Barcelona can no longer afford to live off the memory of '92. La city has reached 1.73 million inhabitants, while its metropolitan reality exceeds 3.39 million. This is its real scale. And this scale poses an uncomfortable question: does Barcelona know what it wants to be today?
Because the world has changed. Cities compete with each other for talent, investment, and influence. And Barcelona, which remains one of the most attractive in Europe, runs the risk of confusing attractiveness with project. In 2024, it received 15.6 million tourists and generated more than 10.3 billion euros in direct economic impact. The airport exceeded 57 million passengers. Everything seems to be working. But this success has a less pleasant side: the city that the world wants to visit is increasingly difficult to inhabit. The average rent already exceeds 1,190 euros per month, and one in four rental homes suffers from cost overload. Barcelona attracts, but also expels. And this contradiction is not circumstantial: it is structural.
Meanwhile, its economy already depends more than 90% on services. This means that its future does not depend on large physical infrastructures, but on something more intangible: efficient institutions, intelligent regulation, and the ability to attract and retain talent. Talent: the oil of the future. This is where the city is still not living up to its potential.
Because there is talent. And a lot of it. Barcelona is today the first major hub in the European Union in terms of the percentage of international startup founders. The entrepreneurial ecosystem already comprises more than 2,400 companies, nearly 3 billion euros in turnover, and more than 30,000 workers. In addition, almost 460,000 residents are of foreign nationality. Barcelona is, de facto, a global city.
But being global does not only mean attracting (only) people from outside. It is knowing how to integrate them without diluting what makes you unique. And here arises one of the big questions that is often avoided: Barcelona is not just an international brand; it is also the capital of Catalonia. And that is not a folkloric detail, but a strategic asset. The language, the culture, the way of understanding the city, the associative fabric, the industrial and entrepreneurial tradition: all of this forms part of an ecosystem that has made Barcelona different from other Mediterranean cities. Without this Catalan identity, Barcelona runs the risk of becoming a generic, interchangeable city, just one more in the global circuit.
The paradox is evident: to compete in the world, Barcelona must be more itself, not less. This implies understanding that international openness and local roots are not contradictory, but complementary. That welcoming global talent does not mean renouncing one's own language, but making it part of the experience. That projecting oneself to the world does not mean diluting oneself, but reinforcing what makes you unique.
But for this to work, an administration up to the task is necessary. Too often, Barcelona operates with a defensive, slow bureaucratic culture, more oriented towards control than facilitation. In a global context, this is not just a problem: it is a competitive disadvantage. The challenge, today, is not to build more physical city, but to update its "software": regulation, taxation, administrative agility. To move from "no" by default to "yes, with conditions". From distrust to trust.
And to do so, moreover, with a metropolitan vision. Because the housing problem will not be solved within municipal limits. Neither will mobility. Every day, more than 3.6 million public transport journeys are made in the metropolitan area, but cars still weigh too heavily. Without truly metropolitan governance, Barcelona will continue to manage problems that, in reality, are not just its own.
It is also necessary to rebalance the economic model. Tourism has brought wealth, but it has occupied too much space. Recovering the center as a place of work, innovation, and productive activity is not an aesthetic option: it is a strategic necessity. There is demand —prime office rents exceed €41/m²—, but a clear commitment is lacking.
Barcelona still has advantages that are difficult to replicate: quality of life, urban density, cultural capital, and a civil society with a tradition of commitment. But this, by itself, no longer guarantees anything. Barcelona's future does not depend on whether it remains attractive —because it already is—, but on whether it is capable of converting that attractiveness into shared prosperity without losing its identity.
In short, the city faces a fundamental decision: to be a global city with its own soul or a global city without a soul. And at this point, the question is no longer what Barcelona can be. The question is whether it wants to be —and on what terms.