Catalan Language Discrimination Complaints Jump by Nearly Half in Barcelona

Cases of discrimination against people for speaking Catalan rose by almost half in Barcelona in 2025, according to the city’s latest Observatori de les Discriminacions (Discrimination Observatory) report. The report counted 284 such cases, and language discrimination is now the second most common reason for complaints in the city, behind only racism and xenophobia. A year earlier it ranked fifth.

Reports differ slightly on the 2024 baseline. Tot Barcelona gives 194 cases for 2024, while betevé, the city’s public broadcaster, gives 192.

Where Catalan speakers ran into problems

The Ajuntament de Barcelona (Barcelona City Council) said in a press release that most of the language cases happened in the private sector. Catalan speakers reported trouble using the language in everyday situations: at a bar or restaurant, at the doctor’s, when renewing documents, signing up for a service or filing a complaint. The council listed demands to switch to Spanish in order to be served, a lack of paperwork in Catalan and, in some cases, refusal of service.

The report draws on data from the city’s Oficina per la No Discriminació (OND, the Non-Discrimination Office) and the SAVD, a network of organizations that support victims of discrimination.

What the city council has done

Since July 2025, the council has handled Catalan speakers’ language rights and the promotion of Catalan through a commissioner for the social use of Catalan, Marta Salicrú. Measures listed by the council include:

• language clauses in public procurement contracts;
• an information campaign aimed at 850 shops, bars and restaurants in Gràcia;
• inspections of language-policy compliance at businesses on La Rambla;
• work on adding language requirements to hiring at TMB (Barcelona’s bus and metro operator).

One recent case involved the city’s own staff. Tot Barcelona reported a week ago that the council suspended a Guàrdia Urbana (Barcelona’s city police) officer for twenty-four days without pay after he refused to serve a woman in Catalan and called her request “fascist” and “totalitarian.” The complaint was filed by Plataforma per la Llengua, a Catalan language advocacy group.

Racism remains the top complaint

Overall, the report recorded 163 more discrimination cases in Barcelona in 2025 than in 2024. Racism and xenophobia led for the eighth year running, with 348 cases. Women were affected most often (163). Racism against people from Latin America accounted for 113 cases and anti-Muslim racism for 92.

The other leading categories were:

• health, with 268 cases, 57% of them involving people with mental health problems;
• ableism (prejudice against people with disabilities), with 232 cases;
• LGBTI-phobia, with 228 cases, a record and double the 112 recorded in 2019, driven mainly by homophobia and transphobia;
• gender, down from 280 in 2024 to 226;
• aporophobia (hostility toward poor people), up from 90 to 141.

Separately, the city’s ECAMB 2024 survey on neighborhood relations found that a third of Barcelona residents have experienced some form of discrimination, according to betevé.

What it means for residents

For Catalan speakers, the figures count a problem that shows up in bars, medical visits and paperwork: being asked to switch to Spanish to get served. For businesses, especially in Gràcia and on La Rambla, the council is now checking compliance with language-policy rules, and refusals to serve in Catalan are a fast-growing source of formal complaints.

The report also flags more discrimination in schools, which the observatory links to rising hate speech, discriminatory attitudes and defense of far-right ideas among pupils and teachers. It blames unchecked online information for spreading misinformation and polarization among students.

Sources: Tot Barcelona, betevé