Dreams come true

Early in the 19th century, the utopian socialist Étienne Cabet imagined an island, Icaria, recalling the Greek island of the same name and the flight of Icarus in Greek mythology, where machines would do the laborious tasks instead of men. Later the urban planner Ildefons Cerdà, who realised his own utopian city dream in the Barcelona Eixample, applied this suggestive name to the old path that led to the Poblenou cemetery, then surrounded by factories.

For decades the area now taken up by Nova Icària Beach was known as Somorrostro, a shantytown housing thousands of families in terrible conditions. When that disappeared at the end of the 1960s, the area was left abandoned until Cerdà’s dream came true with the Barcelona ’92 Olympics. Nova Icària was reclaimed and turned into one of the beaches that locals prize the most.

Fun and quiet

Today Nova Icària is one of the quietest beaches in Barcelona, along with Bogatell. So its users tend to stay longer than those of the other beaches.

In the middle of the city’s shoreline and with the Port Olímpic’s twin towers as a backdrop, it is 415 metres long and has one of the best set of leisure facilities of all Barcelona’s beaches. You can enjoy a quiet day there at the table-tennis tables next to the Bogatell breakwater, or the volleyball courts next to the Olympic Port.