Barcelona City Council has commissioned a €50,000 study from Institut Metròpoli to assess how residents in Ciutat Vella perceive insecurity, according to official municipal documents. The work focuses on the city’s historic centre, where daily life is shaped by housing pressure, tourism, nightlife and street-level tensions.
The study matters in Barcelona because Ciutat Vella includes the Raval, the Gòtic, Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera, and Barceloneta, areas where residents, shopkeepers and visitors often share the same streets at different times of day. For background on the district, see our Barcelona city centre coverage and our community reporting.
The commission appears in an official BCNROC document, Barcelona City Council’s open repository. The recipient is Institut Metròpoli, a public research institute that works on metropolitan issues, including urban security and social conditions.
The district’s own mandate report, published by the Ajuntament de Barcelona for Ciutat Vella, also points to coexistence, public space management and neighbourhood life as key pressures. The council’s wider Local Security Plan 2024–2027 sets out a framework that combines prevention, coexistence and enforcement.
City Hall has already published broader material on insecurity in Barcelona’s neighbourhoods through its security, prevention and social cohesion work. That approach treats insecurity as more than recorded crime, it also includes residents’ experience of disorder, conflict, environmental conditions and trust in institutions. In Ciutat Vella, that can be shaped by lighting, crowding, noise, vandalism, drug dealing and the use of public space.
The commission comes after a violent incident in the Raval on Saturday 7 June 2026. Barcelona City Council, the Guardia Urbana and the Mossos d’Esquadra each published official notices about the mass confrontation, and said investigations and operational follow-up were under way. The notices do not prove a direct link to the new study, but they help explain why safety remains a live issue in the district.
For local readers, the key question is whether the findings lead to visible changes on the street, including prevention plans, public space management, social intervention and policing priorities. The study is part of that wider policy picture in Barcelona, and it may shape how the city responds in Ciutat Vella next.
