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Barcelona

Barcelona has more than 6,000 empty shop units — 2,443 buildings have one that was already empty two years earlier — and a fifth of the offices in its 22@ district standing empty. The City's own inventory records 29 municipal buildings as boarded up or awaiting demolition and holds about a hundred more for a planned change, while it gives public plots on long surface rights to cooperatives and public housing builders and buys boarded-up buildings itself. The Generalitat's own inventory names public buildings without any use, such as the former UOC headquarters on Avinguda del Tibidabo.
An empty building in Barcelona with homes, balconies and neighbours drawn onto it in ink
Empty buildings on record
1,248
and 5,326 more with an empty shop, flat or floor
Vacant office space
705,600 m²
8.4% of the stock
Homes potential
≈ 2,682
if 30% of empty offices converted

Office figures: JLL, first half of 2026 — 8.4 million m² of offices, 8.4% available (vacant area = stock × rate, an estimate). Savills puts the city at 10.2% and the 22@ district at 20.5%. Homes: our economic model’s conversion engine. Map built 2026-10-09.

Empty buildings in Barcelona

One point per building, from public records, open data and cited reports. Filter by type, size and how sure the evidence is; open one to see who says so and whether it could become homes.

Barcelona publishes no open list of empty whole buildings; the Generalitat's register of empty dwellings owned by banks and large holders (1,350 in the city at the end of 2024) is not open at address level.

Loading map…
Colour = type of building named officially likely reported
Missing a building?

Check any building in Barcelona: could it become homes, and could the EHC model work there?

9 more buildings in Barcelona reported in the news, not yet on the map

The articles do not give an address we could place, so these have no pin yet. From news reports, summed up in our own words with a link to each article — not checked on site by EHC.

  • Antic Hospital Evangèlic de Gràcia — reported demolition planned · formerly hospitalFormer 1970s hospital building in Gràcia, vacated after the hospital moved to Sant Martí, slated for demolition to make way for a school. Betevé (2024-12-05)
  • antigua sede de ICV — reported for sale or to let · formerly office · owner: CaixaBankA CaixaBank subsidiary has put the former ICV party headquarters in Barcelona up for sale at 1.75 million euros. El Periódico (Barcelona) (2026-04-02)
  • antigua sede de la editorial Gustavo Gili — reported conversion planned · formerly office · Public ownerThe former Gustavo Gili publishing house building will become Barcelona's House of Architecture. EL PAÍS (2026-01-13)
  • antigua sede de Puig — reported for sale or to let · formerly office · Company-ownedThe cosmetics group Puig has sold its former Barcelona headquarters for fifteen million euros. Modaes (2025-05-28)
  • antigua sede de Tele/eXpres — reported conversion planned · formerly officeThe former Tele/eXpres newspaper building is due to be brought back into use in early 2028. Tot Barcelona (2026-06-28)
  • antigua sede del PSUC — reported conversion planned · formerly officeThe former headquarters of the PSUC party in Barcelona is to become a museum of surrealism. El Debate (2024-12-19)
  • edificio vacío de la Seguridad Social, Ali Bei and Ronda de Sant Pere — reported empty · formerly administrative offices · Public ownerThe 5,200 m² former courthouse building has been closed and unused for eleven years elDiario.es Catalunya (2026-08-24)
  • Galeries Wagner — reported conversion planned · 4,000 m² · owner: Edificio Rostower SocimiThe former Via Wagner shopping arcade, closed since 1993, was bought for refurbishment into offices to let. Brainsre.news (2026-05-01)
  • Masia de Can Trilla — reported empty · owner: Arquebisbat de BarcelonaOld farmhouse handed to the Church in 2017 and currently standing empty, according to Gràcia housing groups. Betevé (2026-06-04)

Where conversion makes sense, and who to talk to

The districts where empty space, the right zoning and a working neighbourhood come together, and the owners and programmes that open a door. 705,600 m² of offices stand empty (8.4% of the stock).

A hand outlining a neighbourhood on a city map, with small houses drawn inside

22@ and Poblenou (Sant Martí)

The innovation district has the city's highest office vacancy, ten sectors still waiting for their detailed plans, and a cooperative plot already assigned on Carrer de Tànger.

  • 22@ office availability 20.48% (Savills, H1 2026)
  • CBRE estimates 8,400 homes if the remaining tertiary land were rezoned
  • 730 empty ground-floor premises in Sant Martí (2023–24 census)
  • Boarded-up municipal buildings at Pere IV 462, Maresme 154 and Aragó 531 (municipal inventory, 31 Dec 2025)

Risk: Land is in many private hands and the 2023 plan change that added 3,300 homes has seen only 370 started; new office supply keeps arriving.

