Barcelona is living through a moment of profound transformation. It has been a year to remember in 2026, with major events, new projects and infrastructure, and a growing international profile. Some even say the city has begun to recover its self-esteem this year. But Barcelona is also grappling with challenges such as housing, insecurity and inequality, which strain the lives of many residents and generate unease. How do we manage success so that Barcelona remains a city to live in, a city for its people?
Barcelona's mayor, Jaume Collboni, receives us at Barcelona City Hall, in the Saló de Cent. Collboni has been mayor of Barcelona since June 2023. Before that, he served as first deputy mayor and spokesperson for the municipal government, having built much of his political career in the Parliament of Catalonia and the PSC. With the next municipal elections set for Sunday, 23 May 2027, Collboni is now entering the final stretch of his first term as mayor. Three years after taking office, there is enough perspective to start seeing what has changed, what his main priorities are, and which challenges remain unresolved.
– Mayor, thank you for having us. What is the price of Barcelona’s success?
– For me, success, as the city’s mayor, and I think it is also the case for many Barcelona residents, is for Barcelona to have, for example, a network of more than 500 public facilities spread across its 73 neighbourhoods. Success is having 43 public libraries. Success is having 40 municipal markets that guarantee the supply of fresh, locally sourced food throughout the city. Success is also having around 40 public sports centres that make Barcelona one of the cities in the world with the highest levels of participation in sport. For me, all of these are the ideas behind what, for me, constitutes Barcelona’s success.
– Success also lies in the well-being of residents. And a good gauge of that wellbeing is the municipal barometer. How do you assess the latest results?
– Well, I think the real challenge behind the success you're asking about is keeping the city attractive — for investment or international talent, for instance — without that coming at the expense of the city's identity, and ensuring that the economic growth reflected in the barometer is distributed fairly, with quality jobs created for the people who live here.
In this sense, the assessment made by residents in municipal barometers and in the surveys that have been published over these last three years is that the management of the City Council is approved of and supported by a large majority.
– It is gets a 6 out of 10.
– Exactly. And that's asking how the metro runs, how the bus runs, the local library, the market, public space. People appreciate that the council is doing important work to guarantee the quality of public services.
And I believe that this is what most unifies a city: feeling that the city protects you, that the city gives you the services you need and that these services are close to home. This is the great success of the city and, indeed, citizens appreciate and value this, although, obviously, we have problems and challenges that we must face collectively.
– In fact, in the municipal barometer, residents approve of the council's management but flag several concerns. Housing comes first and insecurity second, although the gap between them is narrowing. How do you read these perceptions?
– To begin with, residents' concerns are our concerns too. And on both fronts — housing and security — there has been progress; the work of the past three years has produced good results.
Regarding housing and thanks to the application of the regulation of rent price caps, we are the only large city in the State that has stopped the rise in rental prices. In fact, it has fallen by 5% in the last two years. It is true that it is still at very high levels, but if we had not applied these caps, today the rental price in the city would probably be 300 or 400 euros on average more expensive.
And from a security point of view, although I am aware of many people's concern, the truth is that we have also had two years of continuous decline in crimes. Multi-offending is steadily decreasing and we've also enabled greater judicial and police action, which is helping resolve part of the problem
These are not things that are resolved in a day — I think everyone understands that; the housing problem is so big and so global that it will not be resolved in one term, nor probably in two — but we can say today that we're building twice as much social housing as three years ago. We can say today that, adding up the fall in petty crime across the city, we're down almost 35% cumulatively. We are going in the right direction.
– Let's talk about housing. You mentioned you've managed to control housing prices, but the sector still suffers from a shortage of available supply. There are fewer and fewer apartments on the market.
– That is not entirely true.
– That's what real estate agencies say...
– Well, of course. Here everyone explains it as they see fit… Our long-term and medium-term goal in the city is to guarantee the right to stay in the city. And that means, to begin with, building affordable housing, regulating and building more social housing. And that is what we are doing. This year, we will deliver 1,000 homes, next year 1,200, and we will double the previous average...
