Barcelona Nord is a bus station in the Eixample-adjacent part of Barcelona, Spain, and despite carrying the code XJB in some booking systems, it is not an airport - it is the city's main intercity and international coach terminal, serving long-distance bus routes rather than flights. Travelers searching for car rental here are almost always better served by the dense cluster of rental desks in central Barcelona, a short walk or metro ride from the station, or by Barcelona-El Prat Airport (BCN), the region's real air gateway roughly twenty minutes south of the city center by car.
If your itinerary brings you through Barcelona Nord by coach, picking up a rental car is straightforward once you know where to look: city-center locations near Placa de Catalunya and the Sants train station both carry a wide range of vehicles, and many visitors combine a coach arrival with a short taxi or metro trip to reach a rental counter rather than expecting one directly at the bus terminal. El Prat Airport remains the highest-volume pickup point in the region if your trip also involves a flight, with counters covering the bulk of international and local rental options.
Once on the road, driving is on the right throughout Spain and Catalonia, and Barcelona's city traffic is dense, with a mix of one-way streets, tram lines and restricted low-emission zones that make careful route planning worthwhile before setting off. Outside the city, Catalonia's toll motorways connect Barcelona efficiently to the Costa Brava coast, Girona and the French border, while the Pyrenees foothills to the north offer a more mountainous, winding alternative for those continuing inland. Given that Barcelona Nord itself has no on-site rental presence, treating it as a transit point rather than a pickup location will save time on any Catalonia car rental trip.