5 sources

Eixample

The district with the most empty ground-floor premises, in deep nineteenth-century blocks where whole-building reactivation, not new land, is the main route.

  • A public plot without use at Carrer de Provença 164 (Hospital Clínic)
  • 1,224 empty ground-floor premises, the most of any district (2023–24 census)
  • A boarded-up municipal block of flats at Villarroel 102 (municipal inventory, 31 Dec 2025)

Risk: Among the highest values in the city; whole empty buildings are rarely on the market.

3 sources

La Marina del Prat Vermell (Sants-Montjuïc)

Former industrial land under transformation, with the largest residential floor area still waiting for detailed plans and a municipal plot in the 2026 affordable-rental tender.

  • Three pending transformation sectors with about 20,000, 40,000 and 20,000 m² of residential floor area
  • Included in the March 2026 tender for 625 affordable rental flats on five municipal plots

Risk: Mostly new building on cleared industrial land, far from transit until new lines arrive.

2 sources

Nou Barris (Trinitat Nova, Torre Baró)

Renewal areas where the city is rebuilding post-war estates and assigning plots to cooperatives, such as Carrer d'Aiguablava.

  • Trinitat Nova and Trinitat–Madriguera renewal sectors still waiting for detailed plans
  • ESAL plot at Carrer d'Aiguablava 74-76 assigned to a cohousing cooperative (February 2026)

Risk: Renewal sectors first rehouse existing residents; spare capacity for new groups is limited.

2 sources

Ciutat Vella

The city is moving 700 staff into a refurbished building on Via Laietana to free its own offices on Avinyó, Ciutat and Paradís streets for about 70 protected homes — a direct office-to-housing conversion by a public owner.

  • About 70 protected homes planned in freed municipal offices
  • 636 empty ground-floor premises (2023–24 census)

Risk: Small, listed buildings in a tourist-pressured centre; the first staff move only from mid-2026.

2 sources

Signals to watch

Decisions, auctions and closures that change what becomes available, and when.

  1. 2026-08-01City inventory names boarded-up buildings

    The municipal inventory at 31 December 2025 describes 29 City buildings as boarded up (tapiat) or awaiting demolition and about 100 more as held for a planned change; in 2025 the City granted surface rights to INCASÒL and to the housing cooperative Llar Unió Catalonia SCCL.

    1 source
  2. 2026-07-27Office take-up up, availability 8.4%

    Barcelona take-up rose 25% in the first half of 2026; the 22@ captured 45% of activity, yet a fifth of its space is still available.

    1 source
  3. 2026-03-18Tender for 625 affordable rental flats

    Five municipal plots (Provençals del Poblenou, Marina del Prat Vermell, Sant Andreu, Diagonal Mar) offered on 50–75-year surface rights to developers and non-profits.

    1 source
5 earlier signals
  1. 2026-02-20
    Two more plots for cohousing cooperatives

    Surface rights at Carrer d'Aiguablava 74-76 and Carrer de Tànger 56-58 assigned under the ESAL agreement.

    1 source
  2. 2025-09-24
    City buys a boarded-up building in Gràcia

    Passatge d'Alió 21, 11 flats, abandoned for years; bought by pre-emption at a judicial auction.

    1 source
  3. 2025-04-01
    1,350 empty flats of large holders

    The Generalitat's register of empty homes owned by large holders counted 1,350 in the city of Barcelona at the end of 2024, more than any other municipality — but it is not published by address.

    1 source
  4. 2025-01-21
    Brokers push to rezone 22@ offices for homes

    CBRE proposes rezoning the remaining tertiary land in the 22@ for 8,400 homes; of 3,300 homes added in 2023 only 370 had started.

    1 source
  5. 2024-11-11
    Municipal offices to become homes

    The city will move 700 staff to Via Laietana 8-10 from mid-2026 and turn freed offices in Ciutat Vella into about 70 protected homes.

    1 source

Sources, and what we cannot see

31 sources connected, 1 waiting for access. We only use data we may lawfully reuse; where a publisher blocks automated access we do not work around it — a person downloads it, or we ask for permission.

