The Pope in Barcelona: €3.3 million in spending and an impact yet to be quantified

2026 will be remembered as a year in which Barcelona once again "looked up". The city has experienced an exceptional calendar, with the Year of Architecture, the passage of the Tour de France and, above all, the culmination of the Jesus tower of the Sagrada Família, one of Barcelona's great symbols, and the visit of Pope Leo XIV. For a few months, some of the city's great venues have concentrated unusual international attention, projecting Barcelona around the world and making it the protagonist of a singular year. And as happens with any major event, this projection has had a return for the city, but also a cost for the administrations.

Before the visit, the Barcelona City Council calculated that the arrival of the pontiff could generate an economic impact of about 30 million euros for the city. It was a first internal and provisional estimate that, as explained by the mayor, Jaume Collboni, did not constitute the objective of the event, but one of its possible consequences. The visit also arrived in the middle of the high tourist season and in a particularly intense week for Barcelona, between Primavera Sound and the Formula 1 Grand Prix. Hotels, tourist apartments, restaurants, shops and transport were some of the sectors that could benefit from the arrival of visitors, while the international interest generated around the Pope and the culmination of the Jesus Christ tower of the Sagrada Família could have a longer effect over time. In fact, the tourism and restaurant sector already pointed out before the visit that part of the return could occur later, through the international projection of Barcelona and the interest in visiting the venues that had been the protagonists of those days.

However, already during those days there were indicators of the activity that the visit was generating. Hotel occupancy was between 85% and 90% during the days of greatest activity, according to the Catalan Association of Specialized Travel Agencies (ACAVE), while tourist apartments expected an occupancy of 97% between June 9 and 11. There was also more interest in staying in the city: searches on Booking had increased by 52% compared to the previous year. But the effect was not limited to the days of the visit. At the end of June, the Barcelona Tourism Observatory noted an increase in online interest in the city and placed searches related to the arrival of Leo XIV among those that grew the most. The body also pointed out that hotel reservations for the following months remained above usual levels, a first indication that part of the international projection of the visit could go beyond his stay in Barcelona.

However, although it is still unknown what the real economic return of the visit was and if that first estimate of 30 million euros was finally met, the other side of the coin can already begin to be quantified: public spending. A detailed report prepared by the Generalitat and to which El País has had access places the cost assumed by the Catalan Government for the Pope's visit at 3.3 million euros. The ACN has been able to confirm the data, which raises the figure of 2.8 million that the Minister of Justice and Democratic Quality, Ramon Espadaler, had explained to Parliament in June by half a million euros.

The main item corresponds to the 2.8 million euros granted to the Archbishopric of Barcelona, financed with the tourist tax. Of this amount, 1.8 million were allocated to the partial financing of the production contract for the vigil held at the Lluís Companys Olympic Stadium, while the remaining million served to fully cover the international press center set up for the visit. This last item ended up being higher than initially foreseen by the Government, which estimated that there would be a thousand accredited journalists and finally received almost double that number.

The subsidy to the Archbishopric, as Espadaler defended in Parliament, was not allocated to strictly ecclesial activities, but to logistical issues related to the organization of the visit. The minister had stressed that there would be no public contribution to events under the Church's competence, so neither the visit to Montserrat, nor the activities of the Augustinians, nor the events at the Sagrada Família received funding from the Generalitat through this item. The Government thus justified that public money was allocated to aspects associated with the extraordinary dimension of the event, such as logistics and attention to the thousands of media professionals displaced to Barcelona.

Outside of this subsidy, the rest of the bill is distributed among different departments and bodies of the Generalitat. Presidency assumed 351,855 euros for the advertising campaign Catalunya, terra de trobada (Catalonia, land of encounter), linked to the pontiff's visit. To this amount are added 1,234 euros for the production of a summary video of the visit and 2,750 euros corresponding to the reception of the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, to the international press. The Catalan Tourism Agency, for its part, contributed 11,620 euros in personalized merchandise with the Catalonia brand.

There are also expenses linked to the security device and the mobility of public services. Interior accounted for 43,868 euros corresponding mainly to the bus transfer of Mossos d'Esquadra officers to the different points of the operation, as well as an additional 5,667 euros in transport and provisions for Civil Protection personnel. In Montserrat, the Pope's visit entailed 20,078 euros to reinforce personnel, surveillance, and security at the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat stations and an additional 6,923 euros for the same device on the rack railway.

The bill also includes some smaller expenses, but especially illustrative of the institutional deployment that accompanied the visit. Among these are the 1,300 euros for the replica of the Homilies d'Organyà that Salvador Illa gave to the pontiff and the 363 euros for a reproduction of the Ivory Doll from the National Archaeological Museum of Tarragona. The visit to Brians 1 also generated expenses: 4,880 euros in overtime for prison staff, 131 euros in gifts, and 1,333 euros in flowers, bouquets, and ribbons for staff identification.

And there is still an item that is not part of these 3.3 million: the overtime hours of the security forces deployed due to the visit. The Generalitat has not yet reported this amount, so the known bill so far is not yet the definitive public cost of the operation.

The balance, therefore, is still halfway done, awaiting official publication of the economic impact the visit finally left and whether the 30 million euros initially calculated by the City Council were actually generated. The comparison between the return and the cost will have to complete the picture of a visit that, for a few days, made Barcelona once again the protagonist of international attention.