Concern over the rise in discrimination based on racism and xenophobia in Barcelona. The Office for Non-Discrimination (OND) of the Barcelona City Council registered 5% more cases last year for this reason compared to last year, the majority related to moral integrity (43%).
“We see with concern that racism continues to be the most present discrimination in the day-to-day life of the city of Barcelona,” lamented Marc Serra, councilor for Citizenship Rights, who has attributed this increase to the rise of the extreme right.
The positive news is that, in general, LGTBIphobia cases have been reduced by 10 percentage points, with moral integrity being the most violated right in half of the situations, while physical integrity accounts for 16% of the cases attended to. Despite this decrease, it is worrying that in this group there has been a larger increase in cases of transphobia and lesbophobia.
On the other hand, 24 situations of discrimination in access to housing have been detected due to origin or condition. The Consistory currently has six disciplinary proceedings open for this issue.
In total, last year the office opened a total of 240 files for discrimination based on origin, gender, disability, ideological reasons, age, health or language. The OND, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in 2023, attended more than 500 queries from citizens in 2023.
