The limited construction activity that has been recorded in Barcelona for many years now, with more than one crisis in between and the application of measures that greatly limit production, especially new housing, is accelerating the aging process of the physical structure of Barcelona. the Catalan capital. This is certified by the update of the cadastral data and the Real Estate Tax (IBI) that has just been made public by Barcelona City Council. The statistics, which take into account all the properties built in the city, whether residential, commercial, office, healthcare or sports, to name just a few types, place the average age at over 70 years old. of Barcelona buildings.
This low production has led to the seventy-year mark being surpassed and in just six years that age has gone from 67.5 years in January 2018 to 72.7 in the last update, which dates back to last month. February.
The name Ciutat Vella does not lie. Despite the relative artificiality of its recreation, the Gòtic is the neighborhood with the oldest buildings in the city. Many estates from medieval times have survived, fortunately for the heritage and historical wealth of Barcelona, ??the passage of time, real estate speculation, the pickaxe and even the necessary sponging and sanitation of some areas. With an average age of 128.7 years in its buildings, Gòtic heads a ranking in which two other neighborhoods in the district (Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera, 120.8 years, and Raval, 119.5) They complete the podium of the oldest areas of the city.
With an average age of more than 90 years, there are, according to data collected by Barcelona City Council, another four of the city’s 73 neighborhoods. This is Can Peguera, in Nou Barris, a territory with just over 2,000 inhabitants and with an average age of its buildings of 93.6 years; the fourth neighborhood of Ciutat Vella, Barceloneta (93.1); Dreta de l’Eixample (92.6) and Vila de Gràcia (90.3).
At the other extreme, only five neighborhoods in Barcelona have a building stock with an average age of less than 50 years. The youngest of all is Diagonal Mar i Front Marítim del Poblenou. Most of its tall towers were built in the years prior to the celebration of the Universal Forum of Cultures, which will soon celebrate its 20th anniversary. The much more modest constructions prior to that time that were included in this administrative division mean that the average age of the buildings in the youngest neighborhood of the city is 31.7 years.
The other four neighborhoods whose buildings are not older than 50 years are Baró de Viver (34.3); the Marina del Prat Vermell (41.6), an area in full transformation, one of the main housing reserves in today’s Barcelona that, logically, will rejuvenate in the coming times; and two neighborhoods that completely mutated in the years prior to the 1992 Olympic Games, such as Vila Olímpica del Poblenou (42.7 years) and Vall d’Hebron (49.3).
The emptying of the cadastral review of Barcelona provides other data that projects the image of the city today. The updated records number 832,624 cadastral premises whose main use is housing. The district with the most inhabitants (16% of the Barcelona population) and with the most economic activity in the city, Eixample, concentrates 144,945 homes, this is 17.4% of the total.
The districts of Sant Martí (113,816) and Sants-Montjuïc (90,121) are the second and third, respectively, that contribute the most to the housing stock of Barcelona. Those with, in absolute terms, fewer residential units are Les Corts (41,131) and Ciutat Vella (57,923).
The registry of all cadastral premises in Barcelona indicates that, after housing, the second most common typology in the city is parking spaces. There are 384,315 (the city’s vehicle fleet exceeds 800,000 units), of which a third are concentrated in the Eixample and Sarrià-Sant Gervasi districts.
After homes and parking lots, in the list of cadastral premises according to the main use for which they are intended, appear shops (93,642), warehouses (76,240), offices (32,642) and premises dedicated to tourist and transportation services. hospitality (11,361).
The comparison with the latest records with those corresponding to January 2009, when the great financial crisis was taking its first steps, indicates that Barcelona’s commercial fabric has recovered quite well from the drain that that economic cataclysm represented and that it has also survived the bad times caused by the pandemic. According to the Municipal Office of Dades (OMD) of the City Council, and always based on IBI data from the General Directorate of Cadastre (DGC) and the Institut Municipal d’Hisenda, in the capital there were 84,988 commercial premises 15 years ago. Currently there are 93,642, that is, in this turbulent period of the last three decades, the number of commercial premises in Barcelona has increased by approximately 10%. Also in this section, the relative weight of the Eixample district stands out, which with nearly 20,000 units concentrates just over 20% of the city’s commercial premises.
From the comparison between the statistics of today and 15 years ago, the strong increase in the number of cadastral premises dedicated to tourism and hospitality is striking. From the almost 7,000 that existed in 2009, it has currently increased to 11,361, with an increase of 63.2%. The Eixample and Ciutat Vella districts together account for 56.7% of the premises dedicated to these activities that are so relevant to the local economy.
The holders of Barcelona’s cadastral assets collectively generate 1,170,150 charges (receipts). The amount calculated as the net IBI quota amounts, according to the latest data, to 748.5 million euros, about 115 million more than in 2018. Of that global amount, a quarter, more than 190 million of euros, is generated in the Eixample district.