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Barcelona’s terraces approach 7,000 licences and continue to grow
Barcelona has more and more terraces. In 2025, the city has almost 7,000 active licences for bars and restaurants with tables on the street, 6% more than four years ago. The figure explains a highly visible part of today’s urban landscape: more places to sit, have a drink and extend social life outdoors, but also more noise, more pavement occupied and more debate over who uses public space.
Between 2022 and 2025, the City Council granted 1,192 new licences and rejected 1,117 applications. The figure shows sustained growth, although not uncontrolled growth. For the Gremi de Restauració, there is still room to expand terraces in some areas and the municipal process remains too slow. For the FAVB, by contrast, the problem is no longer only how many terraces there are, but how they are controlled and what impact they have on residents' daily lives.
The distribution by district presents an uneven picture. Sants-Montjuïc leads the granting of new licences over the last three years, with almost one in every five authorisations. Sant Martí, Eixample and Sarrià-Sant Gervasi follow. By contrast, in more pressured areas such as Eixample and Ciutat Vella, more applications are refused than approved.
Eixample remains the great territory of Barcelona's terraces. With 2,296 licences, it accounts for approximately one third of the city's total. The density is also striking: 8.3 terraces per 1,000 inhabitants, well above the municipal average. At some junctions and on some streets, the terrace is no longer an addition to the bar, but another feature of the everyday landscape.
Growth brings another consequence: more sanction proceedings. In 2025, around 2,400 procedures were opened, mainly for placing unauthorised elements, occupying more space than permitted or reducing pedestrian passage. Eixample, Ciutat Vella and Sant Martí are among the districts with the most sanctions, although the volume varies according to the year and inspection pressure.
Restaurateurs argue that most terraces are small, with four tables or fewer, and that their presence helps sustain employment, consumption and neighbourhood life. They also denounce excessive monitoring and an overly distrustful relationship with the administration. Neighbourhood organisations, for their part, call for exactly the opposite: more inspections, fewer exceptions and clear rules to prevent some streets from becoming narrow corridors between tables.
The debate is not against the terrace as an idea. Few things fit Barcelona as well as sitting outside, watching people go by and making the most of the weather. The question is another one: how many terraces can a street absorb before the balance breaks. In a dense, tourist city with highly contested pavements, every table counts. And what for some is urban life can for others be noise beneath the window, less room to walk or the feeling that the neighbourhood is slowly slipping away from them.