1 Introduction

The Statistics and Data Dissemination Department of the Municipal Data Office of Barcelona City Council presents detailed figures on the population residing in the city of Barcelona according to place of birth and nationality, obtained mainly from the reading of the Municipal Register of Inhabitants as of 1 January 20261, as well as from other statistical sources that classify the population according to origin or nationality.

The results presented here expand the analysis of section 4 of the report “The Population of Barcelona. Results Report. Reading of the Municipal Register of Inhabitants as of 01/01/2026”, published last May2. The objective is to make use of the statistical information available for Barcelona according to place of birth and nationality in order to provide the greatest possible territorial detail on demographic diversity, as well as to create sociodemographic profiles of the main population groups born abroad or of foreign nationality residing in Barcelona.

This is the second edition of a new series of statistical documents that was created with the aim of continuing the previous series of statistical reports The Foreign Population in Barcelona. The Population of Barcelona Born Abroad3, published by the Municipal Data Office, Statistics and Data Dissemination Department, which ended with issue number 99 referring to the data for January 2023.

Although it is true that the annual update of such detailed results hardly reveals global changes from one edition of the report to the next, events taking place beyond the municipal boundaries continuously affect the population of Barcelona, making it necessary to maintain updated monitoring of its evolution by origin and nationality. The continuous analysis of figures and indicators makes it possible to identify potential changes in trends regarding the composition of Barcelona’s population, as well as its socioeconomic characteristics. In this regard, this report aims to provide detailed and up-to-date information for the benefit of both the Municipal Administration and the general public, the academic sphere, the economic sphere, and other institutions and social organisations.

1.1 Barcelona, a diverse city

Barcelona has a long tradition of welcoming immigrant populations, and this has shaped it into a diverse society. The heterogeneity of the population currently residing in the city is the direct consequence of two waves of immigration. The first took place throughout the twentieth century, with the arrival of people born in the rest of Catalonia and in the rest of Spain, particularly concentrated between the 1950s and the 1970s. The second began at the start of the twenty-first century and consists of intense flows of international immigration. This recent arrival of people born abroad continues with intensity, although it experienced two interruptions, first as a consequence of the economic crisis and later because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The arrival of population from abroad has been the main driver of population growth in Barcelona in recent years, offsetting the standstill in natural growth. Beyond its contribution to growth, it has also led to a diversification of the origins of registered residents and the configuration of a plural demographic and socioeconomic profile. This growing heterogeneity has followed specific and differentiated patterns across the city’s neighbourhoods which, eventually, could accentuate some divergences in socioeconomic profiles between the city’s territories.

As residents of Barcelona, people born abroad have progressively spread across all areas of city life. In this regard, this report aims to contextualise, using various available statistical data sources, the evolution and demographic profile of the population born abroad and of foreign nationality, their residential and household patterns, their educational profile, as well as their evolution within the labour market, the university system, the real estate market and the city’s vehicle fleet.

In the analysis of data from the Municipal Register of Inhabitants, the availability of information on place of birth has made it possible to consider it as the characteristic that best approximates the diversity of Barcelona’s population, beyond nationality. As detailed in the report, of the 626,924 people residing in Barcelona who were born abroad as of 1 January 2026, 30% have Spanish nationality. Therefore, by considering origin, we can study the specific characteristics according to origin of 11% of city residents who, despite having Spanish nationality, were born abroad.

However, nationality is also an essential variable that must be considered as a criterion for analysis. Therefore, the analysis of register data is complemented by the study of the population according to nationality. Furthermore, the other data sources used in the report do not contain information regarding individuals’ origin, but they do contain information on their nationality.

This report draws on various statistical sources, and the temporal coverage of the results varies depending on the data used. From the reading of the continuous file of the Municipal Register of Inhabitants as of 1 January, the series is available from 1997 to 2026. Taking advantage of this long data series, evolutionary data on the population of Barcelona and its characteristics according to place of birth and nationality are presented. However, where greater detail is required, the analysis focuses on the most recent data, those referring to 1 January 2026.

Several data sources are used in the analysis of labour-related characteristics. The first is the Labour Force Survey conducted by the National Statistics Institute, through its specific sub-sample for the city of Barcelona, covering the quarters of the 2005-2026 period. The second and third are monthly registered unemployment for the period 2009-2026 and the number of employment contracts registered in 2025, both provided by the Labour and Productive Model Observatory based on data from the SOC and the Spanish Public Employment Service. The evolution of average annual salary by nationality for the period 2010-2024 and the percentage of in-work poverty in 2024 are also analysed, both based on the processing carried out by Barcelona City Council’s MDO using data from the Continuous Work History Sample.

Other additional sources include those provided by the Secretariat for Universities and Research of the Government of Catalonia, which are used to describe the number of students enrolled by nationality in Catalan universities in the 2023-2024 academic year; cadastral data for the period 2018-2026 based on the Property Tax (IBI) of the General Directorate for Cadastre (DGC) and the Municipal Institute of Finance of Barcelona City Council; notarial records of real estate transactions in Barcelona processed by the MDO of Barcelona City Council; and, finally, data from the Vehicle Census of the Municipal Institute of Finance of Barcelona City Council, which make it possible to describe the evolution of the city’s vehicle fleet during the 2016-2025 period according to the nationality of the owner.

Alongside the richness and variety of the data used, their limitations must also be highlighted. Among the most significant, for example, are the lack of information on family relationships, the low reliability of the date of registration in the municipal register as an indicator of the date of arrival in Barcelona, and the limited representativeness of specific population groups offered by the Labour Force Survey sample for the city of Barcelona.

All the data used in preparing this report can be found at https://portaldades.ajuntament.barcelona.cat/en/ and https://dades.ajuntament.barcelona.cat/estadistiques-padro. To facilitate consultation, the charts, tables and maps include links to the specific indicators on the website.