"I stayed at Catalonia El Retiro in November 2025, and I booked it because of the strong ratings on Booking.com and its advertised four-star status. What I found was completely different from what those ratings suggested.
The first room was in terrible condition. The furniture was worn and broken, parts of the flooring were damaged, and even the telephone was not connected. I complained and was moved to another room. That room was also bad. I complained again and was moved a second time.
So, in total, I stayed in three different rooms.
All three were bad.
The second room they moved me to, where I spent the night, had another problem. It was so noisy that I could barely sleep for most of the night. When I complained, the explanation was that I had asked for a city view. I do not accept that as an excuse. Hotels all over the world have rooms facing busy city streets. Proper windows and soundproofing are supposed to keep the noise outside. Wanting a city view should not mean choosing between the view and getting a night's sleep.
At that point, it was obvious this was not a problem with one unlucky room. It was the standard of the hotel.
What makes this worse is that Catalonia El Retiro charges prices that suggest you are paying for a proper four-star hotel. I have stayed in enough hotels to know the difference between an older property and a badly maintained one. This was badly maintained.
The biggest surprise for me was the gap between the hotel I experienced and the ratings I had seen online. Those ratings were a major reason I booked the hotel in the first place. After seeing three rooms myself, I genuinely struggled to understand how the hotel had maintained such strong scores.
I am attaching photos because people should be able to see the condition for themselves.
This review reflects my stay in November 2025. Perhaps the hotel has renovated since then. I hope so. But based on what I personally experienced across three separate rooms, I would not consider this remotely close to a four-star standard."