– The goal is to reach 15,000 by 2027 according to the Living Plan.
– Indeed. We want to reach 15,000 homes to increase the social housing stock, and also boost the private market. And on that front we have two good visual examples: two new neighbourhoods currently under construction in Barcelona — La Marina del Prat Vermell and La Sagrera. In La Marina del Prat Vermell, a neighbourhood of almost 10,000 new homes is being built. And while the cranes aren't all visible yet — some are — in the Sant Andreu area, around the new Sagrera station, roughly 3,000 new homes are already under construction. Between these two areas alone, public and private combined, more than 25,000 homes have already begun construction. There's light at the end of the tunnel.
“Tourist apartment licenses should never have been granted”
– Before your term ends, how many social housing units will be ready to hand over the keys to?
– We'll have delivered around 3,000, with 5,000 under construction and, with land already prepared, a further 10,000 in the pipeline. And, crucially, another 10,000 all at once in 2028, when we don't renew tourist-flat licences. We'll be the first city in the world to do this, because we believe tourist flats are undermining or damaging the right to housing. Returning 10,000 tourist flats to residential use is roughly equivalent to a decade's worth of housing construction in Barcelona.
– Well, because little has been built in recent years.
– Yes, little has been built both by the public and private sectors.
– In the private sector's case, is that because of the requirement to reserve 30% of new developments for subsidised housing
– And because the 2008 crisis hit the property sector hard and halted construction, and the sector took a long time to recover. Also because Barcelona doesn't have much land; we're a city of 101 km² with little room to grow. But we're doing it now. And we're pursuing several other strategies too, such as renovation.
– And converting offices into housing?
– That too. These are other strategies we're following, alongside removing tourist flats, as part of the Plan Viure. Like the debate that's opened up around converting ground-floor commercial premises into housing. There's still room for supply to grow in the city, and across the wider metropolitan area too. Improving public transport matters here as well...
“Flats are for living in”
– Let's go back to tourist apartments. Will eliminating tourist apartment licences solve the housing problem?
– It will contribute a lot. 10,000 homes for residential use means 25,000 people who can stay and live in Barcelona. 10,000 homes that return to residential use is the equivalent, as I told you before, of a decade of new housing construction. It will also help solve coexistence problems both for homeowner communities and in some neighborhoods, and it will also be noticed in terms of the city's identity.
That's why we have fought this very important battle in Brussels. And we've taken a major step forward with the approval of the European Affordable Housing Plan, because we want to safeguard this path we've started and make sure there's no turning back.
– On the coexistence problem: if Barcelona's tourist flats were concentrated in dedicated buildings, all together, rather than bothering the neighbour on the same landing, would it be less of a serious problem for Barcelona?
– It wouldn't be as serious, but we start from the premise that the most relevant aspect of the proposal and the decision we have made to eliminate tourist flats is because flats are for living. If it is a dwelling, residential use is the priority in a housing emergency situation like the one we are experiencing in the city of Barcelona. And, therefore, any flat that does not have a use for living, the City Council must make it possible, within its competencies, for it to be a place to live.
“When a public policy does not yield the result you are looking for, you have to change it”
– But if the housing emergency is resolved, could licences be reconsidered down the line? Perhaps too many were granted at the time?
– My view is that tourist-flat licences should never have been granted in the first place. That's what hotels, guesthouses and youth hostels are for.
– Let's look at another measure: the requirement to reserve 30% of new-build housing in Barcelona for subsidised housing, which has resulted in very few new flats, and even fewer social housing units. Should this regulation be revised?
– Yes. I am very clear and very practical about this: when a public policy does not yield the result you are looking for, you have to change it.
– And it hasn't delivered.
– No, it hasn't, or only very minimally. And we backed it, like most of the groups currently on the council, because the intention behind it is good. Reserving 30% of new developments for affordable housing is a good idea in principle.
– Has it failed because it relies too much on private capital?
