Living in Barcelona

Barcelona, Spain, about 1,686,208 people. What you would earn and keep, the climate month by month, and every open figure we hold, each with its source, period and licence.

Weigh Barcelona against other cities, with your own numbers

Key facts

• Barcelona has about 1,686,208 residents (GeoNames).
• On a gross salary of €60,000 a year, an employee in Barcelona takes home about €41,124 a year (€3,427 a month) after income tax and employee contributions, an effective rate of 31.5% (Spain 2026 rules).
• In Barcelona the average daily high (air temperature in the shade) peaks at 29.2 °C in August and the average daily low falls to 4.6 °C in January (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Barcelona has about 73 nice days a year, days that are dry, mostly clear and feel 18 to 30 °C on average from 8 am to 8 pm, most of them in July (14) (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• Between 2021 and 2025 the air in Barcelona reached 37.0 °C at its hottest and −0.8 °C at its coldest (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo).
• It rains or snows (at least 1 mm) on about 86 days a year in Barcelona (Historical weather (ERA5 reanalysis), Open-Meteo, 2021-2025).
• The shortest day in Barcelona lasts 9 h 11 min and the longest 15 h 10 min (computed from latitude).
• Fine dust (PM2.5) in Barcelona averages 10.9 µg/m³ a year, 2.2 times the WHO guideline of 5 µg/m³ (WHO Ambient Air Quality Database v8.0 (2026), World Health Organization, 2024).
• Everyday prices in Spain sit at 68.7 on an index where the United States is 100 (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2025).
• Life expectancy at birth in Spain is 83.9 years (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2024).
• Spain records 0.69 intentional homicides per 100,000 people a year (World Development Indicators, World Bank, 2023).
• Besides citizens of Spain, citizens of 29 other countries under EU and EEA free movement and of Switzerland (Swiss-EU free movement) can live and work in Barcelona without a visa.

What you would take home

Employee resident in Spain (common regime): IRPF state and regional halves (Madrid, Catalonia, Valencian Community, Andalusia), personal minimum, work-income reductions, minimum-wage credit, social security. Rules for 2026. Sources: BOE: Ley 35/2006 del IRPF, consolidated (arts. 19, 20, 57, 63; DA 61 as amended by RDL 5/2026), BOE: Comunidad de Madrid, Decreto Legislativo 1/2010, arts. 1-2 (scale and minimum), BOE: Catalunya, Decreto Legislativo 1/2024 (Codi tributari, llibre sisè), arts. 611-1 and 611-2, BOE: Comunitat Valenciana, Ley 13/1997, arts. 2 and 2 bis (2026 scale from Ley 5/2026), BOE: Andalucía, Ley 5/2021 de Tributos Cedidos, arts. 23 and 23 bis, Seguridad Social: bases y tipos de cotización 2026, BOE: Ley General de la Seguridad Social, DT 42 (solidarity) and DT 43 (MEI), AEAT: Manual práctico de Renta 2025, worked example of the state and regional quotas.

• Regional halves are exact for Madrid, Catalonia, the Valencian Community and Andalusia; other regions are assumed to mirror the state half. Basque Country and Navarre have their own systems and are not modelled.
• Social security assumes a permanent contract, contributions at actual pay up to the 2026 maximum base (€5,101.20 a month), pay spread evenly over the months.
• No regional credits (rent, age, children) and no family minimums. A personal pension plan contribution, set as your pension share, reduces the taxable base within the art. 51-52 limits.
• Newcomers: under the special regime (art. 93 LIRPF, the 'Beckham law') a flat-rate setting taxes the whole of gross pay at 24% up to €600,000 and 47% above, with no social security deduction, no work-income reduction, no personal minimum, no pension reduction and no regional half.

A month in Barcelona

Assumed: one person, €60,000 gross a year, renting a one-bedroom home, and everyday spending of €1,200 a month in Lisbon scaled by each country's price level. These are the app's defaults; change any of them there.

Who can live and work here freely

• Citizens of Spain.
• Citizens of Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, under EU and EEA free movement (Directive 2004/38/EC and the EEA Agreement). Directive 2004/38/EC, extended to Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway by the EEA Agreement. Beyond three months a registration is usually required, but no visa or permit to work.
• Citizens of Switzerland, under Swiss-EU free movement (Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (EU-Switzerland)).

Climate

Daylight is computed from latitude: the shortest day lasts 9 h 11 min, the longest 15 h 10 min.

Every figure

No open figure yet for: rent, one bedroom, rent, three bedrooms, your childcare cost, health insurance premium, public swimming pools (official), green urban areas (official), monthly transit pass, politics, left to right. A country-wide figure is marked as such where it stands in for the city.

Compare Barcelona with

• Barcelona vs Budapest
• Barcelona vs Geneva
• Barcelona vs Lisbon
• Barcelona vs London
• Barcelona vs Lyon
• Barcelona vs Madrid
• Barcelona vs Málaga
• Barcelona vs Munich
• Barcelona vs Paris
• Barcelona vs Porto
• Barcelona vs Rome
• Barcelona vs Stockholm
• Barcelona vs Torino
• Barcelona vs Valencia
• Barcelona vs Vienna
• Barcelona vs Warsaw

Elsewhere

Sources we link to but do not copy, because their licences forbid it.

