I am a job-hunting or wish to improve my professional profile
Check out all the resources available to workers: professional guidance resources and employment advice, training courses and programmes for employed and unemployed workers, job offers and other economic-revival resources.
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Subsidies, grants and funding
Barcelona City Council is allocating a large amount of resources to drive city recovery and promotion policies, in the form of grants, subsidies and funding. The City Council is reaffirming its commitment to promoting the economy, fostering employment and shaping the city’s future, by having more programmes, services and budgetary allocations.
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Incentives for recruiting unemployed individuals with a particular focus on groups facing greater difficulties in accessing the labour market. The grant amount varies depending on the type of contract and the candidate's profile. A total of €2 million will be allocated to this measure.
Period: March–April 2025
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Barcelona City Council, in collaboration with the La Caixa Foundation, spearheads a twice-yearly grant programme for research and innovation projects aimed at addressing the challenges facing the city of Barcelona. This initiative aims to promote collaboration among research centres, third-sector organisations and the city’s economic fabric to develop research in areas such as community health, city digitalisation, ageing, quality of life and the climate emergency.
Period: In 2025
Advice
Barcelona City Council is at your side, helping you to look for information, selecting the resources best adapted to your needs and supporting when it comes to processing grants or drawing up personalised plans for your business with the help of experts. Our advice services will help you to start, consolidate or continue developing projects.
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Support for companies and organisations in filling vacancies, including both employment contracts and internship agreements. The service includes information and advice on recruitment, potential subsidies based on specific groups, as well as recruitment, pre-selection of candidates, and CV forwarding. Targeted at companies.
Period: In 2025 -
Website aimed at international talent interested in coming to live and work in Barcelona. It includes practical information about the daily aspects of life in the city, a selection of the most important procedures to follow for setting up residence, and a calendar of periodic activities to get to know the city, settle in, and establish contacts.
Period: In 2025
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Free, personal, face-to-face advice and assistance service on employment rights, available to all workers in every district and also by phone. Expanded service covering the whole city to meet all demand.
Period: In 2025 -
Employment-information and job-see- king support service for people in vulnerable situations, whether personal, social, legal or financial.
Period: In 2025
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Guidance service providing advice on the training best suited to the profile of each person and to labour market opportunities.
Period: In 2025
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Employment-information and job-see- king support service for the city’s youth. It offers full information on training, employment resources and the tools needed to find work. The service is offered at the Convent de Barcelona Activa, in Ciutat Vella, and several assistance points spread throughout the city.
Period: In 2025
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Events that provide a space for direct contact between enterprises with job offers and job candidates, with participatory dynamics and brief interviews. They are tailor-made for enterprises and also specifically for business sectors.
Period: In 2025
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The Escolab programme brings secondary school, baccalaureate and vocational training students closer to research centres through a wide range of scientific outreach activities conducted by the researchers themselves. Every year, training sessions are organised on key current topics (new curriculum, inclusion, improving educational activities, etc.). They are aimed at teachers and researchers who are part of the Escolab community.
Period: In 2025
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Programme led by Barcelona Activa, together with Mercabarna and in collaboration with the Barcelona Institute of Markets (IMMB), offering young people the chance of receiving training and working as sales assistants specialising in food products in city markets and lo- cal shops. The programme is aimed at young people aged between 18 and 29, whether or not they hold qualifications from secondary school, baccalaureate studies or vocational training. This year’s specialities are butchery, seafood pro- ducts and vegetarian foods. Additionally, the IMMB is auctioning empty market stalls to help new licence holders access them. The institute’s website also lists the food guilds that offer job boards.
Period: In 2025
Training
To be competitive, you need to be up to date. So Barcelona City Council has launched a wide range of specialised training lines, designed to prepare you for the future with more drive than ever. The range of free possibilities means there is something for everyone!
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Guidance and support service on existing training resources to help individuals improve their digital skills.
Period: In 2025
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This programme offers comprehensive training with official certification and a one-year contract at local markets or specialised shops in butchery, delicatessen, and poultry.
Period: In 2025
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A digital skills training programme for people with disabilities, run by the ONCE Foundation, based at the Cibernàrium in Nou Barris.
Period: In 2025
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A programme that enables professional profiles to be reoriented towards sectors such as programming and data science in just 12 weeks, thanks to its self-learning, personalised and highly innovative educational method, and to an expert mentoring service that provides accompaniment throughout the process. It also includes an advisory service and tools to find work.
Period: In 2025
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Located in Barcelona Activa’s Technological Park, 42 Barcelona is a programming campus that follows an innovative and free model endorsed worldwide and is based on ‘meta-learning’, which fosters creativity and teamwork and allows individuals to train at their own pace, opening doors to a new labour market. This is a Telefónica Foundation, Barcelona City Council and Catalan Government initiative.
Period: In 2025
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Programa de formació en competències digitals per a persones amb discapacitat de la Fundació ONCE que s’instal·la al Cibernàrium de Nou Barris.
Termini: durant el 2025
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Training and work programmes for young people whose main aim is to improve professional skills and find work in entertainment and the creative industries, as well as the environment field. It combines a maximum of six months work experience and a six-month employment contract.
Period: From January to December 2025
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Barcelona Activa offers training grouped by subject category and adapted to the needs of each person.
Period: In 2025
Further information. Online training
Further information. Online training - companies -
Short-term professional technical training that allows individuals to improve their profiles or reorient their careers towards the city’s strategic sectors with higher employability. It offers three formats: online, streaming and F2F.
Period: February - March 2025
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Language reskilling courses are short training modules that enable participants to learn new languages for improving their professional profile and adapting to labour market demands.
