If you love sport and you’re thinking of visiting Barcelona in early September, this year there’s an added incentive: as well as enjoying the restaurants, terraces, city routes and so on, you’ll be able to go to a game in the final stages of the Basketball World Cup, now in its seventeenth edition.

Spain’s Basketball World Cup team

The games to be played in Barcelona, which include some of the round-of-16, quarter-final and semi-final knockout ties, will take place on 6, 7, 9 and 11 September.

Tickets have practically sold out, although there’s still a chance of getting hold of a pass to see the best basketball players in the world through the secondary ticket market. On the Ticketbis site, for example, you can find tickets from €150.

As you’d expect, the venue chosen for the games held in Barcelona is the Palau Sant Jordi, which holds 16,500 spectators.

The Palau Sant Jordi was built for the 1992 Barcelona Olympic Games, and since then it has hosted everything from big-name concerts to top-level sporting events like this one. It also hosted the World Swimming Championships, which I had the chance to see last year.

World Championships, Barcelona

Today, together with the Calatrava tower and the Olympic Stadium, it has become yet another emblem of the city and one more reason to visit Montjuïc hill and all its charms, such as the coloured fountains, Montjuïc Castle, the MNAC and its various parks.