– No, the problem is that, as the rule currently stands, it forces the reserved units to be built within the same building, which discourages developers. Developers don't see a clear upside for various reasons, so they don't build. And we've got a lot of frozen investment as a result. What we're proposing is to take that 30% and apply it instead to entire affordable-housing buildings — pooling it into affordable-housing developments.
– But doesn't that mean a developer needs to have several developments on the go...
– No. For example, if I build a development of 10 private homes and have to reserve three for social housing, those three don't need to be within that same development. They could instead be built in a separate, publicly owned building.
– But who owns that building?
– The public sector.
– So, the costs are paid by the private developer, but in a publicly owned building.
– Exactly. This is what is done in many European cities. It's called offsetting the 30%.
– And what does the sector say?
– The sector is in favour. The problem is that, for political reasons, we haven't been able to build a sufficient majority on the council at the moment, but I don't want to get into political disputes. I think the proposed arrangement was very reasonable.
– Are you considering lowering that 30% to 20%?
– No, because it's an amount the private sector was already willing to commit and offset towards affordable housing developments.
– Let's talk about inequalities. Barcelona is a city very rich culturally, entrepreneurially, but it suffers from strong inequalities; it suffers from historical socioeconomic differences between some neighborhoods and others. How does the Barcelona City Council detect the inequalities in this city?
– First, the first way to fight against poverty and inequalities is to generate wealth. And, therefore, for the economy to work, for companies to do well, for companies to hire, for us to have companies in sectors that pay good salaries. And fortunately, this is happening in Barcelona.
One of Barcelona's successes is that at the moment we have a minimal unemployment rate. There is, but it is minimal. That's why people come to the city to work, that's why talent arrives from large multinationals, and engineers and scientists, and also from people who work in the service sector or in the hospitality sector, because the city is growing economically.
What should the Administration do? Guarantee that everyone receives the same public services under equal conditions. And Barcelona is a city that has in all its neighborhoods –or very close to everyone's home– a library, a primary care center, a municipal market, a metro stop, a bus service... This is the first guarantee of a city's cohesion.
– The 15-minute city.
– But for everyone. Not because they live on the right side of the Eixample or in Sant Andreu de Palomar or in Navas should they have different services than those in the Eixample Esquerra or in Sant Gervasi. That is, to equalize services for everyone. This is the idea of a social democratic city, a city that grows and invests in the economy, but that distributes services equally to all citizens.
However, of the inequalities that exist in the city, the one that worries me most and is most difficult to resolve is child poverty. It is poverty of origin, often from migrant families, for whom we strive to ensure that from the beginning, from nursery school, they have the same opportunities to escape situations of poverty or chronic inequality. This is where we focus, especially the Neighborhood Plan, which is a plan that also distributes almost 400 million to the 27 most vulnerable neighborhoods in Barcelona.
– I wanted to ask you precisely about three indicators for detecting inequalities in the city. You mention one, which is child poverty. What other two indicators could we identify?
– The school dropout rate. Normally, when a child drops out of school early, it is due to a social and economic origin. Fortunately, we are improving these figures thanks to the neighborhood plans we are implementing, especially in education. And then we can also observe income inequality, which is evident, but here the City Council can do less. What we can work on more is practical, everyday equality.
– Of accessibility to services and infrastructures.
– Like, for example, sports. We invest 15 million euros a year in sports scholarships so that all children in the city can participate in extracurricular sports activities.
We also provide aid with the Guaranteed Minimum Child Income, a kind of voucher that guarantees food and school supplies for the most vulnerable families. We are the first city in the State to implement it.
We have been adopting rebalancing measures so that the prosperity of this city is shared. In this city where congresses come and large investments from large companies are announced – and it is very good that it is so and must continue to be so – we do not want anyone to be left behind.
– Let's talk about major transformations. Superblocks have celebrated their first 10 years in Barcelona. What is the assessment 10 years later?
– Superblocks have been around for much longer.
– But the first one?
