It seems that August is not the best month to visit Barcelona. It's hot and muggy and full of tourists. Many of the locals go on vacation to spend the month in cooler weather. Many of the small shops are closed, while the big ones are running their August sales, to get some revenue from the depleted population.
Barcelona lives in a time zone all its own. You might find a coffee bar open for breakfast at 8:30, but you'll be its first customer. Breakfast consists of a tiny cup of café con leche and some sort of pastry. Around 1:30 or 2:00, the shops start shutting down, and everyone walks out for the big meal of the day. At 4:00, everyone goes back to work till around 8:00. Then they go home, open all of the windows to catch the evening air, and go out again, to promenade or sit in a bar, or have dinner in a restaurant. You can nibble on tapas early, but nobody would consider sitting down to a real meal before 9:30.
The second language here is Castilian. The first is Catalan. It's supposed to be closer to Provencial than to "real" Spanish. I find it very close to Latin. I have to listen carefully during church services to tell which language they're using.
Catalunya was a hotbed of Republicanism during the Civil War, and Catalan was suppressed while Franco was in power. After his death, however, the language resurfaced.
