Population: the century of growth and the return
Barcelona went from 533,000 inhabitants in 1900 to its historic ceiling —nearly 1.9 million in 1979— before losing people for two decades to the periphery and recovering with twenty-first-century immigration.
| Year | Inhabitants |
|---|---|
| 1900 | 533,000 |
| 1930 | 959,000 |
| 1950 | 1,277,000 |
| 1979 (peak) | 1,907,000 |
| 2000 (recent low) | 1,496,000 |
| 2024 | 1,686,000 |
Today
The municipality sits near 1.69 million inhabitants in 2024, with 3.2 million in administrative Barcelona and around 5.5 million in the metropolitan area: southern Europe's sixth-largest urban agglomeration.
Uneven density
Average density runs around 16,600 inhabitants per km², but brutally concentrated: nearly 90 percent of people live in half the municipality, and the neighborhoods around the Sagrada Família exceed 50,000 per km².
Diversity
More than a fifth of residents were born outside Spain: Italy, Colombia, Pakistan, China, Peru and France lead the census's foreign communities.