Demography in Barcelona

According to informacion announced by the local authorities for the day 01 Jan 2006 population of Barcelona amounted to 1673075 inhabitants. The population density in Barcelona is more than 15 thousand people per square kilometer. The most dense district is Eixample - located between an old town and the former suburbs, which are now a part of the city (Sants, Grácia, Sant Andreu, etc.).

The 62 percent of population are Catalans, 23,5 percent are people from other regions of Spain. Last 13,9 percent is made up by immigrants from other countries, mainly from Ecuador, Peru, Morocco, Colombia, Argentina, Italy, Pakistan, Poland and China. Since year 2001 amount of immigrants increased three times (in 2001 it was 3,9 percent).

The 95% of people understand catalan language, while 74,6% can speak it, 75% can read it and 47,1% can write it.

The most of Barcelona's inhabitants are Roman Catholics.

In 1900 in Barcelona was inhabited by 533 thousands of people. This number grew slowly but equally till 1950 - thanks to people who immigrated from less developed regions of Spain.
Barcelona reached its population peak in 1979 (over 1,9 millions of people). But in next years, in the eighties and nineties of XX century, it fell down, because of people who moved to the suburbs, where they could find a higher quality of life.