Some people say that Barcelona with it's population of 1.5 millions(city) and 4.2 millions(metropolitan area) is the biggest non-capital city of Europe. Whether this might be correct or not anyone will probably agree that Barcelona is big and beautiful!

Located at the Mediterranean sea in the very north of the Spanish coast, it is certainly the most cosmopolitan, progressive and modern city of Spain linked to the rest of Europe for its inspiration and its innovations.
The glorious modernista architecture from Antoni Gaudí with its fascinating and fantastic Sagrada Família, Pedrera, Parc Guëll…spreads all over the city's streets and avenues and has left its mark on Barcelona. Catalunya and Barcelona have always had a very rich art movement/tradition and are source of some of the greatest modern artist such as Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Dali, Antoni Tàpies and other well known personalities like Victoria Abril (actress), Bigas Luna (director), Pau Casals (musician and composer), Llluis Lllach (singer), Eduardo Mendoza (writer), Manuel Vasques Montalban (writer)...

As the second city of Spain, with its international flair, its mild weather and the beach only a few metro stops away it's easy to understand why so many foreigners choose Barcelona to live and work.

In a worldwide quality of living survey from the year 2001 by consultants William M. Mercer analysing 218 cities, Barcelona reached position 58 behind other european cities such as Dublin(35), Madrid(44), Birmingham(57) and beyond Lisbon(59), Milan(64), Rome(68), Budapest(72), Prague(74) or Athens (82). While this is a rather bad ranking there are other surveys such as Arthur Andersen and the magazine Fortune which in its 1997 study "Europe's most improved cities", placed Barcelona as the third city which has improved most in recent years (after Dublin and Amsterdam). Another study by Healey & Baker 1998 shows that Barcelona has moved from occupying the 13th position in 1992, to consolidate the 6th position in the ranking of the best European cities for locating a business.

About 7% of Barcelona's total population are foreigners. These 105118 residents originate to about 49% from North & South America, 22% from Europe, 16% from Asia and 13% from Africa.

The biggest foreign communities in Barcelona are as shown:

	Origin	Number	% of foreign population
	Ecuador	17975	17%
	Morocco	9751	9%
	Colombia	9616	9%
	Peru	8646	8%
	Pakistan	6112	6%
	República Dominicana	5031	5%
	Italy	4572	4%
	Argentina	4547	4%
	Filipinas	3859	4%
	France	3684	4%
	China	3303	3%
	Germany	2593	2%
	Chili	2187	2%
	United Kingdom	1936	2%
	Brasil	1880	2%
	Cuba	1693	2%
	United States	1264	1%

source www.bcn.es/Ayuntamiento de Barcelona

If you're thinking about moving to Barcelona, remember it is both, a bilingual and bicultural city! Many people deciding to move here underestimate or sometimes even totally ignore the reality of the Catalan language thinking it is some kind of regional accent (never commit this error!). Catalan, which resembles a mix of French and Spanish, is a natural language such as French, German or English with its own grammar, syntax, literature, tradition and culture. There are about 10 million people who speak or understand Catalan and thus it is much more widely spoken than better-known languages such as Danish, Finnish or Norwegian. There are 4 TV station broadcasting only in Catalan, half of advertisement in the streets are in Catalan, any public signs, gas-, water- and electricity bills, street names and/or announcement are in Catalan and quite often movies are subtitled or dubbed in Catalan. Business talks and company meetings are often rather held in Catalan than Spanish (Castilian) and quite often university classes are only in Catalan. While most of the time you'll be fine with Spanish you'll quickly realise that it can sometimes be annoying or confusing having to figure out that "tancat" hanging in a shop window means "closed". If you seriously intend to spent the rest of your life here you will have to learn Catalan.

You will also have to adapt to the local lifestyle and timetable. Work normally starts a 9 and quite often there is a "breakfast" break at around 11 while lunch happens between 14 and 16. You'll find a lot of shops closed between 14-17 reopening from 17 to 20 or 21. Work normally ends at 19/20 and dinner is served around 21/22 which corresponds more or less TV prime time (news at 21 or 22 movie at around 22 or 23). You'll probably won't sleep before midnight. On weekends if you think of going out, don't bother to show up at a disco/club before 2am. It'll be either closed or empty. 3-4 is more normal and even that's early for some…

While today Barcelona has become a success story combining intelligently its traditional past and the modern present into a vivid, cultural and cosmopolitan boom town it also has its problems. Having attracted a lot of immigrants(especially from south America as they share the same language) Barcelona has to cope with illegal and often unskilled immigration, petty crime rate, drug problems, dirt, thrash and a growing gap between rich and poor. The population is ageing and birth-rate is low partly to the lack of social aid/support from the government. House prices rocket and living in the centre of Barcelona has become expensive for many young families often being forced to move to the outskirts. The public health service is suffering from inefficiency and long waiting times/lists. Standards in schools and universities are low and the justice system is slow and unreliable.It is also one of the most densely populated cities in the world(18156 inhabitants/km²), with an oppressive quantity of cars and motor scooters, and consistently ranks as one of the noisiest.

The 1992 held Olympic Games have without a doubt given Barcelona an massive impulse to reinvent itself, to reshape its face and to open the city to the sea. Barcelona's drive for self-improvement and self-promotion sometimes seems unstopable. And as before, it has a 'big event' to showcase its next stage of growth, the Forum Universal de Cultures, a locally-conceived project of rather questionable usefulness supported by UNESCO, whose aim is to celebrate cultural diversity and world peace. Scheduled for 2004, the project will no doubt provide the city with yet another reason to build and expand…