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Barcelona exceeds in eight months the traffic deaths of all of 2024 and 2025
Barcelona entered September with 12 deaths in road accidents, a figure already exceeding the 11 deaths recorded during all of 2024 and the 11 in 2025. The previous two years had marked the city's lowest road fatality level since 1990.
The latest fatal accident occurred this Thursday on the Ronda del Litoral. A 58-year-old lorry driver died after his vehicle overturned near Montjuïc, heading towards the Llobregat. The incident forced the complete closure of the ring road for several hours and caused tailbacks of up to ten kilometres.
Just four days earlier, on 31 August, a 38-year-old motorcyclist died after being hit by a car while stopped at the junction of Aribau and Mallorca. The car driver left the scene and was arrested shortly afterwards by the Mossos.
Motorcyclists are so far the group with the highest mortality on Barcelona's streets. Five have lost their lives during 2026. They are joined by three pedestrians, one cyclist and three occupants or drivers of four-wheeled vehicles. In total, the 12 deaths occurred in 11 fatal accidents.
The change compared with 2025 is especially visible among four-wheeled vehicles. Last year, no one in this group died, while three victims have already been recorded in 2026. Motorcyclists, meanwhile, once again appear as one of the most vulnerable groups in urban mobility.
The historical comparison puts the figure into perspective. Barcelona ended 2024 and 2025 with 11 fatalities each year, the lowest figure in the entire series since 1990. The city had also remained below 30 annual deaths since 2015, although 2022 and 2023 saw increases compared with the immediately preceding years.
Barcelona's tally contrasts with developments on Catalonia's interurban roads, although these are different statistics and should not be compared as if they measured the same phenomenon. Between January and August, 87 people died on Catalonia's road network, 11% fewer than during the same period in 2025, according to the Catalan Traffic Service.
That does not mean that accident rates are increasing in every area, nor does it make it possible to identify a single cause for Barcelona's increase. Each accident has different circumstances and investigations do not attribute the twelve deaths to a single factor.
For now, however, the figure breaks the improvement achieved over the last two years. Barcelona still has almost four months ahead before the 2026 tally closes and has already exceeded the total number of fatalities in each of the two previous years.