Period: Second semester of 2025
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Programme that offers young people guidance, activities to learn about occupations and tutoring for them to define their professional goal and establish a personal work plan adapted to that. The plan includes vocational training with internships in sectors such as the hotel and catering industries, facilities and construction.
Period: February 2025 -
Long courses (+300 hours), which include internships and a professional skills certificate on completing the training. This is a recognised official qualification that enables those who have it to change their profession and access jobs with a higher market demand.
Period: In 2025
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The Escolab programme brings secondary school, baccalaureate and vocational training students closer to research centres through a wide range of scientific outreach activities conducted by the researchers themselves. Every year, training sessions are organised on key current topics (new curriculum, inclusion, improving educational activities, etc.). They are aimed at teachers and researchers who are part of the Escolab community.
Period: In 2025
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Promoting the city
Barcelona is a city that looks to the future and possesses all the attributes for playing a key role in the changes that are coming. The City Council is therefore driving ahead with economic-promotion tools, both local and international, fostering public-private cooperation initiatives and launching campaigns that strengthen the city’s full economic potential.
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The leading event for self-employed professionals, retailers, and SMEs, showcasing trends and solutions while providing advisory spaces and networking opportunities to foster business growth and innovation.
Period: 15 and 16 October 2025
Further information: BIZBarcelona -
Another edition of the fair aimed at job seekers or those looking to improve their professional prospects. This event provides guidance to discover career opportunities and connect with companies.
Period: 15 and 16 October 2025
Further information: Job Fair
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An annual event where the city's entrepreneurial, scientific, and technological ecosystem has the opportunity to interact with emerging companies, spinoffs, professionals from research and investment sectors, and businesses to share projects and create new collaborations. For the second consecutive year, it will take place as part of the Smart City Expo World Congress.
Period: 4 – 6 November 2025
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Employment initiative to promote job placements for unemployed individuals that combines work experience, skills improvement and career guidance. Participants join various municipal projects connected to strategic sectors.
Period: In 2025
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This year will see the twelfth edition of Barcelona International Community Day, an F2F event that includes an exhibitors’ fair and an extensive programme of activities (seminars, workshops, roundtables and networking) to welcome the city’s international community, offering useful information and resources for living, working and doing business in Barcelona.
The 2024 edition is planned for Saturday, 25 October
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Barcelona City Council and Barcelona Activa take part in the main trade fairs held in the city, with their own space offering economic information on the city, advice for enterprises and investors, and networking activities, among other things. Spaces are provided at these fairs so that start-ups in the Barcelona Activa orbit and taking part in its accompaniment programmes can be introduced and create new business opportunities.
Period: In 2025
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Website aimed at international talent interested in coming to live and work in Barcelona. It includes practical information about the daily aspects of life in the city, a selection of the most important procedures to follow for setting up residence, and a calendar of periodic activities to get to know the city, settle in, and establish contacts.
Period: In 2025
Regulatory changes and tax rebates
The Barcelona City Council is firmly committed to ensuring that our city is an easy place for economic activity. This is why it has launched regulatory and administrative changes that simplify things for city residents and economic sectors and speed up and simplify procedures and payment periods.
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A 95% rebate on the rate is applied in the following cases:
- Transfer through inheritance of the primary residence: the rebate is conditional on not transferring the residence within the three years following the date of death of the transferring person. It can be requested by spouses, descendants or adoptees, as well as ascendants or adopters and individuals who, by law, receive a treatment similar to a relationship of kinship to continue using the residence due to having lived with the deceased person during the two years prior to their death.
- Transfer through inheritance of premises where the deceased person conducted a habitual, personal and direct professional activity: the rebate is subject to not transferring the premises and to continuing to conduct an economic activity there for five years following the death.
Deadline for paying the capital gains and applying for the rebate: six months from the date of the deceased person’s death (extendable for an additional six months)
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The City Council offers different: for new-build properties and social housing, if this involves a large family and systems are installed for harnessing heat or electricity from the sun’s energy, during the three tax periods following the date of the installation’s legalisation.
Period: each rebate’s specific terms will have to be consulted
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The City Council offers several rebates on the tax on mechanically powered vehicles.
- Rebate on the tax on mechanically powered vehicles for owners of vehicles classed as zero emission or electric vehicles: Rebate on the tax on mechanically powered vehicles of any kind (except trailers) classed as zero emission vehicles according to the vehicle registry of the Directorate General of Traffic.
- Rebate on the tax on mechanically powered vehicles for owners of ECO-classed vehicles that use petrol, with emissions of up to 120 g/km of CO2: Rebate on the tax on mechanically powered vehicles for owners of ECO-classified vehicles of any kind (except trailers) that use petrol, with emissions of up to 120 g/km of CO2, according to the vehicle registry of the Directorate General of Traffic.
- Rebate on the tax on mechanically powered vehicles for owners of vintage vehicles: Rebate on the entire amount of the tax on mechanically powered vehicles for vehicles considered vintage, under the regulations for vintage vehicles.
Period: specified for each rebate
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Barcelona City Council offers several rebates on the construction, installation and works tax. Rebates on the construction, installation and works tax (ICIO) may be requested for work whose purpose is to construct buildings or put up installations declared to be of special municipal interest or usefulness, because of social, cultural, historical and artistic or work-promoting circumstances or because they incorporate systems for harnessing heat or electricity from solar energy.
Period: The period needs to be consulted in the corresponding tax byelaw
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This is a method of direct debit payment that allows you to pay all the taxes for the year together, choosing the number of monthly instalments you wish to pay. Only for natural persons. Legal persons cannot ask for a flat rate.
Period: Each year, the tax calendar will include information on the period for registering for the flat rate
