Mediterranean trading centre which supplied goods entering the Isle of Man during the eighteenth-century running trade.

By the 1750s Barcelona was one of the foreign sources feeding the Manx entrepôt. A contemporary account of smuggling from the Island stated that coarse Spanish brandy from Cette and Barcelona was being bought for about ten pence English per gallon and sold from Mann to smuggling boats for about eighteen pence. More than 4,000 gallons of such brandy were said to have been seized around Whitehaven in a single year.

Barcelona silks and handkerchiefs also appear in the surviving records. In September 1764 an observer reported that the Lurcher cutter took aboard tea, china, brandy and fifteen dozen Barcelona silk handkerchiefs while at Mann.

The same type of goods appears in Irish revenue material. In January 1765 John Wetherall described the “Isle Man package” used by revenue officers when identifying goods believed to have come from Mann, including tea, tobacco, spirits, Indian and Barcelona handkerchiefs and other foreign merchandise.

After Revestment the trade changed sharply. In proposals to the Treasury, William Lutwidge reported that illicit trade had been largely extinguished. The foreign goods imported since the Crown acquired the Island included some Barcelona silks brought in before a later prohibition, together with wine and fruit from Spain.