“We’ve only got a hundred years to live.” Five for Fighting sang it more than two decades ago, sitting alone at a grand piano in the middle of a mountainous landscape that seemed frozen in time. But, certainly, few people actually make it to have “a hundred years to live.” In Barcelona, specifically, there are now 1,196 residents who have reached the age of 100 or beyond.
Reaching a century of life remains uncommon, but it is becoming slightly less so. In Barcelona, the number of centenarians has continued to grow over the past decade: there were 700 in 2016, and today there are 1,196, an increase of 71%. And this is not just a one-off record. With the sole exception of the slight impact of the pandemic, the city has reached a new historic high every year.
This increase is part of a broader trend: we are living longer thanks, among other factors, to advances in medicine, nutrition, quality of life, and health and social care. But, unfortunately, these conditions do not exist equally everywhere and, therefore, longevity is not evenly distributed across the planet. There are, in fact, specific places around the world where reaching the age of 100 is particularly common. These are known as Blue Zones, regions identified by their exceptionally high concentration of people who reach 100 and which have become a kind of paradise for scientists seeking to discover the secret to eternal life. Well, or life as a centenarian.
The concept of Blue Zones originated from demographic studies on the long-lived peoples of Sardinia and was later popularized with other territories. The best known is probably Okinawa, in Japan, where for years an extraordinary concentration of long-lived people has been observed. Also part of this list are Ikaria, in Greece; the Nicoya Peninsula, in Costa Rica; Loma Linda, in California, and the Barbagia region, in Sardinia.
Barcelona, obviously, is not a Blue Zone. But if the secret of longevity also has a geographical dimension, perhaps the city has its own small “Blue Zones.” Or, rather, its blue neighborhoods.
And where are these blue neighborhoods? Well, if we look at where the highest number of centenarians is concentrated, the map clearly points to certain areas of the city. Nova Esquerra de l’Eixample, Sant Gervasi-Galvany, and Antiga Esquerra de l’Eixample are the neighborhoods with the most residents aged 100 or more, followed by Dreta de l’Eixample, Sagrada Família, Sant Andreu, and Poblenou.
It is no coincidence that l’Eixample appears so strongly on this list. In fact, this district alone concentrated 241 centenarians in 2024, almost one in five of those living in Barcelona. And Sant Gervasi-Sarrià also stands out, with 172. They are, therefore, some of the main candidates to enter the particular map of Barcelona's blue neighborhoods.
And there is another element that stands out a lot when we look at the map of longevity in Barcelona: women reach 100 years old much more often than men. According to the Municipal Data Office of the Barcelona City Council, of the 1,196 centenarians living in Barcelona today, 982 are women and only 214 are men. In other words, more than eight out of ten centenarians in the city are women.
Evolution of the centenarian population living in Barcelona
And this gap is also reproduced outside Barcelona. In Catalonia, according to the latest Idescat data, there are 2,605 centenarian women compared to 534 men. It is such a large difference that, when we talk about living to 100, the masculine singular almost becomes a statistical exception.
Nova Esquerra de l’Eixample, Sant Gervasi-Galvany and Antiga Esquerra de l’Eixample are the neighborhoods with the most residents aged 100 or over
And what does it mean to be 100 years old in Barcelona? It means having seen the city change almost completely. A person who today reaches a century of life was born around 1926 and has lived through the Republic, the Civil War and the dictatorship; has seen the arrival of democracy, has seen Barcelona transform with the 1992 Olympic Games —which marked a before and after in the city— and has witnessed its conversion into one of the great tourist, cultural and technological capitals of Europe.
And they have also lived through a global pandemic, that of covid-19, almost a century after being born. One hundred years are enough for a lot: to see trams disappear, entire neighborhoods change, the coastline transform, the internet and smartphones arrive and, now, to see how artificial intelligence enters our lives. It is, in a way, having lived several Barcelonas in a single life.