The best way to beat a case of recession whiplash just might be a trip to Barcelona. Not only is Catalonia’s largest city a contagiously happy, optimistic sort of place, but it also just keeps getting better and better. Why? Recession or not — Spain’s economy is in bad shape, too — the locals honestly believe their city will be more beautiful, ecological, socially harmonious and culturally vibrant in the future, and they’re probably right.

This upbeat mindset also explains Barcelona’s insatiable appetite for the new and its willingness to wing it with the avant garde. Depending on the airline you use, your first taste of this futurism will be Barcelona airport’s stunning new $1.7 billion Terminal One, a shimmering white metal-granite-and-frosted-glass Bauhaus beauty by the busy Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill.

The ongoing local hotel boom that started with the 1992 Olympics proves the whole world is still mad for this town. Along the Passeig de Gràcia (the Gaudí district), the local equivalent of New York’s Madison Avenue, the 98-room Mandarin Oriental, created from a former bank headquarters, has made a big stir as the city’s first full-bore luxury hotel since 1994’s Hotel Arts. It plays up its Asian pedigree with Zen-Mediterranean interiors by the Spanish designer Patricia Urquiola; a spa and plunge pool in the old bank vaults; a rooftop terrace with a lap pool and great views; and a restaurant by Carme Ruscalleda, who has three Michelin stars in nearby Sant Pol de Mar and two in Tokyo.

The Mandarin has stopped the local flow of urban development toward the Mediterranean for the first time since Barcelona renovated its seaside for the 1992 Olympics. But there’s still a lot of action on the waterfront. Enoteca at the Hotel Arts won the city’s only new Michelin star for 2010, heaping praise on Paco Pérez’s contemporary Catalan comfort food — arroz with truffles, sea cucumbers and cepes in a sauce of ham drippings. The other big news by the big blue is the new W Barcelona, a 473-room sail-shaped building right on the edge of the old fishermen’s quarter of Barceloneta. Designed by Bofill, it was greeted with decidedly mixed reviews. Some locals have already started a petition to have it torn down (it blocks views, its prices offend), and the El País columnist Agustí Fancelli railed about the “scandalous privatization” of public land and compared the form of the building to “an inglorious beer belly.” Nonetheless, it’s worth popping in if only to take in the views at the Eclipse bar on the 26th floor over a glass of cava.