The hotel is clean, affordable, and the rooms are huge as they include kichenettes. The neighborhood is safe, easily accessible to local restaurants, pharmacies, grocers, etc. The staff is excellent. A few things to note. Please use the Thibidabo metro station, not the Vallcarca station. The latter involves a long walk and substantial hills. Second, unlike other reviews, we did not find it easy to walk to Park Guell. While walking is the best option (if not taking a taxi), plan on 30+ minutes and a good workout as the hills are intense. On that point, I would recommend older or out of shape travelers use taxis if staying in the northern part of Barcelona. The hills are quite intense.

Otherwise, this hotel is perfect. It's not fancy but its in excellent condition with fantastic maid service. Once you learn the metro system its easy to navigate to and from this hotel as you can take the metro from Thibidabo to Catalunya square in about 10 minutes. The sites we enjoyed the most were Sagrada Familia (arrive early and bring cash as no cards allowed), the Barcelona Cathedral, and the Las Ramblas shopping promenade. We also took a day trip to Montserrat and thought that was the best part of our trip. If traveling by metro, get the Barcelona Card online and pick up at the tourist desk right outside of baggage claim when you arrive at the airport. Provides free transport on all public transit and lots of discounts to museums. Well worth the money.

My husband and I booked a room a year in advance and confirmed the reservation before we arrived, asking for a room with a balcony and noting that we were two people but would pay for whatever size room it took to have a balcony. When we arrived we were given a cramped, expensive room for four with no balcony and told that one could not reserve specific types of rooms! They did move us after the first night (although we were charged as if we spent the week in the larger room we did not want), but we had to vacate the first room by eleven and were not allowed into the new room until mid-afternoon. The rooftop pool area was not a terrible place to wait with our luggage, but we went to Barcelona to see the city, not the inside of the hotel, Also, although the balcony we finally got was lovely (with an amazing view), the shutters were closed by the maid -- although we asked in Spanish, English, and using the card one puts on one's door that the balcony door not be shuttered -- and got stuck. So we spent another half day waiting for someone to come fix the shutter allowing us to sit on the balcony. Finally, the stove did not work (using it tripped the circuit breaker). Oh yes: the maid came in daily and turned off the electricity, which meant the refrigerator in which we kept food was endangered. Again, repeated efforts to have this stop yielded nothing.
The little grocery store downstairs was nice, as was the location and access to the metro; it was also quiet. However, we would not stay at the Aparthotel Bertran again, simply because we spent so much time dealing with getting a room, a balcony, and a working stove (eventually we did get one of two burners to work) -- time we would rather have spent seeing the city.