Sants: the dragon-slide park and the long high street
A surreal 1980s park with a dragon slide, then one of Europe's longest shopping streets. This is a Claude-drafted route awaiting the editor's walk.

1. Parc de l'Espanya Industrial
Step straight off the station into the strangest park in the city — a tiered boating lake watched over by ten lighthouse-like towers, built on an old textile-factory site in the 1980s. Walk the upper terrace first for the full effect.

2. Drac de Sant Jordi (the dragon slide)
The park's giant black dragon, its tail a metal slide kids queue for. Adults are allowed; nobody's checking. The Andrés Nagel sculpture is the thing everyone photographs and rightly so.

3. Plaça d'Osca
A leafy square a couple of streets in, ringed with café terraces and the calm centre of old Sants. Sit for a coffee here; it's where the neighbourhood actually slows down.

4. Mercat de Sants
The neighbourhood's covered food market, rebuilt but still doing the daily shop — fish, fruit, a couple of stalls worth a snack. Closed Sunday and quieter late afternoon, so time it for the morning bustle if the market's the draw.

5. Carrer de Sants
The long pedestrian-friendly high street — claimed as one of the longest continuous shopping streets in Europe. Not glamorous, entirely real: family shops, awnings, the unhurried commerce of a working district.

6. Plaça de Sants
The square where the high street meets the metro on Lines 1 and 5. A good place to end — and to look back down Carrer de Sants at how far the shopfronts run.

Sants: the dragon-slide park and the long high street