Every source, its licence and when we last read it
SourceAccessRecordsStatusLicence
OpenStreetMap disused/abandoned tags and brownfields
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open API1,343Live
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Rail, S-Bahn and U-Bahn stations (OpenStreetMap)
OpenStreetMap contributors
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Building heights: GlobalBuildingAtlas (TU Munich)
Zhu, X. X., Chen, S., Zhang, F., Shi, Y., Wang, Y. (2025), Technical University of Munich
GlobalBuildingAtlas: an open global and complete dataset of building polygons, heights and LoD1 3D models. Earth System Science Data 17(12), 6647–6668, doi:10.5194/essd-17-6647-2025. Read from the Parquet copy on Source Cooperative. Satellite-derived heights (typically 1.5–3 m error in Europe), turned into storeys with storey heights fitted on Berlin; used only where no register or official 3D model sizes the building.
Open download38 buildings sizedLive
2026-10-09
CC BY-NC 4.0 (heights); footprints from OpenStreetMap and Microsoft: ODbL
Official floor areas and uses: Catastro INSPIRE buildings
Dirección General del Catastro (Ministerio de Hacienda)
Fuente: Dirección General del Catastro. The official gross floor area (officialArea, grossFloorArea) and current use of the cadastral building a record sits in — everything built on that parcel.
Open download1,260 buildings sizedLive
2026-10-09
Catastro INSPIRE licence 1.0 (free use of transformed information, with attribution)
Road noise (EU Environmental Noise Directive, Lden)
European Environment Agency
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-09
EEA standard re-use policy (attribution)
Leerstandsmelder.de — public reports of empty buildings
Leerstandsmelder (Gängeviertel e.V., Hamburg)
Shown while we ask Leerstandsmelder for permission. Reports since 2016 only, with the address, the month reported and a link to each entry; not checked by EHC. Each point says when a report has since been marked demolished, lived in, in interim use or rebuilt on Leerstandsmelder, and the owner type the reporter gave (private owners are never named).
Asking for permission0Pending
2026-10-09
Credited to Leerstandsmelder.de; asking for permission
Open-ended property funds: buildings they report partly empty
Open-ended real-estate funds (each point names its fund and report)
German and Austrian open-ended public property funds must list every property with its vacancy (or letting) rate in their annual and half-year reports. scripts/reuse/import-fund-reports.ts reads those lists; properties at 10 % vacancy or more are shown, those at 25 % or more count as evidence.
Open download3Live
2026-10-09
Published fund report (KAGB / KARBV property list), cited per point
Co-working spaces, department stores, banks, hotels and cinemas listed as permanently closed
Overture Maps Foundation (closure data: BrightQuery company records)
Places with operating_status "permanently_closed" in the monthly Overture release, read by scripts/reuse/import-overture-closures.ts and matched to the building they sit in. A closed business is usually one unit; names are shown only for companies, never for sole traders.
Open download0Live
2026-10-09
CDLA Permissive 2.0 (Overture Maps Foundation)
Land without current use and stalled construction, mapped from satellite imagery (Copernicus Urban Atlas 2006–2018)
European Environment Agency — Copernicus Land Monitoring Service
Urban Atlas class 13400 (brownfields, demolition sites and gaps in the built-up area, 0.25 ha and up) compared across the 2006, 2012 and 2018 editions, so each plot says how long it has stood unused; plus construction sites (13300) already under way in 2012, and 2012 construction sites left unused by 2018. Read from the EEA's open ArcGIS services, the same way in every radar city. The 2021 edition (Copernicus Data Space) drops plots built on since 2018 where scripts/reuse/import-urban-atlas-2021.ts has been run. Points are context, never evidence of vacancy.
Open API22Live
2026-10-09
Copernicus open data (© European Union, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service 2006–2021, EEA)
Office buildings of 1,000 m² or more, with depth and storeys (EUBUCCO)
EUBUCCO (TU Berlin / ai4up), from the Spanish cadastre, Regione Lombardia’s building database and OpenStreetMap
EUBUCCO harmonises Europe's building footprints with their use, height and age. Only buildings whose source names the use are kept — the cadastre's office class in Barcelona and Madrid, Lombardy's "commerciale" in Milan, building=office in OpenStreetMap for Dublin and Lisbon — never EUBUCCO's machine-learning guesses. The footprint gives the plan depth, so the conversion score treats them like the German cadastre's offices (scripts/reuse/import-eubucco.ts → src/scripts/data/reuse/eubucco/, ODbL).
Open download1,093Live
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0 (EUBUCCO v0.2; Dirección General del Catastro, Regione Lombardia, © OpenStreetMap contributors)
Stalled construction and buildings held by insolvent developers
EHC research (dated press and court sources per point)
Signa, Adler/Consus and other developer insolvencies since 2022 and stalled sites, each with its latest dated status (src/scripts/data/reuse/stalled-projects.json; news leads from scripts/reuse/mine-news.ts are reviewed before they join).
EHC research1Live
2026-10-09
Cited publisher per point
Church buildings the dioceses and regional churches plan to give up
Catholic dioceses and Protestant regional churches (their building plans), via EHC research
Buildings a church body’s published building plan or recent reporting names as to be given up, without church funding, for sale or lease, or profaned (src/scripts/data/reuse/church-plans.json and brussels-churches.json).
EHC research0Live
2026-10-09
Cited publisher per point
Named buildings and sites from EHC research (each with its own source)
European Housing Coop research
Includes the library’s public lighthouse conversions (src/scripts/data/reuse/lighthouses.json), shown under "Already converting" with a link to their library page.
EHC research9Live
2026-10-09
Facts cited to their publishers
Year built and listing: OpenStreetMap building tags
OpenStreetMap contributors
