From tourist to local: Are expats in Barcelona integrating successfully?

"Expats, for us here in the neighborhood, are people who have migrated from other countries, especially from Europe and the United States, and come to work for tech companies in the 22@ district," Toni Coll, of the Poblenou Residents' Association, tells Catalan News. 

He would like to believe that the expat community has the desire to integrate, "but that's not the reality," Coll says.  

"In practice, they end up forming their own groups. This happens with other migrant communities as well. It's not unusual," he adds matter-of-factly.  

Changing neighborhood

Poblenou was originally a working-class area in Barcelona that grew up around big industrial manufacturing companies. 

The 1992 Summer Olympics brought massive change to the area, opening up the beaches, removing the train tracks that separated the neighborhood from the sea, and cleaning up slums. 

The next major transformation came with the 22@ urban plan, a digital innovation hub which has brought cutting-edge architecture and a growing influx of highly qualified migrants seeking opportunities in the tech sector. 

"There are lots here, lots," Coll laughs, "but it's logical. They come to work in the tech companies and can afford to buy or rent properties that locals can't." 

"I wouldn’t want to blame the expats. They’re not to blame for anything," he says. "The thing is, when they arrive in a place, they can choose to put in more or less effort to integrate into the community." 

"Rather than trying to change it, instead, they could adapt to the environment they're in," he adds. 

Changing city

Barcelona is undergoing rapid demographic change. The city's foreign-born population accounts for over a third – 33.6% – of the total.  

The Catalan capital is now home to more than 86,000 migrants from countries with a GDP per capita above Spain's. 

According to an analysis by the Catalan News Agency (ACN), this group, which is one way to define expats, has quadrupled over the last 25 years.  

In 2024, these migrants from wealthier countries made up over 5% of the total population of Barcelona and over 15% of foreign residents. 

Catalan is key

Geographer Brian Rosa, a researcher and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, has done research – together with Antonio López Gay – on the city's highly qualified international residents, and the results may come as a surprise. 

"The cultural discourses around expats supposedly not wanting to integrate or coming to live in Barcelona because they see it as a cheap place to live, that's not supported by the results of our research," Rosa tells Catalan News. 

"There's a high desire to become more involved with local neighborhood culture and society," he says, acknowledging that the research involved a self-selecting group of people completing a 15-minute survey, "so there may be a bias towards people who want to be more civically involved in the city than this population as a whole." 

The "key barrier" to integration is "the often-stated desire to learn Catalan," Rosa says. 

A lot of the people surveyed or interviewed for the research spoke some Spanish or spoke Spanish fluently, but in most cases, they didn't speak very much Catalan.  

"It seems pretty clear to me from this research that there needs to be more investment in providing Catalan classes for people who actually seek to live and better integrate themselves within society in Barcelona," Rosa says. 

That is something recognized by the Catalan government too, who have pledged to invest €8.8 million in a new action plan to increase the number of Catalan language courses and places throughout Catalonia – although campaigners say the plan doesn't go far enough. 

Places and spaces  

Day-to-day life in Poblenou has clearly changed, Toni Coll explains. 

As migrants with more spending power move into the area, "commerce is increasingly catering to expats rather than the traditional neighborhood residents," he says. 

"Now, we're filled with shops operating in English, co-working spaces, and," he says in English, "coffee bakeries." 

The expat effect is also noticeable in schools. Their children are attending public schools in the neighborhood, which is a good example of integration, Coll says, but it is also a challenge for staff who have to teach students who don't speak Catalan or Spanish. 

One place where recent international arrivals do integrate well is in Barcelona's ever-expanding network of co-working spaces. 

"What they bring throughout the spaces is diversity, culture, and they're really involved in all our activities when they come, because they want to connect, they want to interact with other people," explains Marta Gràcia, CEO at Cloudworks. 

Founded in 2015, the company manages co-working and flexible spaces at 13 locations in Barcelona and two in Madrid, catering to around around 3,000 members. 

In March they opened new premises in the El Born neighborhood of Barcelona, "pretty close to the city center but also near the beach," Gràcia tells Catalan News, with a view to attracting "freelancers, expats and people who run their own businesses." 

"More or less 50% of our members are Spanish," Gràcia says, with most international members coming from France, Italy, the UK and Latin America. 

"Even if they are here for a shorter stay, they get really, really involved in the community," Gràcia says. 

Two-way process 

Integration is a two-way process. 

Toni Coll points out that although he was born in Barcelona, he only moved to Poblenou 14 years ago and immediately got involved with local initiatives like the Poblenou Residents' Association. 

He believes "there should be some responsibility on the part of the city council," to facilitate dialogue between expats and locals. 

"When the administration sees that there is a group of this kind that is producing a demographic and social change in a neighborhood or an area of the city, we believe it should intervene in some way and encourage interaction, a meeting, dialogue between one group and the other," Coll says. 

Barcelona City Council has various initiatives to welcome what it refers to as "international talent" to the city, such as Barcelona International Community Day and Barcelona International Welcome Desk. 

The situation isn't unique to Catalonia, Brian Rosa points out. 

"A lot of cities and a lot of national governments are competing to try to attract this segment of the global population, with different types of marketing and tax breaks," he says, citing Southern and Eastern Europe, cities in Latin America, and Thailand. 

"We have to acknowledge that tourist marketing and the way of living in and consuming a city for a tourist does have a lot of overlaps with so-called expats, as much as they might try to integrate themselves within the local society," Rosa says. 

One irony Rosa points out is that, although the majority of the survey group had neutral or negative attitudes towards the level of tourism in Barcelona, most had already visited the city before as tourists themselves. 

Both mass tourism and the arrival of large numbers of highly qualified international migrants are potential drivers of conflict within cities, over housing, gentrification, and, in Barcelona, the decline in use of Catalan.  

"These are all debates that are not going to go away and we have to reckon with," Rosa says.