They have attended an average of three people a day during the first year and during the last two months the demand has practically doubled. The Welcome Desk, the one-stop shop designed to streamline administrative procedures for foreigners who have chosen Barcelona to start a business or to pursue university studies or because they have signed a contract or because they are digital nomads, has far exceeded a thousand users since it opened , at the end of 2021 at 22@. Its managers hope to multiply the activity during 2023.
“Before, the talent went where the industry was, now the industry goes where the talent is, and the talent looks for cities with a good quality of life, good connectivity and where there is an entrepreneurial ecosystem; Barcelona is very well positioned but we have to facilitate the arrival of this talent”, maintains Pau Solanilla, Commissioner for City Promotion. 40% of the users of the Welcome Desk are between 17 and 29 years old and another 42% between 30 and 40 and 96% have university, post-university or doctoral studies.
“I got tired of the weather in London and I prioritized the quality of life that Barcelona offers with its beaches, near the mountains, its good weather, good gastronomy and because I saw that there is a very interesting startup and business movement”, explains Koen Vandecaveye. . This 44-year-old Belgian left his country to settle in Shanghai, where he lived for ten years. He then spent another twelve in London and moved to Barcelona a year ago.
His first contact with the Welcome Desk was by video call. In fact, 45.7% of the services provided during the first year were online. “People want to come knowing what procedures they will have to do and they ask all kinds of things… in addition to visas and permits or municipal procedures, we also help them with questions about schools or how to find a flat…”, explains Yasmin, who with Faizan attend in person or through the screen in six languages.
As for municipal procedures, practically half of the procedures have been to register newcomers on the register. And of the central administration, appointments to obtain the EU registration certificate (36%), the Foreigner Identity Card (20%), or the NIE for non-residents (9%) have been the most defendants.
“With European citizens, the procedures are usually easier, things get complicated with non-EU users or with mixed marriages… we have seen cases of all kinds…”, explains Jaume Baró, director of Business Services at Active Barcelona.
This is the case of Koen. Her husband has a Chinese passport, but the marriage certificate arrived late… “in the end it took us seven months to be able to regularize her situation, if they hadn’t helped us, it would have been chaos to make appointments and come back and come back… ”, she admits. She works in Barcelona
Users have come from 93 countries, 56% from outside the European Union. By volume, most are from Italy, the United States, the United Kingdom, Colombia, France, Germany and Italy. 25% state that they have come to Barcelona to work in a highly qualified position, 22.5% to pursue graduate or postgraduate studies, 15% to undertake, 9% to work in a research center and a significant 8.3% declare themselves a digital nomad.
The origin of the Welcome Dek dates back to before the pandemic. The International Talent Monitor, the surveys that Barcelona Global prepares every two years, highlighted the difficulties faced by foreigners in carrying out administrative and tax procedures. “We followed up and looked at how other cities were doing it; we looked at the Amsterdam model and studied how we could implement it in Barcelona”, explains Cristina H.Valiñani, project manager at Barcelona Global. The City Council supported the project and materialized it in 22@.