start_date / construction_date and heritage / listed_status of the OpenStreetMap outline a record is matched to, where no register answers. Read with the outline match, not a separate query.
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-09
ODbL 1.0 (© OpenStreetMap contributors)
Empty ground-floor premises (census of ground-floor premises 2024, with the 2022 and 2019 censuses compared)
Ajuntament de Barcelona — Open Data BCN
Open download5,376Live
2026-10-09
CC BY 4.0
Planning sectors awaiting their detailed plan (22@ PMUs, renewal and transformation areas)
Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona — Refós de planejament urbanístic (sectors)
Open API75Live
2026-10-09
AMB planning geoservices, attribution 'Servei d'Informació Urbanística, AMB' (refós updated 1 July 2023)
Generalitat buildings without use
Generalitat de Catalunya — Inventari de béns immobles
Open API7Live
2026-10-09
Open data, Generalitat de Catalunya (attribution)
Generalitat plots and railway leftovers
Generalitat de Catalunya — Inventari de béns immobles
Open API11Live
2026-10-09
Open data, Generalitat de Catalunya (attribution)
Central-state property held unassigned (Patrimonio del Estado)
Gobierno de España — Portal de la Transparencia, inventory of state property (CIBI, 6 Sep 2026)
Open API7Live
2026-10-09
No licence stated on the export — shown with credit to the Portal de la Transparencia (EHC decision, 6 Oct 2026)
Buildings the cadastre records as ruined
Dirección General del Catastro — INSPIRE Buildings (August 2026 release)
Open download20Live
2026-10-09
Catastro open data (attribution: Dirección General del Catastro)
Buildings the cadastre records as declined (300 m² or more)
Dirección General del Catastro — INSPIRE Buildings (August 2026 release)
Open download392Live
2026-10-09
Catastro open data (attribution: Dirección General del Catastro)
Buildable plots the City owns (500 m² or more, inventory at 31 Dec 2025)
Ajuntament de Barcelona — Portal de Transparència, inventari municipal (31 Dec 2025) i negocis patrimonials 2025 (published Aug 2026)
Open download122Live
2026-10-09
Public transparency information, Ajuntament de Barcelona (no licence stated — credited)
City land on surface rights for housing (cooperatives, HPO, residences)
Ajuntament de Barcelona — Transparència, inventari i operacions patrimonials (31 Dec 2022)
Manual download82Snapshot
2022
Public transparency information, Ajuntament de Barcelona (credited)
Buildings the City bought in 2022
Ajuntament de Barcelona — Transparència, inventari i operacions patrimonials (31 Dec 2022)
Manual download57Snapshot
2022
Public transparency information, Ajuntament de Barcelona (credited)
Municipal buildings the City's inventory records as boarded up, unused or awaiting demolition (31 Dec 2025)
Ajuntament de Barcelona — Portal de Transparència, inventari municipal (31 Dec 2025) i negocis patrimonials 2025 (published Aug 2026)
Open download29Live
2026-10-09
Public transparency information, Ajuntament de Barcelona (no licence stated — credited)
Municipal buildings held for a planned change ("construcció en transformació", 31 Dec 2025)
Ajuntament de Barcelona — Portal de Transparència, inventari municipal (31 Dec 2025) i negocis patrimonials 2025 (published Aug 2026)
Open download108Live
2026-10-09
Public transparency information, Ajuntament de Barcelona (no licence stated — credited)
City land granted on surface rights in 2025
Ajuntament de Barcelona — Portal de Transparència, inventari municipal (31 Dec 2025) i negocis patrimonials 2025 (published Aug 2026)
Open download9Live
2026-10-09
Public transparency information, Ajuntament de Barcelona (no licence stated — credited)
Buildings the City bought in 2025
Ajuntament de Barcelona — Portal de Transparència, inventari municipal (31 Dec 2025) i negocis patrimonials 2025 (published Aug 2026)
Open download5Live
2026-10-09
Public transparency information, Ajuntament de Barcelona (no licence stated — credited)
Heritage at risk in Barcelona — Hispania Nostra's Lista Roja
Hispania Nostra — Lista Roja del Patrimonio
Open download2Live
2026-10-09
All rights reserved (Hispania Nostra, aviso legal): only the entry's name, the street, the date added and a link to its card are kept — no descriptions or photos; credited "Hispania Nostra — Lista Roja"
Buildings named in the news (each with its article)
Local and national press, read by EHC
Buildings the news reports empty, for sale or to let, to be demolished or being converted (src/scripts/data/reuse/news-building-leads.json; rules in src/lib/reuse/news-layer.ts). A report that names a building already on the map is shown on its card instead of a second point; one an open source contradicted, or that says the building is in use, is left out. Not checked on site.
EHC research20Live
2026-10-14
Facts with a link to the article; the one-line summary is ours — no article text is republished
Year built: Spanish cadastre (via EUBUCCO)
Dirección General del Catastro, via EUBUCCO v0.2 (Milojevic-Dupont et al.)
The cadastre’s construction year of the building a record sits in (or the nearest within 5 m), as EUBUCCO took it from the Spanish cadastre’s INSPIRE buildings. A cadastral building is everything on one parcel; its year can be that of a major refurbishment. Not the Basque Country or Navarre, which keep their own cadastres.
Open downloadscoringLive
2026-10-14
ODbL 1.0 (EUBUCCO v0.2); cadastre data © Dirección General del Catastro
Probable era: estimated from a street photo (Panoramax, Mapillary, Google Street View)
Panoramax and Mapillary contributors; Google Street View (research use agreed with Google, 14 Oct 2026); estimate by EHC with a vision model
Where no register dates a building: its era read from a Panoramax or Mapillary photo looking at it — Google Street View only where no open photo answers (scripts/reuse/estimate-photo-eras.ts), only when the building is clearly visible and the model is confident, and only as “before 1945” or “1945 or later” — the split it got right for 89% of buildings with a register year in Amsterdam and Paris, and 89% from Street View pictures alone (photo-eras/calibration.json). An estimate: a sentence in the conversion check, never points.
Open APIscoringLive
2026-10-14
Open photos CC BY-SA 4.0 or Licence Ouverte 2.0 (per picture); Street View read for research only, never stored or shown; only the estimated era is published, never a photo

