UKC

we’ve got a flight to Barcelona booked for the last weekend in April and 2 weeks hols and both guide books.   Our heads are fried with options.  Choose one gem of an area and stay there, rent a central cottage and drive around, hire a camper van and roam?? - any comments from experience and personal favourites most welcome.   We climb around the 6c mark  

Cheers, Rog n Rach 

Both are excel·lent options. Perhaps Lleida is a better option for multi-pitch climbing

Cheers

Both areas are brilliant!  Tarragona possibly has the better climbing, (Siurana and Margalef), but for me the Lleida area has the edge, because you have the Pyrenees as backdrop and the vultures soaring around you.  It also has more choice of altitudes to suit the weather.

I think it would be hard to find accommodation which gave you easy access to both areas.  However, if you have two weeks you could rent accommodation in Lleida for one week and Tarragona for the other.  Personally though, I prefer taking a camper van.  There are plenty of beautiful camping spots near the crags in both areas (though only a smattering of formal campsites open at this time of year).

Have a great time.

Just back from a month in Catalunya and I agree with the other posters - you won't go wrong with either. If forced to choose, I'd go with Lleida for more variety (mountain routes and single & multi-pitch sport) and flexibility to accommodate weather extremes. However, there are plenty of refugios and Airbnb options so why not tour around...

In both cases you need to think quite carefully about where to base yourself - crags in both areas are pretty spread out (Siurana and Margalef are an hour apart and it's 90mins from Ager to Col de Nargo). A bit of time feeding permutations into Google Maps will yield dividends.

Some inspiration and beta on individual crags on our blog https://rockaroundtheworld.co.uk/category/spain/catalunya/

Enjoy! 

Great blog Dominic

Quite simply - you can't and won't 'do' these 2 zones in one visit. Lleida may be thought of as 3 sub-zones centered around Tremp, St Llorenc, and Coll de Nargo. Tarragona might also be visualized as 3 - set around Margalef (which is in itself a grand and diverse collection of crags), Siurana and perhaps La Mussara further N. These are named for ease of transport, they all contain great interest and diversity so take a pick this year with assurance that there's plenty to return for another.