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MOVING TO SPAIN

The downsides of Barcelona you should be aware of before moving

Barcelona is one of the coolest cities in Spain and Europe, which explains why so many foreigners dream of visiting and even moving to the Catalan capital. But the city also has its downsides. The Local's Esme Fox, who's lived in Barcelona for seven years, explains what you need to know before making a decision.

Published: 25 March 2022 09:28 CET
Updated: 21 May 2023 08:45 CEST

People walk along Barcelona's iconic Ramblas. The Catalan city is an incredible place to live in but there are drawbacks. Photo: LiKlug / Wikimedia Commons

People are drawn from all over the world to Barcelona’s vibrant cultural attractions, its world-class art, architecture and incredible festivals – which rank among the best in Spain.

But it’s not just what’s in the city that makes it a great place to live, it’s Barcelona’s location too. Situated along the Mediterranean coast, from here you have access to miles of stunning beaches, unlike other landlocked cities popular with foreigners such as Madrid and Seville.

Barcelona even has a large natural park within its limits, offering countless opportunities for hiking and getting out into nature – all accessible by public transport.

Its international airport and location in the top right-hand corner of Spain mean that from here, you have easier access to the rest of mainland Europe too.

And if you’re moving to Spain and hope to find a job, then Barcelona has more opportunities than most cities in Spain (except Madrid) with lots of international companies and even some positions where both Catalan and Spanish are not even necessary.

While Barcelona is very high on the list of the world’s best cities for many, like everywhere it does have its drawbacks too. If you’re considering moving to the Catalan capital, here are a few downsides you should be aware of.

There’s a higher cost of living than in other parts of Spain

Barcelona may be a great city, but you’ll pay to live here.

According to the comparison website Kelisto.es, Barcelona is the most expensive city in Spain to live in, with a cost of living 35.51 percent higher than the national average. Housing costs, transport, taxes, shopping and leisure all proved to be more expensive in Barcelona. Of course, wages here are also higher compared to many other cities in Spain, but it’s something you need to be aware of when budgeting for your move.

Petty crime rates are high

Although crime rates in Barcelona dropped because of the lack of tourists due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the city still has a very high petty crime rate compared to some other cities in Spain. In 2019, the city witnessed 299 daily robberies, which equates to 12 every hour. More worryingly, violent crimes were also on the increase and in just the first half of 2019, 5,310 robberies were categorised as ‘violent’.

The most common thefts are pickpockets stealing bags, wallets and mobile phones, but watches are jewellery are sometimes stolen too.

Despite this, on the whole, Barcelona is a relatively safe city. In 2021, it was listed as the 11th safest city on The Economist’s Safe Cities Index, beating the likes of Frankfurt, New York, London, Madrid and Paris.

Rental scams are rife

As well as petty crime, there are several scams that you have to watch out for in Barcelona too. These seem to particularly affect the rental market. If you’ve been in Barcelona a while, you’ll know what sounds too good to be true and what to watch out for, but if you’re new in the city, there are many traps to fall into.

Remember never to sign a rental agreement without having visited the property in person, never hand over any money before you get the keys and if in doubt, get a professional estate agent or lawyer to go over the contract with you.

You need to learn two languages instead of one

While learning a second language is always a good thing, if you’re new to a country and are learning the language for the first time, it can be difficult to get your head around learning two at once. Catalan is one of Barcelona’s two official languages, meaning that many signs, official documents and menus are not written in Spanish, but in Catalan instead.

While some foreigners can get by only speaking Spanish and all locals in the city will speak it, there are many instances where Catalan will prove very useful. All public schools are taught in Catalan too, so families with school-aged children will inevitably need to learn some Catalan as well as Spanish as soon as they arrive.

Barcelona has its ugly and dodgy neighbourhoods too

Barcelona may be considered to be one of the most beautiful European cities, but it’s not all elegant Modernista buildings and cute little cobbled alleyways; Barcelona has its ugly sides too.

Neighbourhoods such as Raval, some parts of the Gothic Quarter, Sant Adrià de Besòs and La Mina are not the nicest looking. Unfortunately, these are the neighbourhoods that also have some of the highest crime rates, and are not the safest for walking around at night. Drug dealers, narcopisos (drug flats), prostitutes and homelessness are all problems in these areas.

Some parts of Barcelona are not the safest at night. Photo: Yoav Aziz / Unsplash

The centre can get very overcrowded with tourists

Before Covid-19 came along, Barcelona often featured on the lists of places struggling with overtourism, and in 2019 the city received a record-breaking 12 million visitors. Tourism bounced back in 2022, with numbers in the summer, already surpassing those of 2019. With a population of just over 1.6 million, this means that tourists can often outnumber locals.

