Around almost every corner in Barcelona you come across fascinating shops and eyecatching architecture

“Gaudi is waiting for you” promise the brochures. And so he is. Barcelona in Spain bursts with the splendors of modernisme, its home-grown version of Art Nouveau.

Thing is, culture usually costs. After a couple of days, some visitors start feeling the pinch. Same goes for novice travel writers who don’t know the ropes.

Yes, eating out can be inexpensive. And it costs nothing to walk the beachfront promenades or experience the razzamatazz of street performers, flower stalls and portrait artists along the famous Ramblas.

But you’ll probably also want to visit Gaudi’s Sagrada Familia cathedral and Casa Batllo, his eerily beautiful “House of Skulls” on Passeig de Gracia. So allow 11 euro and 16.50 euro respectively.

Notching up Barcelona’s big-ticket sights soon diminishes dollars or euros. Nine euro for the Picasso museum…12 euro for a guided walk around the gargoyled corners of the medieval Barrio Gotic. A one-day ticket for the hop-on, hop-off Bus Turistic: 21 euro. A tour inside the gilded opera house, Gran Teatre del Liceu: 8.70 euro.

Soccer fans wanting a behind-the-scenes peek at Camp Nou, home of European Champions Barcelona FC, can extract another 17 euro. Same for Port Vell’s Aquarium—a fascinating insight into Mediterranean sea-life.

A round trip on the cable-car to the castle crowning Montjuic Hill’s green spaces? Eight euro. The surrealist Joan Miro Foundation—another 8 euro. So far, sightseeing bills amount to 128.20 euro. On current exchange rates, that’s almost $166.

Yet there’s a way to experience all this and more for free.

A couple of weeks before leaving home, I contacted Barcelona’s tourism office. To prove my travel writer credentials, I included links to three Postcards on International Living’s website. (With the right guidance, writing these snippets isn’t difficult.)

I got a return e-mail telling me to pick up a Press Card when I arrived. This allowed free entry to 55 museums, tours and attractions. I don’t have insider friends here—I’d never contacted Barcelona’s tourist office before. And I wasn’t asked to bring copies of my print articles. The web stories were good enough.

Bagging freebies is simple when you know how. If you dream of a lifestyle like mine, here’s how to get it.