The Sagrada Familia hostel Barcelona is the Barcelona Skateboard Hostel. A designer hostel with top facilities and great location. It has a skateboard theme that reflects the vibrant urban culture and artistic creativity of Barcelona. We reached out to Gisela Mena, marketing manager of Sant Jordi hostels, to ask a couple of questions.

Tell us a quick story about the early days of Sant Jordi Hostels Sagrada Familia.

The Sant Jordi Group, dedicated to the temporary accommodation of guests and students, was founded in 1999 to provide personalized service of accommodation and welcome people of all ages who want to stay in the city of Barcelona, with good prices and customized service and attention.
Initially, the Group focused on serving university students in shared apartments, but in 2003 decided to take a step forward and create the first hostel of the chain: Sant Jordi Alberg, to accommodate guests traveling alone or in small groups, with shorter stays in Barcelona and looking for affordable accommodation while getting high standard service and for whom socializing is a fundamental part of the travel experience.

Why did you decide to integrate skate into your concept?

Gradually we developed a concept of high-quality service and social atmosphere and we wanted to give an extra to the experience of our guests and we opted for the thematization of our hostels. Our guests are mostly young people with an adventurous spirit and many of them, besides partying, are lovers of sports, music, art... That is why we decided to dedicate our hostels to different themes. The first one in Barcelona was skateboarding and urban arts and in 2010 the first skate hostel in Europe was born: Sant Jordi Hostels Sagrada Familia.

Its name comes from the location near the emblematic icon of Gaudi, but the essence of the hostel is far from the imaginary of the Catalan architect. Our skate hostel converted into a museum of unique vintage pieces of skate history, allows you to relive the golden years of skateboarding, in addition to practicing the sport inside the hostel itself on our mini ramp. All this is decorated with urban art that we periodically renew with artists from around the world.

Our Sant Jordi Hostel Sagrada Familia was designed from the beginning to be a skater's paradise. Knowing that Barcelona is considered the European capital of street skating and probably the best city in Europe for skateboarders, we thought it was more than appropriate that Barcelona was the city with the first skate hostel in Europe.

Our goal was to create a skate hostel that would be the ideal accommodation for skaters visiting Barcelona and, at the same time, a comfortable place for all other travelers looking for the best facilities and services of a hostel in Barcelona, all at a reasonable price.
Also, our hostel has been visited by skateboarders such as Evan Smith or Luan de Oliveira.

Tell us a bit more about the local skate scene in Barcelona.

For years Barcelona has been among the best places to skate in the world and year after year skaters from all over the world come to our city to enjoy our spaces, beaches, landscapes, and social life with a multicultural atmosphere that makes this city unique in the world.
In the 90's Barcelona was a kind of Mecca for skaters and this has led to the creation of emblematic spaces in our skate scene as the MACBA, in addition to the commitment of municipalities to create spaces dedicated to this sport such as municipal Skate Parks (in Barcelona there are 5 public skateparks).
Maybe because of this, the city landscape itself has become skate-friendly in many aspects and its spaces invite to practice this sport.

Visit Sant Jordi Hostels website