– Absolutely. The first was Portal de l'Àngel. The next was Avinguda de Gaudí. And then came the superblocks, which weren't called that then, which were the pacifications made in Vila de Gràcia, Sant Andreu, Sants, in the Sarrià area. That is, the towns that are part of the city of Barcelona were the first great superblocks because they were pacified areas where the human dimension of the city had more relevance to the detriment, indeed, of the automobile, which occupied a lot of space in these towns.
However, what is known as the Consell de Cent superblock, I believe it is the first that directly intervenes in the Cerdà grid horizontally (because the diagonals had already been intervened, with Avinguda de Gaudí) and this produces a disruption in mobility...
– And some resistance.
– And therefore, some resistance. We have tried not to make these pacification processes conflictive, for example in Meridian. We have tried, and I believe we have succeeded, to dialogue with all affected sectors, because many times there are people who are harmed by these pacifications or at least have to change mobility habits, shops that are in that area...
My conclusion is that from each stage of pacification that the city has undertaken in the last 30 or 40 years, we have learned things. And I believe that the great lesson, surely from Consell de Cent, which has resulted in a magnificent work that many people are enjoying right now, is mainly about two characteristics: the first is whether we have really reduced global mobility in the Eixample or not, and the data tells us that rather not because it has been diverted to other streets.
– And it has caused greater congestion in these streets.
– That's right, and that was not the objective. And another effect that we will also have to keep very much in mind in future pacifications is how this has impacted housing prices.
– Of course, when we improve the city or specific areas, but what we are causing is that area to become more expensive, it causes that in the next cycle the people we wanted to help can no longer live there, right?
– Indeed. And I admit that this is a paradox.
– An urbanistic paradox.
– To which I don't have an answer yet, or a clear solution. I just point out that there is a paradox here that the city must reflect on together. Because indeed the objective was not to expel people, or for people to sell their apartment because they were making a lot of money.
– Therefore, this reflection is not yet resolved, but the mobility one is, right? It is clearly seen that congestion has been caused in the confluent areas. For the current superblocks or pacifications, is this being taken into account?
– In each pacification project, there is an impact on mobility. On Meridiana, which we are finishing now, which is practically 5 km, we have converted one of the city's main arteries into what will be a rambla. Or the pacification project of Les Rambles, which if all goes well we will inaugurate in February, greatly reduces mobility, leaving it practically only for goods and public transport.
Therefore, the plan, indeed, is for there to be a public transport service that can supplement what we are reducing in private transport. A private transport that will always exist and against which I will not wage any war, because a man or a woman who works in an industrial estate in Baix Llobregat and who has to get up at 4 in the morning because they start work at 5 in the factory, sometimes has no other alternative but to take the car. And we must keep this in mind. We cannot ignore it or think that one day they will stop taking or using it. But here comes the importance of investing more in the metro, which is being done, and the debate about Rodalies, which affects us especially. and which I hope will go much better in the coming years.
– I'm making a big jump because we have little time left, and I'm jumping from the Rodalies debate to the airport expansion debate. What kind of airport does Barcelona need?
– More connected. We need to be more connected, especially with the United States and Asia. And that means having more direct flights so that investments and higher value-added companies can arrive. Because if we want better jobs in Barcelona, we need people who create companies in these areas of the world to be able to connect directly with Barcelona. And also from a tourist point of view: the tourism we seek and want for Barcelona – which is not more tourism, but better tourism – is also what comes from the United States and Asia. And therefore, to the extent that you have a direct connection, you have more possibilities for this type of tourism to come to our city.
“Barcelona no longer needs big events either to promote itself or to have big transformation projects"
– What return does Barcelona expect or seek from the major international events it hosts, such as the Pope's visit or the Tour de France?
– The Pope's visit is an institutional visit, it is not a planned visit...
– An institutional visit with significant public expenditure...
– Evidently, if the head of the Catholic Church, which is the majority church in our country, comes to inaugurate the culmination of such an emblematic and iconic work as the Sagrada Família, then the city, the State, Catalonia, must provide the means for this to work well. And it worked perfectly, as everyone could have seen.
