Natàlia Costa

20 Minutos — article archive

Month-by-month archive of my reporting for 20 Minutos, Spain's second-largest daily — urbanism, housing, climate and heritage across Catalonia and Valencia. Headlines are translated; the articles are in Spanish.

September – November 2026 · 57 pieces

• The day the Trambesòs begins its return to normal after ten weeks cut off
• Getting to school without a car in Barcelona: the travel passes children can use
• Which Barcelona shopping centres open on 11 September — and which close for the Diada
• Supermarkets open on 11 September: hours for Mercadona, Carrefour, Lidl, Aldi, Bonpreu and Consum
• With 300 brands, this huge outlet village on the French border is worth a trip in itself
• The best exhibitions to see in Barcelona this autumn
• Where to watch La Mercè's fireworks without getting trapped: good vantage points and how to get home
• Farewell to cars around the Grao Market: how this historic corner of Valencia will change
• Castellón city centre sheds its skin: 600-plus trees and dozens of streets with a new look
• Valencia's direct flight to New York won't land at JFK: the airport it will serve in 2027
• The missing stations on Barcelona's L9 metro line: the first will open in 2027
• The new Trueta hospital will transform this part of Girona: 370 homes, a green corridor and a new bridge
• Two chocolate fountains and never-seen products: Lindt opens its biggest Spanish store in Barcelona
• The unmissable exhibitions in Valencia this autumn: from Rembrandt to Pompeii
• Fira de Montjuïc begins to change forever: farewell to its great dome as the works advance
• From urban motorway to green avenue: the Meridiana's transformation enters the home straight
• L'Hospitalet will bury part of the Gran Via: the major project starting in 2027
• Trains already cross La Sagrera: what's left before the great station opens
• From motorbike factory to 2,100 homes: how this corner of Esplugues is changing
• Meridiana's new bike lane is about to open: here's the route
• What Valencia's new Colón street will look like: works enter their final weeks before Christmas
• The renovated Russafa Market: new windows and a complete facade makeover
• Key moment for the new Pont del Petroli: the great platform readies its arrival
• Everything about the placing of the Nou Mestalla's great roof
• Raising the Nou Mestalla's gigantic roof: 4,800 tonnes and a millimetre-precise operation
• This part of Barcelona has Europe's densest concentration of students — and mobility is a challenge
• Fines of up to €1,500 for doing this in Valencia: penalties begin on 13 October
• Eight months from the elections: the big openings set to mark the home straight in Barcelona
• Supermarket hours for the 9 d'Octubre long weekend
• The four-day October break coming to Valencia: the dates and who gets to enjoy it
• The October holiday that creates a three-day weekend in Barcelona: when it falls this year
• Eight months from the elections: the big openings set to mark the home straight in Valencia
• Barcelona's new seafront promenade: greener, sportier, with new spaces facing the sea
• The Valencia shopping centre nearing full occupancy: new stores and a 600-metre Decathlon
• Hispanic Day weekend in Catalonia: what opens and what closes
• The buildings not to miss at this year's Open House
• Barcelona's beaches in autumn: the services still running
• The Barcelona school playgrounds anyone can use — even if your kids don't study there
• 344 flats transform Turianova: inside one of the big developments of Valencia's new south
• Not housing: what will fill the Diagonal's new skyscraper
• Catalonia's most expensive house: €22 million, eight bedrooms and the sea at its feet
• Ultra-luxury finishes: Barcelona's new skyscraper of million-euro apartments
• Fira Gran Via's gigantic new hall takes shape: 59 lifts and escalators
• Mushroom picking near Barcelona can end in a fine: the rules many don't know
• Where to forage for mushrooms in Catalonia: the best forests and a map of likely spots
• Valencia will raise a monument to the DANA volunteers: the design and the chosen date
• A new chapter for Bonaire after the DANA: more shops, new spaces and a 10,000-metre expansion
• Buyer sought for Catalonia's biggest shopping centre: on sale for around €500 million
• The Barcelona neighbourhood where flat-sharing costs most — and it isn't the Eixample: €800 a room
• Everything we know about the future Malva-rosa Library
• Seven months on, Collserola stays closed: why Barcelona's great green lung remains off-limits
• What became of Barcelona's legendary Bulevard Rosa: a giant 1,600 m² restaurant on Passeig de Gràcia
• The area between Cornellà and Esplugues transforms around the new Vithas hospital: hundreds of flats and new shops
• The future of the Pont d'Esplugues: from historic bridge to major Baix Llobregat transport hub
• Peñíscola's seafront after the demolition of its shoreline shops: the end of a 30-year legal battle
• The five Catalan hospitals among the world's smartest — two in the global top 40
• Barcelona's most famous tapa takes over La Barceloneta: 20 bars reinvent it for under €7 — this Saturday only

