Case study · Sant Miquel del Fai · Bigues i Riells del Fai · Barcelona
The guide rope takes you to the overlook. The landscape starts where your hand stops.
How Barcelona's provincial council turns the half-mile trail at Sant Miquel del Fai into a route you can listen to: 17 NaviLens codes at the Rossinyol bridge, the Foradada passage, the fortified gateway and the cliffs, with audio descriptions that speak English as of August 2026.
17 codes
On the landmark features of the trail
0.5 mi
Of signposted natural and heritage route
14 stops
Points of interest with an audio guide and an audio description
1st pilot
The first NaviLens pilot in the provincial Natural Parks Network
The client
Barcelona Provincial Council Sant Miquel del Fai · Cingles de Bertí Natural Area
Sant Miquel del Fai is a monumental complex wedged into a gorge in the Vallès Oriental county, in Bigues i Riells del Fai, where the Tenes and the Rossinyol have carved rock shelters, waterfalls and ledges under the Bertí cliffs. Its priory begins with a donation dated 997, and the church of Sant Miquel sits literally inside the rock: it is the only one in Catalonia built entirely within a cave and preserved intact. Around it stand the Prioral house, the fortified gateway and two overlooks above the valley.
The provincial council bought the 173-acre estate in 2017 and gave it back to the public in April 2023, after more than five years of work. Admission is free, with advance booking and a capacity limit, along a signposted trail of about half a mile; only guide dogs and service dogs are allowed in. In October 2025 that trail became the first NaviLens pilot in the provincial Natural Parks Network.
§ The challenge
A trail you can touch, and a landscape you can't.
- 01
Braille ends where your arm ends
The panels at Sant Miquel del Fai carry braille text and raised photographs, and the ropes and the handrails lead from one stop to the next. But what has to be explained here is a gorge: the rock shelter above the church, the waterfall, the panorama over the Tenes valley. None of that fits under a hand.
- 02
Before you can read the panel, you have to find it
A braille panel only helps if you know it is there and you know where. Outdoors, among rock, water and steep drops, finding it by touch is already half the visit — and along half a mile you have to do it fourteen times.
- 03
Two languages for a site that draws visitors from abroad
The audio guides and audio descriptions launched in Catalan and Spanish. Sant Miquel del Fai is less than an hour from Barcelona and receives international visitors: English was missing, and extending a printed panel means rebuilding it.
§ The solution
Seventeen codes spread across a gorge.
The 17 codes are spread across the landmark features of the natural and heritage trail: the two overlook panels, the Rossinyol bridge, the Foradada passage, the fortified gateway, the Prioral house, the cliffs and rock shelters, the church of Sant Miquel, the Rossinyol falls, the Repòs square, the Monges lake, the Tenes waterfall and the old entrance gate.
Each code carries two different things. The audio guide: the explanation a staff member would give if they were standing there. And the audio description: a narration of what can only be taken in by sight — which is exactly what braille and a handrail cannot hand over.
Visitors point their phone without focusing — NaviLens is detected from several yards away, while moving, at angles up to 160° — and hear it. The NaviLens and NaviLens GO apps are free and read the codes in 42 languages; here the trail is voiced in Catalan, Spanish and English, and NaviLens GO adds photo galleries and interactive visit cards.
§ On the ground
The first ones through it were the ones who can't see it.
The launch was not a desk demo: the codes were walked on site with the ONCE, the Catalan guide-dog users' association and the Associació Discapacitat Visual Catalunya B1+B2+B3. Sant Miquel del Fai only admits guide dogs and service dogs, so the test ran exactly the way the visit runs.
And nothing was taken away. The code sits on the same panel that already carried the braille and the raised image, next to the guide rope and above the tactile paving. Whoever reads with their hands goes on reading with their hands; whoever doesn't now gets the same information in their ear, without having to find where to put it.
§ Timeline
From braille on the panel to a trail you listen to.
- 2017
The provincial council buys the estate
Barcelona's provincial council acquires the 173 acres of Sant Miquel del Fai to bring it back as a public space with free access. The site closes for restoration.
- Apr 2023
Sant Miquel del Fai reopens
The site opens again after more than five years of work, with free admission, advance booking and a capacity limit, along a signposted trail of about half a mile.
- May 2023
Braille, raised images and a guide rail
Every panel along the trail can be read in braille and carries a raised version of its photograph, and a rail guides visitors from the access ramp on. The visit is also offered in pictograms, easy-read text and QR codes with sign-language videos. The information reached as far as a hand could reach.
- Oct 13, 2025
17 NaviLens codes
The provincial council's first NaviLens pilot. It launches with the ONCE, the Catalan guide-dog users' association and the Associació Discapacitat Visual Catalunya B1+B2+B3, with audio guides and audio descriptions in Catalan and Spanish. Alongside the codes come tactile paving and tactile markers on the handrails, running the length of the trail.
- Aug 27, 2026
The trail speaks English too
The audio guides and audio descriptions for the 14 points of interest go live in English, on the website and in the NaviLens codes on site.
- Next step
Replicating the pilot across the network
The council's stated goal is to take the model to the rest of the parks in the Natural Parks Network.
§ Results
A heritage site that explains itself.
17 codes
The rock shelter, the waterfall and the panorama, told out loud
3 languages
Catalan, Spanish and English in the audio guides and descriptions
0.03 s
Detection time · up to 12× the range of a QR code
§ And your destination?
Your destination can also guide in 42 languages.
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