– We know the expense. But do we know the return?
– The return is not entirely an economic return. That is, there has been no increase in the number of tourists for either the Tour or the Pope's visit, according to what the hotels have told us.
– We were also already in high season at that time...
– Yes. We were at 90-something percent occupancy, and that's not what we were looking for either.
With the Sagrada Família, Barcelona has experienced a wow moment, a moment of seeing the city shine again...
– This self-esteem we were talking about, right?
– Indeed. And in some way, it has reconciled us with the Sagrada Família as the icon of the city that it is.
"We have already reached the limit of the number of tourists in the city"
But it was not a promoted visit, but a visit that we had to attend to. And about the Tour, it is one of those great events that sports sectors often ask for, and that they have the right to promote, and that they propose to us, and that we, if we think they are suitable for the city, we do them and we will do them. However, Barcelona no longer needs great events either to promote itself or to have great transformation projects.
– No, but it has them.
– And that's why we are no longer obliged to look for great events. What we have to take care of is our international reputation. What we have to take care of is that the Barcelona that is projected to the world is a city that offers culture, that offers gastronomy, that offers economic opportunities, that offers security, and that the tourism sector continues to function.
However, we have already said that we have reached the limit of the number of tourists in the city, and that is why we have taken measures such as those for tourist flats or the taxation of cruises, which we will implement from January 1, because we want to de-massify tourism and we want to improve the experience of the person who comes to visit us.
Or with the congresses themselves, like the Mobile, those who come for us are not only visitors, they are people who make decisions in their companies and, the fact that they come, has often meant that companies are implemented in Barcelona, which then generate quality jobs in the city.
– A small personal leap: You have dedicated a good part of your professional career to politics. It's been quite a few years. What remains of that Jaume Collboni?
– What remains? Everything. In fact, I entered politics before entering politics. I have been in politics since I was old enough to reason. Since I was 13, I became a school councillor at my high school, because I wanted to improve the educational system and I wanted to improve my high school. Here in the Fort Pienc neighborhood. That was my first responsibility, and since then I have been involved in politics.
I joined a political party, however, much later, and I have been dedicated to politics as such for 10 years. I have always had political commitment, and when I stop being mayor, I will surely have political commitment too.
– The way of doing politics has changed a lot during these years, but also the way of communicating politics. Today many politicians are content creators on social media, but also very professionalized. What do we gain and what do we lose with this way of doing politics?
– I believe it's a matter of adapting. When I started in politics or when I did campaigns at university, there was no internet, and everything was posters and direct contact. Therefore, it's about adapting, without going crazy, and without falling into the traps of permanent communication and noise. In fact, I think we have also learned to separate ourselves from the noise of social media, which is very important.
"I want to leave a better Barcelona, and a Barcelona that guarantees people the right to stay"
– Not to respond or get involved in everything, right?
– No, because our job requires concentration and reflection. And, therefore, I don't live glued to social media, far from it. In fact, I don't even have them on my phone. But I understand that it is a very important communication channel and a way to reach many people. Especially Instagram, because I left Twitter because I consider that it has become an absolutely toxic place manipulated by a gentleman who has very perverse intentions. And I'm sure I lose opportunities by not being there, but I think we also have to make decisions like these.
– The municipal elections are just around the corner. What kind of Barcelona do you want to leave behind?
– A better Barcelona, and a Barcelona that guarantees people the right to stay. That is the will with which I began to dedicate myself to political life and to the City Council many years ago.
I am very happy with the progress and changes we have made, and with these results I was talking about: housing, security, public space and the transformation of the city. I am happy to be able to say that we have once again had great transformation projects in the city, which is what gives us great opportunities. Like the new La Sagrera station or the new La Marina neighborhood; I am also particularly proud of this. And also of small works that may be very annoying but are necessary, to improve the sewage system to cope with the rains, to have more sustainable lighting, to have a better public space and more adapted to climate change…
This is the Barcelona we want and above all the Barcelona we deserve.
– Thank you, Mayor.