned: blocking cookies cannot stop a script that does not set one, and the setting on this site can. Blocking costs you nothing either way — every guide works without any of it.
Your choices, and what runs before you make them
What runs before you choose depends on where you are reading from, because the law does. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, and in Brazil, Chile, China, Israel, Nigeria, South Korea, Thailand, Türkiye and Vietnam, nothing beyond the strictly necessary runs until you answer the dialog on your first visit — not analytics, not Stay22 — and Reject all sits on that first screen next to Accept all, not behind a second click.
In the United States you are shown a bar rather than a dialog, and it is not only a notice. Analytics starts on arrival there, but advertising and booking-partner scripts stay switched off until you answer it. In Switzerland you get the dialog too, but analytics starts on arrival there and only advertising and booking-partner scripts wait for your answer. In Canada, and in the countries where notice is enough — among them Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, India and Mexico — everything described on this page starts when you arrive; the notice tells you so, and the same control switches it off. Everywhere else, and whenever we cannot tell where you are, the strictest setting applies: nothing beyond the necessary runs until you answer.
Your answer is kept on your own device, in a first-party cookie called cookie_consent_7f64a3 that only this site can read, so you are not asked again on every page. It lasts about a year. The Cookie settings link in the footer of every page reopens the choice, and withdrawing is the same two clicks as agreeing: the scripts stop and what they stored on your device is cleared, including visitor_id_id22, cache_id22 and the thumbmark_* keys.
Refusing costs you nothing. Every guide here is readable in full either way, nothing is paywalled, and no part of Barcelona Tourism Guide is held back from readers who say no.
If you are reading this in the United States
Several US states give you the right to opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information, and those words are broader than they sound: letting an advertising or affiliate partner receive information about your visit can count as sharing even though no money changes hands for your data and we have never sold anything of the kind. Rather than argue the definition, Barcelona Tourism Guide treats it as covered.
So the bar shown to US readers carries a Do not sell or share button, and for US readers the Cookie settings link at the foot of every page reads Do not sell or share my personal information. Using it stops the advertising category, which is what Stay22 and any ad partner sit in, and clears what they have already stored on your device.
This site also honours Global Privacy Control. If your browser or an extension sends a GPC signal, it is treated as a valid opt-out on arrival — you do not have to find the control and click it as well, and we do not ask again on later visits. Do Not Track is a different and long-abandoned signal, and to be straight about it: this site does not act on DNT, because nothing agreed what it ought to mean.
The record kept of your choice
Proving that a choice was offered and honoured means keeping a record of it. Each answer is logged with the date and time, the two-letter country the choice was made from, which of the rule sets above applied, a reference to the exact wording you were shown, and the choice itself, against a random identifier generated for your browser.
That record contains no name, no email address and no IP address. It holds a salted hash of your browser’s user-agent string, and the salt changes every day, so two visits on different days cannot be linked back together through it. Records are deleted after 26 months. If you want to see or delete the entries tied to your browser, ask through the contact form.
Affiliate links and booking partners
Some of the links on this site are affiliate links. Where a guide points at somewhere to stay, that link is usually one of them. Accommodation links are handled by Stay22, a booking-link service that adds a referral tag when you click through to a hotel or booking site. If you go on to book, the booking site pays us a small commission. The price you pay is the same either way, and nothing on this site is behind a paywall or conditional on using those links.
What that means for your data: when you click one of these links, the partner receives the fact that the click came from this site, along with the standard technical details any website receives, and identifies your device so that a booking made afterwards can be attributed and the commission paid. Stay22 does this from the characteristics of your browser and device rather than by setting a cookie, and it stores an identifier in your browser’s local storage. Barcelona Tourism Guide never sees your booking, your travel dates, your name or your payment details — what comes back to us is a count of clicks and, occasionally, the fact that a booking happened.
Once you follow one of those links you are on the booking partner’s own site, under their privacy policy, and this one stops applying. If you would rather not be tracked that way, the Cookie settings link on this site is where to do it: decline marketing and the Stay22 script never loads, and withdrawing consent later purges the identifier it stored. Blocking third-party cookies does not achieve the same thing, because Stay22 does not use one. The links still work either way and the price is unchanged.
Links to other sites
Guides link out to places like Sagrada Família ticketing, TMB, Renfe and the Ajuntament de Barcelona so you can check things at source. Once you follow one of those links you are on someone else’s site under someone else’s policy, and we have no control over what they collect. That applies equally to the affiliate booking links described above and to the official ticketing and transport sites, which earn us nothing.
Your rights
Under the GDPR and the UK GDPR you can ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected or erased, object to how it is used, or withdraw consent you previously gave. In practice the only personal data this site holds is contact-form correspondence, so a request is straightforward to honour. Send it through the form and expect a reply within a month. If you are unhappy with the response you can complain to your national data protection authority.
Children
This site is written for adults planning travel and is not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 16.