Clothing and shoes for seeing Barcelona in Feb?

As in all big cities, you will see all sorts of people in Barcelona, wearing all sorts of clothes. There is no "right" or "wrong" attire, unless you are going to a fancy restaurant with a dress code. So, wear what you would normally wear in that weather. The most important thing about footwear is that it is comfortable on uneven surfaces like cobblestones, and that it is well broken in. After that, anything goes.

If you're worried about being an identifiable tourist, you will be regardless of what you wear.

Perhaps avoid wearing a "Trump for President" cap.

In a city as visited as Barcelona tourists are spotted (normally) by the way they behave, not by their attire. Not only we have a motley crew of "urban tribes" (or social groups if you prefer) ourselves -like in any major city- each one with their own dressing style/fashion sense/dress habits but also near 20% of the city's inhabitants are expats from over 120 countries each bringing their own 'sense of fashion' so to speak, therefore it's impossible to know just by looking at the attire whether you're a tourist or a resident. That said, there are "exceptions", some visitors are really something so they're spotted a mile away, I'm talking the ones in the likes of this -I hope you catch my drift.

As per local dressing codes, that's a permanent argument with some people -especially from the US I must say where there's quite a different view on this matter- that don't want to understand that a lot of cities here in Europe do "have" such non-written codes (ie. Paris, Milan or Barcelona among others). These so-called "codes" have developed (and evolved of course) over many decades and are, as I said, non-written and don't often follow a rule or a logical pattern... you need to have been born here (or have lived here for many years AND have really embraced the culture) in order to understand them. A short vacationer doesn't grasp it nor even realize it most of the time. These codes certainly go far beyond a mere "dress code for a restaurant or the opera house". There are some things you do and some you don't. Period. Something else of course is whether someone, as a temporary visitor, should bother about it or not. That's another matter for discussion and I personally feel there's no simple answer: striking a balance between respecting 'local ways' (a.k.a. 'blending in') and keeping 'my ways' is probably the best answer. In any case, you coming from a western society like ours probably share many of those 'dress habits/codes' so it's unlikely there'll be much difference in most situations -if anything the d**n 'shorts' thing on male grown-ups, lol!

This week we've had a drop in temperatures which are not expected to pick up until next week or so. During the day we're having 50s and low 40s when the sun sets and at night. It's forecasted that temps during the day will raise to mid 60s -like we had just last week- by mid next week. Note however that weather in these shores is quite hard to accurately be predicted due to the peculiar orography of this part of the world as it can be 'surprising' to say the least. For example, while we normally hardly have any snow in winter in Barcelona city (it's a coastal city), in 2010 we had a heavy snow on March 10th so that comes to show that it's important to follow the weather charts and ask a couple of weeks in advance or so to locals so you get a more realistic prediction than looking at historical data. I'd like also to point out that we here in Barcelona normally advise visitors to dress in layers when visiting in winter since there can be big differences in temperature between say 8am, 2pm and 9pm and also because when you go into shops/restaurants/attractions, interior temperatures are likely to be in their 70s, thus being able to get rid of a 'layer' is really a must.

Thanks Enric for a good explanation. Its hard to explain what dressing comfortably but respectfully means.

Ladies... while the melange of styles in the city is astonishing and what you wear depends a lot on your personality, your age, your financial capabilities, your social background, etc... --hence I feel there isn't "one style" anyone can point to and say "this is the style in Barcelona"-- I've added a few links that might interest some of you, if anything out of curiosity:

Did you know three of the four most important fashion clothing brands in Spain are based here in Catalonia, more especifically in Barcelona? These are Desigual, Mango and Custo Barcelona... and the fourth one, who's headquartered in Galizia in western Spain would be the famous Zara.

Some of the most popular local fashion Barcelona-based lady bloggers displaying 'what's in the street': Barcelonette | MartaBarcelonaStyle | LostinVogue | Emmalovesfashion | Dulceida | Aranland | GreatStyling | MissNobody | BCNcoolhunter

If you're visiting Barcelona and are a 'fashionista', you might be interested in these two fashion shows and trade fairs: 080BarcelonaFashion at the beginning of February and Barcelona Bridal Week at the end of April.

Note: I don't necessarily share the same taste in fashion than each of these sites, ok? And if you're curious on me knowing about these things: and old flame of mine is involved professionally in this world and hired me on a research project so I got to familiarize myself with it a bit... but I have to admit, it ain't my cup of tea :)))

Indeed @Stan it is :)

Thank you for all the wonderful advice!

Enric, that was a fascinating answer!

Do you happen to have other writings about the "unspoken" do's and don'ts? It's so interesting to me from a sociological point of view.

Also, you give very thoughtful answers on this forum and I just want to say, "thank you".

hahaha, thanks for your kindness. One of these days I'll have to compile all my answers and publish another book :)) -yes, I've written one already, for traveling to this city with children (well, teens), but I'm not supposed to mention it publicly in RS's own backyard, LOL!

In the meantime, please feel free to ask anything you want... if I can help I'm sure I'll manage somehow to find some free time to do so. I do enjoy sharing and learning from other points of view :))

The do and dont's are not really easy to convey... I've been fortunate enough to have lived in several major cities -mostly here in Europe- and only in a handful of them aside from my home city I've been able to grasp these social "norms", or at least to begin to make sense of them a bit. As I mentioned, many are not written anywhere, they are just observed and not by everybody so it makes it even more difficult to understand.

Yet, one must also realize that the biggest cities in most countries in Europe have evolved very rapidly these past 40-50 years towards more 'denatured' environments that fall short of representing the 'cultural traits' of the society they're in. Thus, there's a joke for example among many French saying there's France and then there's Paris (same goes for British towards London for example) as these cities no longer might appear to represent "the" Frenchness or Britishness of the rest of the country. I hope there are no misunderstanding among fellow Parisians or Londoners with my words. Same goes on in many other places, here in Barcelona too, many Catalans from elsewhere say sometimes Barcelona's not always recognised as a pinnacle of Catalan-ness (?) as other cities around Catalonia. Therefore, those traditional do and dont's might not be as universal and relevant as once they were among Barcelonians.

A lot of reasons for that: changes in social norms (ie. the 1968 Paris student revolt that started a deep change in the societies of the whole continent), influence from foreign cultures (lots of migrants living in major cities, Barcelona has 20%), change of values in society too -call it 'evolvement' if you want- etc.

That makes sense. I think that can be said for large urban areas vs more rural areas in the US as well. Culture is so interesting. I cannot wait to see the contrast from Barcelona to Madrid to Andalusia.

You might be in for a surprise... you probably 'thought' you were visiting one country with the typical regional variations, and you might discover you're not... but again, that's for you to discover :))

In any case, if you like me are passionate about history, sociology and geopolitics, for some background here you have a quite decent (and free!) ebook that covers in a bit of in depth these headlines that pop up from time to time in the international press about the Spain vs Catalonia conflict as perceived by an American writer and journalist living here in Barcelona and who's heavily involved with the pro-independence movement: http://files.cataloniapress.com/files/WhatsupCATcc.pdf The book is now old (written in 2013) since these type of movements tend to evolve quite fast and now we have a fully functioning pro-independence government and majority of seats in Parliament who's moving full speed ahead with the road map to independence, yet I invite you to read it and then judge for yourself when visiting these shores. This might help you to understand both, the views you'll encounter in Spain about this as well as the views from many Catalans when you visit us.