Who Are the People in Your Neighborhood?

In the past Catalans were identified as travelers and explorers. However, it is also true that for a long time now Barcelona has been a top European destination; be it for business or pleasure, our Mediterranean city attracts people from across the globe. So much so that many foreigners from all over the world choose Barcelona as their residence.

Foreigners living in Barcelona are a mystery for many, not only for Spaniards but also for their fellow foreigners. With strong conflict arising over identity on the local and national scene, many resident aliens choose to keep a low profile, often preferring to stay above the fray. But despite an apparent anonymity and living almost hidden among the waves of tourists that visit our city, the number of non-Spanish nationals that choose to live in Barcelona has been steadily on the rise. The purpose of this article is to shed light on who these “new” Barcelonians are. First, some context. 

The Big Numbers

According to the most recent data published by the Spanish Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) for year 2018, Barcelona with its 1,628,936 inhabitants was the second most populous city in Spain, placing it between Madrid (3,223,334 residents) and Valencia (791,413 residents).

Of these cities, Barcelona has the highest proportion of foreign residents with 18.52% of its population—301,626 inhabitants—coming from abroad. In comparison, Madrid and Valencia's numbers are 13.34% and 12.92% respectively. 

Looking closely at the evolution of the population of foreign residents over time, the Catalan independence movement does not seem to have diminished the appeal of the city. In the last five years, after a lull in 2015, the number of foreign residents has increased steadily.

Municipal Register

The data we’ve used for this recount comes from the padró municipal (municipal register). The padró is a Spanish administrative registration system that holds the information of every individual in a municipality. It is the primary source of official data on population. The register falls under the responsibility of several governmental departments located at varying levels. Its creation, maintenance and safekeeping are the responsibility of each municipality, but  it is up to the INE to coordinate the various sources and verify the data. It is updated annually and official figures are compiled on January 1st. (If you want to know more about how to get on the municipal register check our article How to Empadronar-se in Barcelona.)

The dataset used in this article corresponds to the most recently published information to date which, as of this writing, was Jan 1, 2019. This dataset has a feature that must be explained. In the field of nationality only 51 different places of origin have been catalogued. This does not mean that only 51 nationalities are present among the inhabitants of Barcelona. It is a representational decision used for the release of the data.

The dataset has five categories that aggregate the figures for countries with low significance in the set under study. These categories are: Rest of Europe (8,987), Rest of Asia (5,760), Rest of Africa (4,554), Rest of America (3,025) and Oceania (489). All together, they comprise a not-so-small subset of 22,815 residents. Another datum in the field that does not correspond to a country is apàtrida or “stateless.” This group will be explained further ahead.

Smaller Numbers

A decade ago, in the burst of the economic crisis, the largest communities of foreigners in our city were those from the Magreb, Ecuador and Romania. This is not the case anymore. Studies show how the effects of the crisis and changes in the composition of the European Union (EU) have conditioned the migratory movements in our city and taken it to its current state.

Today, Barcelona’s three largest groups of foreign nationals are Italian, Chinese and Pakistani; it is a pattern that has remained consistent in recent years. In comparison, Valencia displays a similar pattern, however Madrid's international communities differ significantly.

Is This Land Your Land? 

My most indelible memory of Barcelona as a newcomer is one in which I was strolling around El Raval. I traversed the patio of the Centre de Cultura Contemporànea (CCCB), from Carrer de Montalegre and exited at Plaça de Joan Coromines. At the plaça, still marveled by the mix and harmonic coexistence of old and new architectural styles, I found, to my amusement, a group of young people in an animated game of cricket. In my head all those contrasts were summarized in a sentence: "I like this place!" It was my personal and unexpected Borgesian Aleph: different places and times all converging at one point in Barcelona. 

In the case of my anecdote, the protagonists were Pakistani or Indian kids of the barri but in many other occasions alien residents are hidden in plain sight. Let's put for example the case of foreign neighbors of Ciutat Vella, any given morning shopping at La Boqueria.

