How the list is made and checked

What this site is

Chess in Barcelona is a list of the places and events where people meet over a chessboard in Barcelona and the towns of its metropolitan area: clubs, cafés and bars, outdoor tables and giant boards, libraries and centres cívics, players' groups, recurring tournaments, schools and coaches with a public offer, and chess shops.

It is meant as information support for the chess community, for a visitor looking for a game tonight as much as for a parent looking for a class. It rates nothing and ranks nothing. A card describes an entry; it does not recommend it.

Where the facts come from

We start from public sources: club websites and social pages, federation listings, city and district programmes, event listings, the press, directories and map listings. An entry is added only when it has a name and a source we could open and read.

Each fact is recorded with its source, a flag and the date we read it. Quotes are kept short and left in their original language, which here is often Catalan or Spanish. Names are never translated. The status of an entry follows the latest dated trace of chess there, such as a calendar entry, a tournament record or a dated post.

Official, secondary, unverified

Official means the fact comes from the place itself, its organiser or the chess federation. Secondary means someone else reported it: a directory, a newspaper, a listing site. Unverified means it was posted by users or appears in a single source that nothing else backs up.

A flag describes the source, not the place. An official fact can be out of date, and an unverified one can be right; the date next to each flag tells you how old the information is.

When the sources say nothing

Many details are simply not published: a fee, whether boards are provided, who may come. In that case the card reads "not stated by sources". We do not guess, and an empty line is never held against a place.

If you know the missing detail and can point to a source, the suggestion form is the way to add it.

What we do not measure

• The strength of the players, or the level of a club's teams.
• The quality of teaching or coaching, or the results of a school's pupils.
• Atmosphere, friendliness, or how at ease a newcomer may feel.
• Prices beyond what a source publishes; we do not ask places for quotes.
• Whether a session takes place on a given day: we record the latest dated trace, not attendance.
• Building accessibility, unless a source states it.
• Chess played only online: the list covers places and events where people meet in person.
• Scores of any kind: we compute none, and a review is quoted only to date a trace.

Right to reply and corrections

Any place, organiser or player can ask for a correction, an addition or a removal through the suggestion form. Reports are stored and read together at the next update of the list; nobody edits cards by hand in between.

A card changes when a source we can open supports the change. Every correction is dated in the update log and shown on the card it concerns. We do not reply to reports unless the message asks for a reply and leaves a contact.

Dates and update waves

Sources for this edition were read from 2 October 2026 to 6 October 2026.

The list is refreshed in update waves, about every 6 months. Each wave re-reads the sources behind the cards, applies the reports received since the last wave and records the changes in the update log. Between waves the list stays as published.

Who keeps this list

Chess in Barcelona is an independent editorial project run by chess players. There is no company behind it, and no place pays to be listed or to be placed higher.

We do not sign the cards with our names: the list should be judged by its sources, and anyone can check any line by following its link. Questions and corrections go through the suggestion form, like everyone else's.

Open data

The whole list is published as a JSON dataset under the CC BY 4.0 licence, with every fact, flag, date and source. Machine readers can start from llms.txt. Please credit Chess in Barcelona and keep the dates when you reuse the data.

What was left out

93 candidates were checked and left out: duplicates, places where no source mentions chess, one-off events, entries we could not tie to a source, unnamed map marks and places outside the metropolitan area. Each is named with its reason in the dataset.

Maps and positions

Map positions come from OpenStreetMap, from a map link the place publishes, or from a Google Maps listing. Where none of these exists, we looked the street address up in OpenStreetMap's search service; such positions are marked approximate on the card.

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database Licence (ODbL). Map links open openstreetmap.org; this site loads no map tiles itself.