Club of the year: Razzmatazz, Barcelona

There's a reason that Mixmag's Editor is playing an impromptu disco DJ set in the unisex toilets of the best club in Barcelona. It's not just because of the amount of cava we've consumed, and (let's be honest) it's not because of insatiable public demand. It's because it's Razzmattaz's 15th birthday, an occasion that demands maximum celebration and participation – and because if the clubbing city of the year has an epicenter, this might just be it. The club that is, not necessarily the toilets.

This is the Saturday midpoint of yet another weekend of birthday celebrations at Razzmatazz. Upstairs, across the five rooms of this sprawling mothership of a club, the line-up ranges from British band The Bohicas to New Jersey legend Mike Simonetti. Tomorrow the main room is the only one open, as Four Tet, Daphni and Floating Points go b2b over six hallucinogenic hours. As so often in 2015, Barcelona is going in.

In a year when the British authorities seemed to be waging a war of attrition on the country's club scene, Barcelona showed what can happen when nightlife is celebrated as the life-affirming, economy-boosting, community-building phenomenon that it deserves to be. A key part of Barcelona's rise to party supremacy, of course, is the Sónar festival every June. The seemingly exponential growth of the Sónar weekend has seen it seep into the DNA of a place that, with its weather, beaches, and huge demographic of creative, beautiful, passionate people who love to stay up all night, was already inclined to greatness. Sónar in 2015 was dominated by a program of electronic music that stretched from the mass appeal of The Chemical Brothers and Skrillex to auteurs like Squarepusher (another headliner) and up-and-comers like Cashmere Cat and Mumdance. But most excitingly, the countless parties that the festival has inspired now continue well beyond the weekend in May. There's the stunning events at El Monasterio, set in the picture-perfect courtyards of the
El Poble Espanyol architectural park, which in 2015 became a series that included takeovers from Mobilee, Pampa Records, Flying Circus and David Squillace's This and That. Speaking of Mobilee, their rooftop parties at the Diaganal Hotel and beyond have grown from a Sónar industry event to a fixture on the city's summer clubbing calendar. "I prefer Barcelona to Berlin," admitted the label's Ralf Kollman when we met him up on the roof. "There's so much love that goes into the events and venues." The appetite for events in unusual locations was encapsulated in October by La Gran Corrida at the city's biggest former bullring, with Luciano, Rossko and Audiofly.

The amount of dance music-heavy festivals that the city enjoys each year is also breathtaking – take Piknik Elektronik for example, running across 13 Sundays in a garden in the Montjuic area and featuring everyone from Floorplan and Apollonia to Maceo Plex and Claude VonStroke. Or DGTL Barcelona in August with headliners Ben Klock and Dixon and Adam Beyer. And of course Primavera Sound with the likes of Richie Hawtin, Simian Mobile Disco and Jon Hopkins nestled among the indie bands and hip hop stars.

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But festivals and events in offbeat spaces aren't all that keeps Barcelona's scene ticking over. There are great clubs here keeping the vibe going every weekend. There's Nitsa, aka The Apolo, a favourite with local resident Maceo Plex. There's the tiny Moog, tucked behind the prostitute-laden streets of the lower Ramblas and dripping with history. But most of all there's Razzmatazz, 15 years strong and still the beating heart of nightlife in the city. A clubbing colossus that from the outside looks as if it's been dropped from space into the quiet industrial area of Pable Nou, Razmatazz is unique for its size and ambition and also for its capacity for welcoming expats and tourists without ever losing its Catalonian soul.

"It's wonderful to be the name people know," says owner Daniel Faidella. "For people to say: when I go to Barcelona on holiday, I want to go to Razzmatazz." Indeed, it was a trip to Ministry Of Sound in London in 1990 that inspired Daniel to create what Razzmatazz has become. "They wouldn't let me in at first," he recalls; "I had to go home and change my clothes!" A few years later he was promoting parties across the city, and when the opportunity came up to buy the club on the site of Razzmatazz in 2015 he took it. An indie kid at heart, Daniel has always seen live music booking as the club's engine (it's named after a Pulp song, and the first act to play here were The Flaming Lips) – especially given the fact that things are currently tough economically in Spain. The previous club had different entrances as well as different music styles for each room; over time these were combined into the festival-like vibe that allows you to wander between five rooms of often wildly differing sounds, plus two giant smoking terraces and, of course, occasional disco stylings in the WC.

The main draw, of course, is the line-ups. Leaving aside live bands, this year the Raz has hosted DJs including everyone from our cover stars Tale Of Us to Flux Pavilion, Claptone to Ben Klock, Hannah Wants to Arthur Baker, Major Lazer to Horse Meat Disco, and label takeovers from Ostgut Ton to Suara to Visionquest.

And there's another side to Razzmatazz. Like when they shut down everything but the main room, open the doors at 6pm and put on one of the greatest six-armed DJ teams in living memory. Floating Points, Daphni and Four Tet begin by softening us up with horn-heavy vintage bangers that veer into Northern Soul at times, take a brief sojourn through techno and finish off with a homage to the relentless disco anthems of Fire Island that has the crowd in ecstasy. There are echoes of Four Tet and 'Point's incredible marathon Plastic People closing set in the intensity and raw passion, the way the crowd is locked in, following every twist and turn with complete trust. Afterwards, Dan [Snaith; Daphni] praises the locked-in vibe that happens when you get a dedicated crowd from the beginning of the journey at 6pm on a Sunday evening, Sam Floating Points hails "One of my favourite clubs in the world", and even the publicity-phobic Kieran Four Tet has a couple of words for the experience. "Wonderful," he mutters. "Loved it". Another great night in the clubbing city of the year is over. Actually, hang on, is it really only 1am? Another night in the clubbing city of the year is only just starting.

Duncan Dick is the Editor of Mixmag, follow him on Twitter here