There have been protests against tourists in previous years and you can still see graffiti scribbled across the streets reading “tourists go home”. But the city’s overtourism problem doesn’t just mean that attractions and central streets are crowded, it means an excess of people on public transport when you might be trying to get to work, as well as a lot of extra noise and an increase in prices.

The city can be very noisy

This takes us on to our next point – the city’s noise issue. Tourists are somewhat partly to blame for this, but it’s also the way the city is organised and how its apartments were built.

If you choose to live in places such as El Born, the Gothic Quarter or Gracia – where bars spill out into squares and onto the narrow streets, you’ll find it can be very noisy, most noticeable at night when you’re trying to sleep. Add this to the fact that most old apartments don’t have any double glazing and it will sound like the partygoers are right in your bedroom with you. Thin walls and lack of insulation in most of the older buildings in Barcelona also means that noisy neighbours are a big issue too.

Moving to Barcelona is still worth it

Despite its drawbacks, Barcelona can still be one of the best cities to live in and reward you with many fantastic experiences. Choose your neighbourhood carefully and you won’t have to worry so much about noise, tourists or petty crime and can focus on the reasons that make this city so great.

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Good tourist, bad tourist: How to travel responsibly in Spain

Barcelona resident David Mar doesn’t travel, but he thinks about tourism every day.

Tourists crowd the buses — essential for movement in a hilly neighbourhood like his. They leave trash for residents to discover in the morning. They shout and sing at night and wander drunkenly through the residential streets, ambling into backyards and pulling down laundry on clotheslines.

“It’s a disturbance that goes from when you wake up in the morning until you go to bed at night,” he told The Local Spain. “You don’t feel welcome in your own neighbourhood.”

Mar lives in Turó de la Rovira, on a 262-metre hill that towers over the city.

A viewpoint atop the hill called Los Bunkers de Carmel has gone viral on TikTok for its sweeping city views, bringing hordes of tourists to come drink wine, watch the sunset, and sometimes party into the early morning.

But for the residents of the surrounding Carmel neighbourhood — among Barcelona’s poorest — the consequences of this tourist explosion have been severe.

Mar was involved in a physical altercation with a group of four Australians, after he confronted them for tipping over parked motorcycles.

And last June a 76 year-old man was assaulted by a group of seven English-speaking youths after he tried to stop them from jumping a fence that had been put up around the Bunkers.

Such events are commonplace in Carmel, Mar says, with the post-pandemic massification of tourism provoking an unstoppable flow of Instagram-like-hungry travellers, fuelled by an increasingly lucrative industry whose interests often conflict with those of local residents.

“It collides directly with the most basic rights of those who live here,” Mar says. “Our right to housing, our right to transportation, our right to rest peacefully.”

With some 1.3 billion international arrivals globally in 2023, more people are travelling for pleasure than ever before in human history.

But as excessive crowds stress infrastructure and locals find themselves pushed out of their own communities, prevailing attitudes towards travel must be reconsidered if global tourism is to continue growing sustainably.

“Tourism isn’t a right, it’s a decision that you make,” Mar says. “And if you do it, you must be aware of the consequences it can generate.”

A couple uses a selfie stick to take a picture next to a banner warning tourists on drought alert in Catalonia, near Sagrada Familia basilica in Barcelona. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Empathy abroad

Bartolomé Deyá Tortella, a researcher and the Dean of Tourism Faculty at the University of the Balearic Islands, says few tourists consider such consequences.

Instead, they embrace their inner hedonist and focus their vacation time on maximum pleasure for minimum price. This mindset might cause a tourist to forget their values and do things they’d never do at home.

“We all become capitalists when we practice tourism,” Deyá told The Local. “You think, ‘I paid for this, I’m on vacation, I’m having my moment of pleasure, I worked the whole year for it.”

Such thinking could explain why someone might respect quiet hours in their own neighbourhoods, but shout drunkenly in the streets late at night while on vacation.

Or why on a trip to Mallorca, where Deyá lives and works, a tourist might feel compelled to take a 10-minute shower — despite the water-stressed Mediterranean island’s near-drought conditions — while residents routinely shower in a minute or less.

Failure to consider saving water or respecting quiet hours comes down to lack of empathy, Deyá says, and our tendency to other the people whose communities we enter while traveling.

“Act as if you were in your own home,” he says. “If when you’re in your own city you don’t shout in the street because you know your neighbours are sleeping, why do it when you’re traveling?”

Social sustainability

Much has been said about environmental sustainability, but it’s easy to forget the social impacts of travel; how our interactions with local people and economies can change that society.

“When every one of us travels, it implies that the places where we came from are transformed, the places we pass through are transformed, and obviously, so are the places we arrive to,” Manuel de la Calle Vaquero, Vicedean of the Faculty of Commerce and Tourism at Complutense University of Madrid, told The Local Spain.

With this in mind, the most sustainable way to travel is by using one’s presence to positively impact the local community.

Or in other words, to leave a place better than you found it.

