Myself & my fiance booked into this hotel, to enjoy a city break in Barcelona to celebrate his birthday. Can I just start by saying that we are normal working folk, we usually stay in 3/4 star hotels. We do not expect platinum service, we just expect a clean and pleasant stay. On arrival we were pleased with the presentation of the reception (very modern & jazzy). The receptionist appeared very friendly & spoke great English. When we were checking in, there was a current guest complaining that his room was too cold & that he had been promised the heating would be fixed the day before. This elderly man was then given a blanket. The lift upto the room was a scary ride, after waiting a good few minutes for it to arrive, it was very out-dated & unsafe looking & both myself & my partner got a mini electric shock inside (this continued to happen everytime we were inside it). Other guests had obviously clicked on to this, as everyone else seemed to always use the stairs. The corridor was dirty & hostel like. When we opened the room (305) door the bed was instantly there, the most compact room I have ever been in! The door basically touches the bed on opening. The room was really really dark, the lighting was poor & the two windows were covered by two blinds each, that were broke & unable to be rolled up! The view looked on to an immediate void space between 4 brick walls. Everything in the room seemed grubby, broken & unclean. The bed had one thin grey/white sheet over it. The TV had no signal. The 'minibar' with 3 bottles of water in it was warm. The towel rail was hanging off. The towels were rock hard. Sockets were actually hanging off the wall! But the most unbearable of all.. was the ice cold temperature!! I phoned down to reception & said the instructions for the safe had been cut in half & the room was cold. He just said read the instructions & hung up. We went down to reception & the receptionist who had previously spoke perfect English, was now really struggling to understand us?! We were finally told that the maintenance man would fix it while we were out for dinner. We returned to the hotel just after midnight. We were told "I dont know, I think so, take a blanket" when asked if the heating had been fixed. We refused the blanket & reluctantly returned to the room to check, and surprisingly it hadn't been fixed & it appeared that no one had been in our room at all. I again phoned the reception to be told that I was to try turning the heating off & on a few times. This did not work. Then I was told to close the windows... The windows were painted shut!!! We gathered our stuff & headed to reception. We were given the key to room 705, this room was worse than the previous & the heating also never worked!!! I refused to stay a minute longer in that pit! I was reluctantly offered a refund! Although the £180.18 has left my account, it has still not been refunded! My bank are now disputing this! Overall this hotel does not deserve 1 star!! It was unsafe, unclean, cold & the staff were selective in their service! This is the first review I have ever left, but I just want to warn people off! We had to walk around at 1am in search of a new hotel. We paid £20 more for an actual 4 star hotel called Hoteles Barcelona Centre... It was luxury!! Sorry for my rant, I am just truly appauled at the service we recieved!!!