According to Barcelona Turisme, last year, around 10,005,305 tourists spent the night in our city—more than six times Barcelona’s population. If that number is distributed evenly over the year, it implies roughly 27,412 tourists daily—that’s equivalent to a medium sized neighborhood every day! Foreigners living in Barna surpass a quarter million and yet this figure seems tiny when compared to the number of tourists that visit our city. Chances are that, at any given moment, only one in 34 foreigners walking on our streets resides in the city. 

But, let's get to know better just who these 301,626 Barcelona transplants are.

Patterns and Tendencies

Roughly, nine in 50 residents of Barcelona were not born in Spain. Looking at the gender split in Barcelona overall, more women than men live here. In all 858,604 women (52,71%) and 770,332 men (47.29%) are registered in the city. But a closer look at the subset that is the foreign population shows that the ratio is much more balanced: 50.14% (151,249) are women and 49.86% (150,377) are men.

Do You Know Where Most Barna Transplants Come From?

One would think that the largest number of foreign nationals would come from Europe, but that is not the case. Barna is home to 97,790 Americans, followed by 95,400 Europeans, 87,024 Asians, 20,699 Africans and 489 people from Oceania.

We present here, disaggregated and ranked by region and country, how they contribute to the population of the city. Number of residents in parenthesis:

• America: Colombia (10,192), Honduras (9,542), Peru (9,069), Bolivia (8,582), Venezuela (7,936), Ecuador (7,751), Argentina (6,701), Brazil (6,584), Dominican Republic (5,716), United States (5,016), Mexico (4,377), Paraguay (4,086), Chile (4,007), Cuba (2,104), El Salvador (1,566), Uruguay (1,536). Rest of America (3,025).
• Europe: Italy (31,500), France (15,260), United Kingdom (7,609), Germany (7,075), Romania (7,050), Portugal (4,699), Netherlands (2,923), Poland (2,752), Bulgaria (1,965), Sweden (1,769), Belgium (1,629), Ireland (1,093), Greece (1,089). Rest of Europe (8,987)
• Asia: China (20,555), Pakistan (19,240), Philippines (9,149), Russia (7,234), India (6,202), Ukraine (4,768), Bangladesh (4,525), Georgia (3,022), Armenia (2,304), Japan (1,723), Nepal (1,324), Turkey (1,218). Rest of Asia (5,760).
• Africa: Morocco (13,058), Algeria (1,779), Senegal (1,308). Rest of Africa (4,554).
• Oceania: description of dataset indicates 488 Australians or New Zealanders and one Melanesian.

As shown previously, the foreign country that has contributed the most to Barcelona's padró is Italy. The data of the register for 2018 showed that 31,500 Italians had decided to live in Barcelona. That number represents 10.44% of residents from abroad. The second largest community of foreign nationals in our city is Chinese with 20,555 (6.81%) residents. In third place, the padró places Pakistani nationals with a sum of 19,240 (6.38%) neighbors. On the other end of the spectrum is Greece, with only 1,089 individuals calling Barna home.

Where Do They Live?

Historically, ethnic collectives have had a tendency to concentrate in specific areas of cities following urban migrations, especially if economically motivated to do so. In the 1950s, Barcelona saw significant numbers of migrants arriving from Andalusia and Galicia. The former tended to gather around the edges of Montjuïc and the coastal areas of the city and the latter settled near the base of Collserola towards the area that is now known as Ciutat Meridiana.

Non-Spanish nationals however, followed different patterns. Today, the districts most densely populated by foreign residents are centrally located, i.e. Eixample, Ciutat Vella and Sant Martí. These districts together are home to almost half of our resident aliens (48.01%). Leading the pack is the Eixample district in which 56,257 foreigners reside; at the lower end there are just 10,347 aliens living in Les Corts.

Barcelona's foreign residents are distributed pretty evenly all over the city. Foreign nationals from Colombia, Honduras, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba, Italy and Morocco can be found in each of the 73 neighborhoods of our city. On the lower end, the foreign nationals with the narrowest distribution are the Nepalese: they are present in just 62 of the neighborhoods.

