Catalonia’s 012 Help Line Now Answers Calls on Saturdays and Sundays
The Generalitat's free 012 citizen line now works weekends from 9 to 20 h. What the service covers, who calls it and how it fits the admin reform.
The 012, the free information and paperwork phone line of the Generalitat (Catalan government), started taking calls on weekends this Saturday. It now answers on Saturdays and Sundays from 9 to 20 h, El País and La Vanguardia reported, so residents can reach an agent every day of the week.
Until now the line worked only Monday to Friday, from 8 to 22 h, and those weekday hours stay the same. According to El País, the weekend service covers Saturdays and Sundays that are not public holidays.
What the 012 line handles
Callers get general information on anything the Generalitat is responsible for. Agents answer questions and can walk people through online procedures over the phone. El País reported that the team has 350 agents, who also help people book appointments at in-person offices, pay taxes and use the government’s digital services. Callers can also ask about education, housing, transport and culture.
The requests that come up most often, according to both newspapers, are about the renda garantida (Catalonia’s guaranteed minimum income), taxes, disability assessments and rent subsidies. Dependency care benefits are also common, El País said. La Vanguardia reported that the busiest subject area from January to October was society, citizenship and families, ahead of mobility and transport and then the economy.
Why it matters for residents
Many people deal with the Generalitat for things like rental aid, benefits and tax questions, and until this weekend the phone line was closed exactly when most of them had free time. The conseller de la Presidència (the Catalan minister in charge of the presidency department), Albert Dalmau, said the government saw a line closed on weekends as an anomaly. “The weekend is when people have time,” he said, as quoted by El País.
The line has been free to call since July 2024. Demand has grown since then: between January and October it handled more than 2 million calls, up on the same months of 2025. The two newspapers give slightly different totals for that period, and El País said this year’s count is already close to the full figure for 2025. El País also reported that users rated the service close to the top of a five-point scale.
Part of a wider reform of public offices
The government presents the weekend opening as one step in its reform of public administration, which aims to make dealing with officials easier. Dalmau said the goal is for callers to be helped by a person straight away, weekends included.
The same plan, El País reported, includes a network of oficines d’atenció ciutadana (OAC, citizen service offices) in every vegueria (Catalonia’s administrative regions), the first three metropolitan OAC, mobile offices that reach more than 200 municipalities, and a virtual office where people can handle procedures by video call without travelling. The service also has “digital agents”, staff who help people in person to finish procedures online, which the Generalitat says is meant to keep people without digital skills from being left out.
Sources: La Vanguardia, El País
