Seven of the ten neighborhoods with the most foreigners in the State are in Catalonia

BarcelonaSeven of the ten neighborhoods with the highest immigration in the entire State are located in Barcelona and l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, according to urban indicator data for 2024 published this Wednesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). In fact, the five neighborhoods with the highest percentage of foreign residents are all located in the Ciutat Vella district of the Catalan capital.

Specifically, the Barri Gòtic, Raval Nord, and Raval Sud are the only three areas in the entire State where inhabitants with foreign nationality exceeded half of the population two years ago. The case of the Gòtic was the most pronounced, with 66.9% foreign residents, while the two aforementioned areas of the Raval both recorded 52%. They are followed by the neighborhoods of Sant Pere, Santa Caterina i la Ribera, with 47.1%, and Barceloneta, with 42.8%, which complete the Spanish top 5.

Other areas highlighted for their high presence of foreigners are Besòs i el Maresme, also in Barcelona, with 41.4%, and two neighborhoods in l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, la Torrassa and la Florida, with 38.6% and 38.5% respectively, which were placed in positions 10 and 11 of the ranking. In this classification, taking up to position 15, there are only four neighborhoods that are not Catalan, three in Madrid –Pradolongo, San Cristóbal, and San Diego– and district 8 of the city of Murcia. The rest of the areas that complete the ranking were Poble-sec, in Barcelona, and les Planes and Pubilla Cases, both in l'Hospitalet.

At the other extreme, the city of Cordoba had in 2024 the ten neighborhoods with the least immigration, with percentages between 1.1% and 2.3% of the population coming from third countries.

Registered crimes

The statistics published this Wednesday by the INE analyze various indicators for Spanish municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants. On this occasion, it also offers data on the number of crimes recorded per municipality and, in the case of Catalonia, two locations occupy the top position in both the ranking of most infractions and that of the fewest.

Thus, El Prat de Llobregat was in 2024 the municipality in the State with the most infractions, 225.1 per thousand inhabitants, followed by Adeje (Tenerife) and Salou, in the Tarragonès, with 126 and 120.9 crimes per thousand people, respectively. Barcelona was in fifth position with 103.5, and among the fifteen towns were also Sitges (Garraf), Sant Adrià de Besòs (Barcelonès), Roses (Alt Empordà), El Vendrell, and Figueres.

It is notable that several of these towns have in common a high presence of tourists, whether due to the presence of an airport—like El Prat—or due to being important tourist destinations. In this sense, among the top 15 there are other municipalities with great tourist overcrowding, such as Sant Josep de sa Talaia, Calvià, and Ibiza, in the Balearic Islands; Cullera and Torrevieja, in the Valencian Community, and the Andalusian municipality of Marbella.

At the other extreme, Olesa de Montserrat (Baix Llobregat), with 17.6 criminal offenses per thousand inhabitants, was the town with the fewest crimes recorded in Spain in 2024. Castellar del Vallès (Vallès Occidental) was third, with 18.8, while Manlleu, with 20.2, occupied fifth place. Two more municipalities from the Baix Llobregat, Esparreguera and Sant Andreu de la Barca, also entered the top 15 with the fewest infractions.