In terms of volume of foreigners, the most foreign neighborhood of our city is⁠—both in number of residents and in proportion⁠—El Raval, in which 23,810 residents (or 50.02%) are foreign nationals. El Raval is also the only barri of the city in which the number of foreigners exceeds Spaniards. In contrast, the most Spanish barri of the city in terms of proportion is Sant Andreu neighborhood, in which only 7.96% of residents come from abroad.

Getting to know accurately the most diverse neighborhood is not possible with this data set. The problem lies not in its accuracy but in its organization. It cannot be discerned where the Barcelonian Babel is because, as noted previously, the public data of the padró used here does not detail every nationality present in the city but compounds five continental categories which lump together the statistically less significant countries.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a homogeneous barri (sigh!) this may not be the city for you. El Clot neighborhood could be the closest to this profile though: there, only twenty five nationalities are present.

Are There Ghettos in Barna?

Over the years, Barcelona's leaders have paid attention to the social dynamics that lead to exclusion or segregation and have issued laws that promote inclusion and integration. Even the two largest urban reorganizations of the city in recent years—the 1992 Olympic Games and the Fòrum Universal de les Cultures 2004—took this into consideration when designing the urban plan, infrastructure, mobility and social policies, pursuing various patterns of social development. Of course, urban segregation has many possible causes and not all can be attenuated.

Taking the figures of each country present in our dataset and inserting them into a map of neighborhoods of Barcelona, it is easier to see that most of the nationalities of our foreigners are pretty well distributed geographically. 

Notwithstanding that, the closest thing to a ghetto in our city is located in an area in El Raval, where more than half of the Philippine nationals that reside in our city have established their homes. Occasionally I've even heard some people refer to this area of the neighborhood as Manilatown.

Europeans and Communitarians

Data shows also that foreign Europeans in Barcelona are mostly communitarian citizens.  Excluding Spaniards, eight out of nine Europeans living in the city come from a member country of the European Union. EU communitarian residents number 86,413 compared to only 8,987 residents that hail from other European countries outside the EU. Interestingly, as many as 4,800 of the EU citizens are concentrated in la Vila de Gràcia.

El Barri Xino

In 1925 an unfortunate newspaper article that compared El Raval to Manhattan's Chinatown christened the zone for 70 years. The article didn't mean to show a ghetto of Chinese people and yet, the name stuck until recent times.

It is ironic though, that nowadays El Raval does not even rank 20th in preference for Chinese nationals. Last year they concentrated in the extremes of l'Eixample. Some of them towards the southwest, in La Nova Esquerra de l’Eixample and others, towards the northeast, in Sagrada Família and especially Fort Pienc (1,317), a neighborhood that recently has been informally dubbed as Chinatown.

One note about El Raval is that it is the most global neighborhood in our city. Nowadays, El Raval is no longer that sordid placed referred to at the beginning of the 20th century. It is a place of great urban, social and human contrasts resulting in a multicultural wealth that is often used as a world reference. You can read more about the Raval Renaissance here.

What Is Statelessness?

On the UNHCR (UN Refugee Agency) website the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons establishes the legal definition for stateless persons as “individuals who are not considered citizens or nationals under the operation of the laws of any country." The European Network on Statelessness in Europe estimates that there are approximately 600,000 stateless persons living in Europe. According to the municipal register, around 224 of them reside in our city.

The 21st Century’s Unmistakable Urban Vocation

At the beginning of this article I placed Barcelona in the context of Spain mainly because the condition of being a foreigner is tied to the existence of a border. Another way to look at the data is to consider Barcelona in the context of other similar cities.

Currently, the United Nations' reports indicate that, globally, one in every 25 city dwellers is a migrant. Barcelona, like many other European urban areas, exemplifies this notion.

Normally the numbers shown here constitute the input for the tasks of city planners and marketeers. But numbers can show more, they can also provide an oblique approach to see how culturally rich a city can be. 

Héctor Cols is an occasional contributor to the Barcelona Metropolitan, covering human or geographical landscapes and helping with data related issues. Héctor is a curious software developer that finds no joy in conversation with Siri or Alexa and prefers to mingle with other kinds of outsiders. A fan of all things Barcelona, Héctor was in charge of the culture section of Resident Aliens, a podcast of the American Society of Barcelona.