Pars Teatro Hostel

Great place, love the theme & decor. Great location close to La Ramblas, the marina & metro stations. Dorm rooms are very small & basic, hardly any room to move around in the 4-person mixed dorm & the bunks are cramped. Quiet vibe but nice kitchen & lounge space for meeting people. The room was pretty dusty if you need to store bags/clothes on the floor.

I arrived at the hostel in the evening by bicycle, after a long day of riding. During check-in I asked the man at the counter if there would be a place in the hostel where I can store/lock my bike during my stay. It's quite a nice bike and I didn't want to leave it to the fate of the Barcelona streets. Bicycle storage has not been a problem any where else I stayed in my 2 months of traveling. I was told that the hostel owner has a strict no bikes policy - I should just lock it on the streets like everyone else. This is unfortunately not an option for me. My compromise solution was to take the bike apart and to put the parts in my bicycle travel bag. This way it would be more compact for storage and also technically now a piece of luggage and not a bike. The man at the counter was not thrilled about this, but was still understanding enough to let me store the bike bag in a hostel storage room (there was anyway plenty of space in the hostel for storage). This was all a bit annoying, and the dismantling took some time, but I thought we found a good solution.  The real problem started the next afternoon. When I returned from the city, I was greeted by the man at the counter - "we need to get the bike out of here now! The owners saw on the video cameras that we stored your bike here and she is really angry!!!". He then followed up with a threat that they would kick me out of the hostel or call the police if I don't take the bike outside NOW. Needless to say, this is not the kind of stress I need on my vacation. He then agreed to let me leave the bike at the reception for a few minutes so that I can ask around in the neighborhood where I can store the bike. Thankfully I was able to beg some people at a local parking garage to let me lock the bike in their building, despite it only being for cars. When I came back (maybe 10 mins later) to the hostel, THE HOSTEL STAFF HAD PLACED MY VALUABLE BIKE UNLOCKED ON THE PUBLIC STREET, WHERE ANYONE COULD HAVE STOLEN IT. I have to admit that I lost my cool at this point and yelled at the hostel man. Sorry, but placing the property of your guests on public street without their knowledge or presence is not acceptable under any circumstances. In the end I don't blame the man at the counter for what happened and I think he was generally trying to help, but also worried about getting in trouble (if you are reading this, sorry again for loosing my cool!). It was clear that there is a very controlling owner somewhere in the background, who is not only actively surveiling the activities of the hostel by video, but also calling up and terrorizing the staff on a regular basis (I think she saw on video that my bike was at the reception and commanded the desk man to put it outside). To be honest the general vibe of the staff was one of oppression and fear. I have traveled to countries governed by oppressive regimes and it really felt like that. Honestly. Staff are also apparently supposed to carefully track in the computer w