December 2025 · 43 pieces

• Lleida's big shopping-centre build presses on through summer, on track for 2027
• Inditex gets the green light to transform the Tres Xemeneies forever — here's how it will look
• The summer's most awaited hotel opens on 1 August: the historic Hotel Capri's new life
• The projects Barcelona never built: the Hermitage, Eurovegas and the Sagrera tower
• Christmas shopping: this Vallès town is the most expensive place in Spain to fill the basket
• Queues guaranteed: an L'Hospitalet bar offers 100 kilos of free 'bravas' — and braces to be overrun
• The bus that strings together Barcelona's Christmas-lights hits — the best way to see them
• Row over the Barcelona street whose Christmas lights were designed for people in cars
• How to get tickets for Rosalía's concerts: Madrid and Barcelona dates and prices
• Catalonia's tallest crochet Christmas tree — the work of 40 women
• The new skyscraper at Barcelona's gateway everyone is talking about
• The Besòs power-station revamp: how the Tres Xemeneies overhaul starting in 2026 will look
• The Christmas market Catalans are crazy about — the most popular in southern France
• A Modernista jewel that isn't Gaudí — and shines like never before this Christmas
• Barcelona's biggest covered ice rink is less than 20 minutes from the centre
• A company lands in Girona looking to hire a hundred people
• What Barcelonans really eat at home — a study leaves little doubt
• A big American burger franchise lands in Barcelona — the first of many
• Where to park in Barcelona over the holidays: tricks to keep your sanity
• Bigger than Barcelona's: a natural ice rink beside a European-style Christmas market
• Berto Romero's birthplace: the medieval town near Barcelona turned viral tourist draw
• Baix Llobregat wants its own 22@: the business hub taking shape south of Barcelona
• Prodigi, Barcelona's most affordable Michelin-starred restaurant
• Million-euro homes beside €16,000 salaries: Barcelona's startling invisible frontier
• A Barcelona-born adventure bound for the end of the world — in a €1,000 Fiat Marea
• Not Pedralbes, not Bonanova: where Barcelona's wealthy live now
• Film set and cradle of Joan Miró: one of Barcelona's last hidden passageways
• The new Joan Miró-inspired square in Miami Platja: water jets and a vast pergola
• The 'Armstrong effect' sends demand soaring in Girona's Barri Vell
• The Tarragona town with more thousand-year-old olive trees than anywhere on Earth
• Catalonia's most Christmassy village: snow, stone streets and a National Geographic crush
• Where to live Christmas in Catalonia: the markets that matter
• America's discount giant readies its Spanish landing — first stop Barcelona, this spring
• The Gran Via-Glòries revamp gets its calendar: works start in 2026
• Alternatives to the caganer: nativity figures even funnier than the icon
• The Catalan town that celebrates Christmas on the beach, with monumental sand figures
• L'Hospitalet Three Kings parade: date, times and route
• Santa Coloma Three Kings parade 2026: times and route
• Cornellà Three Kings parade 2026: times, route and royal entourage
• Mataró Three Kings parade 2026: date, times and route
• It was called Sr. Lobo in the late 90s — and it's nothing like what it is today
• Alcanar heads toward Catalonia's first climate evictions — mayor's resignation included
• Farewell to one of Barcelona's most legendary clubs, closing after almost 50 years

NaT · 12 pieces

• Riding the Barcelona metro after the lifelong cardboard tickets disappear
• No more reserving beach spots with parasols in Salou: fines of up to €3,000 this summer
• Watch out on Valencia's beaches: saving a spot can cost you €750 this summer
• The nightlife icon that made Torredembarra famous in the 80s reopens — set to be a summer hit
• Flip-flops, a backpack, trousers and a T-shirt: Barcelona's kit for beach-theft victims
• The future Glòries tower: 35,000 square metres of homes, offices and public facilities
• The last towers of the housing boom rise 25 minutes from Valencia
• Castelldefels station's underpass works enter the home straight — the renovation, up close
• The Tour de France route through Catalonia: stages, cities and towns
• Valencia begins the Calle Colón revamp: more pedestrian space and noise-absorbing asphalt
• Valencia breaks ground on Infinity: the mega-mall with a wave pool and 240 shops
• The future Carmen Thyssen Museum: ceramic curves that shift colour with the sun

January 2026 · 4 pieces

• 'Coherent but without mystery': an expert's critical reading of the Sagrada Família cross
• The towers that will change Barcelona's skyline forever — nothing like it since the Olympics
• Trampolines and giant slides: Tarragona readies a huge indoor leisure park
• The Sagrada Família rises higher — and meets its most delicate challenge: the Glory façade

February 2026 · 10 pieces

• The best exhibitions to see out the winter in Barcelona
• Dan Brown's Barcelona routine: living on Plaça Catalunya, shopping at the Boqueria
• The corner of Castelldefels shaping one of Netflix's most-watched series
• Churro-and-ice-cream burgers: the Barcelona churrería of the moment
• The Terrassa factory full of plans: a Mies van der Rohe candidate where coffee is the fashion
• The seafront castle where Iniesta married changes hands — here are its plans
• The city next to Barcelona that wants to be a metro-accessible spa, with waters at 30°C
• The key exhibitions to switch on spring in Valencia
• A Barcelona passage of coloured houses with a 19th-century air — an oasis in the heart of El Clot
• It looks like Gaudí but it's in Tarragona: the Modernista temple that took 73 years to build

March 2026 · 4 pieces

• This couple hasn't paid rent in 13 years: they live in a van, circling the world
• The Tarragona coastal town that's ideal for retiring — or remote working
• Sleeping under a dry-stone vault: the new tourism bet in this corner of Lleida
• Not Cadaqués, not Begur: the town behind Serrat's most famous song is still a postcard

April 2026 · 8 pieces

• The Lleida village where you can explore a Civil War trench
• CNN says this medieval Catalan town is one of Europe's most beautiful
• Harry Potter will fly over Barcelona with an army of drones — tickets on sale today
• Harry Potter lights up Valencia's sky with 1,200 drones — tickets now on sale
• The Spanish towns caught up in the shoot of Disney's new film
• The luxury retirement home that hides some of Francoism's worst horrors
• The tiny Barcelona bar where Jamie Oliver and Ferran Adrià have eaten — four dishes since 1945
• Driving down this Barcelona street will now cost up to €90 — and who can apply for a permit

May 2026 · 1 pieces

• How Barcelona prepares for a papal visit: everything you don't see

June 2026 · 1 pieces

• Closure in Barcelona: El Molino has a date — this summer

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