“When you jump on a plane, it’s important to make sure that trip counts for something positive,” says Justin Francis, founder of Responsible Travel, a holiday company that collaborates with local partners to plan socially and environmentally sustainable vacations.

“I advise people to fly less, keep short trips flight-free – and, when you do fly, stay in a place longer and travel in a way that does as much good as possible,” Francis says.

Anti-gentrification banners addressing were already hanging from balconies in Barcelona back in 2017. (Photo by Josep LAGO / AFP)

Neighbourhood colonisers

One of the most significant ways in which tourism can alter the social landscape is through accommodation.

Not long ago, tourists and residents in Spain did not typically mix, with tourists sticking near their hotels, rarely straying into residential zones, Deyá says.

But today’s tourist has matured, and now expects novelty; an “authentic” experience that they can convince themselves distinguishes them from the thousands of other tourists expecting the same.

Nowadays they live among residents, in apartments instead of hotels, utilizing short-term rental platforms like Airbnb, which has led to the dissolution of boundaries between a city’s tourist and local zones.

Vaquero describes this new kind of tourist as the “anti-tourism” tourist, in the sense that they’re not interested in the sort of tourism promoted by governments and travel agencies, but instead consider themselves the explorers of new “authentic” destinations outside the typical tourist sphere.

“The one who wants to leave the traditional tourist circuit and supposedly goes looking for ‘authentic’ neighbourhoods — that tourist is obviously the coloniser,” Vaquero says.

The boom in short-term vacation rentals has led to what’s been dubbed the “Airbnb effect” in neighbourhoods worldwide, in which residents are slowly replaced by a constant flux of tourists. For landlords, vacation rentals can be far more lucrative than renting to residents, thus incentivizing them to evict long-term tenants in order to list their properties on Airbnb.

This is exactly what happened to Emanuele Dal Carlo. His landlord didn’t want to renew the lease on his small Venice apartment because they could make more renting it out on Airbnb. Like so many other Venetians, Dal Carlo had to move to the mainland.

To better understand the cultural erosion he saw happening to his city as a result of Airbnb, Dal Carlo enlisted the help of researchers to conduct a study, through which he discovered only 2,000 of the 3,300 Airbnbs in the city were registered with the government, and many were rented by foreign hosts with zero connection to Venice.

This means that much of the money tourists spend on accommodation never lands on the ground, thus eliminating any potential benefit to the local economy.

“What’s wrong is that the money available from tourism is not fairly distributed between workers and residents,” Dal Carlo says.

Dal Carlo now runs Fairbnb, an ethical Airbnb alternative which promotes “community-powered tourism.” Hosts are certified local, and the platform fees are put directly towards a social project in the local community, like food redistribution or sustainable energy initiatives.

As a tourist, the best way to avoid feeding the problem is by avoiding short term rentals when possible, Dal Carlo says, and instead booking accommodations with local businesses, like small independent hotels or traditional bed and breakfasts.

And if you absolutely must use Airbnb, Dal Carlo suggests booking with local hosts.

“If you’re traveling to Venice and your host is from Finland, ask yourself some questions,” he says.

An elderly local man on crutches waits to cross as a group of tourists using Segways squeeze by and into the narrow streets of Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter. (Photo by PAU BARRENA / AFP)

Whose fault?

In Spain, anti-tourism protests have crescendoed in recent weeks. The travel industry, it seems, has grown beyond its means, and locals are taking note.

To some degree, the problem can be traced to poor planning on the part of local governments and the unchecked expansion of algorithmic platforms like Airbnb.

Deyá points out that many government entities in Spain have welcomed tourist money, pursuing marketing campaigns without investing in adequate preparation.

“Tourism is the typical sector where many governments say, ‘ok, let’s leave it, because this works. Don’t touch it,’” Deyá says. “But there’s been no planning, there’s been no strategy.”

Back in Barcelona, the city’s public transport authority was involved in the promotion of the Carmel bunkers through its Bus Turistic webpage, encouraging tourists to come see the “spectacular views over Barcelona.”

The promotion was taken down on April 16th after continued anti-tourism protests from the Turó de la Rovira neighbourhood council, of which Mar is a member.

But as is the case with so many industries in a crowded world full of contradictions, the individual cannot be absolved of all responsibility, as one’s choice to participate in harmful systems enables their continuation.

No law or tourist tax will compel tourists to act with empathy, and the absence of such regulations should not be used to justify one’s bad behaviour abroad.

“The problem is that we’re hypocrites, and we think that it’s someone else who has to solve the problem,” Deyá says.

Mar, who’s never been much of a traveller himself, is no longer interested in traveling internationally after seeing what tourism has done to his city.

“So much of my city has become inhospitable for residents,” he says. “Because we’re truly suffering from it here in Barcelona, the concept of tourism disgusts me more and more.”

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