Languages of Barcelona

Technically speaking the official language of Barcelona is Catalan. Although Catalan is on the street signs and menus, I have rarely heard this spoken since only 40% of inhabitants speak Catalan as their main language. Contrastingly, Spanish is the native tongue of 60% of inhabitants. Originally, Catalan was by far the most widely spoken however during the dictatorship of Franco, he tried to stamp out minority languages and therefore anyone who spoke the language was punished.

Nowadays, Catalan has been revitalised but is much less widely spoken than before the reign of Franco, but most people in Catalonia can speak both Spanish and Catalan. This bilingualism is very important in Barcelona because of the amount of tourists. In just one day here, I was able to identify a huge variety of languages being spoken in the tourist areas, like La Rambla, including Chinese, French and a lot of English. In fact many of the waiters and restaurant owners were able to speak basic English and possibly many other languages. The ease of learning these different languages may be due to their bilingualism from birth as they have the ability to acquire different languages more easily.