MADRID – Do you like to take your time over your morning coffee? Are you a digital nomad who buys a drink and sets yourself up in a coffee shop for the next four hours?
You might be in the firing line at one café-bar in Barcelona, which is taking aim at drinkers who take too long over their coffee — by charging them extra.
Café Bar Perfetto, which is in La Barceloneta area near the city’s beach, charges €1.60 (£1.10) for a coffee.
But if customers take more than half an hour to drink it, the price rises to €2.50 (£2.15). And if anyone takes more than an hour they will face a bill of €4 (£3.40) for their café con leche.
The bar is in the heart of a district that was once populated by fishermen but where 80 per cent of housing is now for short-term tourist lets to holidaymakers.
In an effort to make sure tourists or digital nomads do not occupy the tables for hours but only pay for one coffee, the bar has adopted this strategy.
A la Barceloneta si vols un cafè te l’has de prendre en menys de 30 minuts. pic.twitter.com/kJd0dsXjVv
— Maria (@maria_lostia) May 4, 2025It prompted mix feelings among residents, some of whom said they feel forced out of the neighbourhood by tourists.
“In Barceloneta, if you want a coffee, you have to have it in less than 30 minutes,” Maria Lostia posted on the social media platform X.
Gema Gomez, who lives in Barceloneta, supported the idea, saying her neighbourhood had become “colonised” by tourists.
“All the bars are geared toward outsiders and the ones that have affordable prices end up charging us €4 for a coffee if we go over our limit. I feel like I have been kicked out of my own neighbourhood,” she told The i Paper.
The bar’s owners said they brought in the idea because customers were taking too long over enjoying their coffees. However, they declined to comment on whether these were tourists or locals.
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“We decided to do this because people were taking longer and longer at the tables and only buying one coffee,” a spokesman for Café Bar Perfetto said.
Since the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona, this part of the city has been transformed from a run-down fishing port to a magnet for tourists.
A flat measuring about 30m2 costs up to €1,300 (£1,105) per month.
The café’s move is not the first time a small business in the wealthy northeastern region of Spain has made headlines for policies clamping down on time-wasters.
In 2023, a famous Barcelona shop brought in a policy of charging tourists €5 if they came in and did not buy anything.
Queviures Múrria, a historic delicatessen which opened in 1898, was fed up with tourists visiting only to take selfies and not buying anything.
The shop has a vintage clock and mahogany furniture, which make it an attractive Instagram spot for tourists.
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