• Numbeo: cost of living in Barcelona
• WeatherSpark: year-round weather in Barcelona
• Wikipedia: Barcelona

Credits

• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Borgo's summary of the EU-Swiss Agreement on the Free Movement of Persons (State Secretariat for Migration) (Borgo's own summary of the law cited (CC BY 4.0); the official text is cited, not copied)
• Unicode CLDR territory information. Copyright © 1991-2026 Unicode, Inc. Used under the Unicode License v3 (https://www.unicode.org/license.txt) (Unicode License v3)
• Borgo contributors, from the statutes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• Borgo's summary of Directive 2004/38/EC (© European Union, EUR-Lex) (Borgo's own summary of the law cited (CC BY 4.0); the official text is cited, not copied)
• Source: Eurostat, Urban Audit (© European Union). Borgo keeps each city's latest value and converts units where its note says so Eurostat is not responsible for Borgo's use of its data. (European Commission reuse policy (Decision 2011/833/EU): reuse with the source acknowledged and changes stated)
• Founders Running Club communities list (facts of presence and links only) (No licence from the publisher: only facts of presence are stored)
• Places, coordinates, populations and time zones from GeoNames (geonames.org), CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)
• GHS-UCDB R2024A, European Commission, Joint Research Centre, CC BY 4.0, doi:10.2905/1a338be6-7eaf-480c-9664-3a8ade88cbcd; Borgo derives the distance from the centre to the urban centre's edge Shores and lakes from Natural Earth (public domain) decide which directions lead on to land. (CC BY 4.0)
• Counts of GitHub profiles by stated location, from GitHub's public user search (counts only, no profile data) (No data licence from the publisher: only total counts are stored, no record about anyone, as its terms allow public, non-personal information in openly published research)
• Borgo contributors, from the labour codes cited in each figure's note (CC BY 4.0)
• The M-Lab NDT Data Set, 2023-01-01–2023-12-31. https://measurementlab.net/tests/ndt (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Public holidays from Nager.Date (date.nager.at), MIT License, Copyright (c) Nager (MIT License)
• Made with Natural Earth (public domain) (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• OECD (2026), Net childcare costs, OECD Tax-Benefit Models, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/indicators/net-childcare-costs.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Family Database, PF2.1 Parental leave systems, https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/oecd-family-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• OECD (2026), OECD Well-being Database (How's Life?), https://www.oecd.org/en/data/datasets/well-being-database.html Reusers must cite the OECD as above and pass this acknowledgement requirement on to anyone they share the data with. (OECD terms for data: any use, with the OECD citation passed on)
• Weather data by Open-Meteo.com (https://open-meteo.com/), CC BY 4.0 Contains modified Copernicus Climate Change Service information 2021-2025. Neither the European Commission nor ECMWF is responsible for any use that may be made of the Copernicus information or data it contains. (CC BY 4.0)
• OpenAlex (openalex.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL 1.0 (https://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright) (Open Database License 1.0)
• Airports from OurAirports (ourairports.com), public domain (Public domain (dedicated by the publisher))
• Research Organization Registry (ror.org), CC0 (CC0 1.0 (public domain dedication))
• Terrain Tiles on AWS Open Data (Mapzen, a Linux Foundation project): SRTM and GMTED2010 terrain data courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey; ETOPO1, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Canada terrain data contains information licensed under the Open Government Licence – Canada (Terrain Tiles source terms: public domain (USGS, NOAA) and Open Government Licence – Canada, with attribution)
• World Health Organization, WHO Ambient Air Quality Database (Version 8.0), 2026, accessed 2026-10-27; data provided by the national and regional agencies named in each value's note WHO does not endorse Borgo, its use of these data, or any city ranking built from them. Values are as published by WHO; WHO advises against using the database to rank cities or compare countries directly, because monitoring differs between places. (WHO terms and conditions for data compilations)
• WMO Member Nations (2023). WMO Climatological Standard Normals for 1991-2020 (NCEI Accession 0253808), sunshine duration. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information. https://doi.org/10.25921/800j-vn07 (No licence attached: NCEI public access with a requested citation, under the WMO Unified Data Policy)
• World Bank, World Development Indicators, CC BY 4.0 (underlying sources named in each figure's note: ICP, IMF, UNODC, UN Population Division, WHO, ILO, UNESCO Institute for Statistics) (CC BY 4.0)
• World Bank, Worldwide Governance Indicators, Control of Corruption estimate, CC BY 4.0 (CC BY 4.0)

Cite this page

Borgo, “Living in Barcelona”, https://borgo.abcastor.com/city/barcelona-es/, figures as of 2026-11-05. Please also name the original source of any figure you use; each is listed above with its licence. Data: barcelona-es.json.