What this radar cannot see yet

  • Barcelona publishes no open list of empty whole buildings; the Generalitat's register of empty dwellings owned by banks and large holders (1,350 in the city at the end of 2024) is not open at address level.
  • The census of ground-floor premises records single units, was last surveyed in 2023–2024 and is marked discontinued; comparing it with the 2022 and 2019 editions shows which units stayed empty, but not whether the floors above are used.
  • The Spanish cadastre's building condition (790 declined, 20 ruined buildings in Barcelona, August 2026) says what state a building is in, not whether it is empty — one declined office building on Via Laietana is a trade union's headquarters.
  • The municipal inventory describes condition in free text ("tapiat", "pendent enderroc", "construcció en transformació"); most buildings held for a change are to be demolished for parks and roads.
  • Wikidata's query service disallows automated queries in robots.txt, so no Wikidata layer is included.

Know an empty building we have missed?

Open data cannot see everything. Tell us about a building in Barcelona that stands empty or barely used; once we have checked it, it joins the map under “Reported by visitors (checked)”.

A phone held up to photograph an empty shopfront, with a map pin drawn above it

We publish the address, the kind of building and your description once we have checked it — never your email. Please do not name the people who own or live in a building.

Radars nearby

The other radars in the same country and the nearest beyond. All 149 cities in the atlas

The figure on each card: empty buildings on record.

Alicante, Spain400empty buildings on recordAndorra la Vella, Andorra2empty buildings on recordBilbao, Spain19empty buildings on recordCórdoba, Spain299empty buildings on recordLas Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain181empty buildings on recordMadrid, Spain366empty buildings on recordMálaga, Spain1,932empty buildings on recordMarseille, France471empty buildings on recordMontpellier, France28empty buildings on recordMurcia, Spain502empty buildings on recordPalma, Spain143empty buildings on recordSeville, Spain134empty buildings on recordToulouse, France74empty buildings on recordValencia, Spain842empty buildings on recordVigo, Spain232empty buildings on recordVitoria-Gasteiz, Spain62empty buildings on recordZaragoza, Spain286empty buildings on record