The fight between Badalona and Terrassa continues, with Sabadell attending the fight and closing the gap, to occupy third position in the ranking of the Catalan municipalities with the most population. The latest data made public by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), corresponding to the reading of the municipal registers as of January 1, 2023, once again show a change in positions: Badalona recovers that third place, behind Barcelona and l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, which Terrassa took from it in 2017 and which the Vallesan city had maintained since then.
At the beginning of this year, Badalona had 225,957 inhabitants, this is 680 more than Terrassa. A year earlier, on January 1, 2022, Terrassa surpassed Badalona by 680 residents. Badalona had occupied the third step of the podium for decades until Terrassa, which had already surpassed Sabadell ten years earlier, in 2007, surpassed the municipality of Barcelonès Nord at the beginning of 2017. Since then, the differences between one city and the other have always They have been below 1,000 inhabitants and were only 6 people in the reading of the register on January 1, 2021. According to the latest data from the INE, Badalona grew by 1.1% during 2022 while Terrassa did so. by 0.5%
Barcelona started this year with a total of 1,660,122 people registered and l'Hospitalet with 264,455. The second city in Catalonia in population was, among the large ones, the one that grew the most in a year. It did so by 3.4%
Beyond the exchange of positions between Badalona and Terrassa, the ranking of the main cities does not experience any change. Sabadell, which for a long time was the third city in Catalonia, remains in fourth place, with an increase in population compared to January 1, 2022 that allows it to reach 218,300 inhabitants and close the gap with Badalona and Terrassa.
There is no other Catalan city that has more than 150,000 inhabitants. The one that comes closest is Lleida, the second most populated provincial capital behind Barcelona, which began this year and is now about to end with 143,094 people registered in the municipality. Tarragona, with an interannual growth of 2.5%, is gradually approaching it and reaches 138,262 inhabitants.
Mataró (129,870), Santa Coloma de Gramenet (119,862) and Reus (108,479) close the ranking of the 10 most populous municipalities in Catalonia. The next ten positions, from 11 to 20, are for Girona (104,320), Sant Cugat del Vallès (97,530), Cornellà de Llobregat (90,303), Sant Boi de Llobregat (83,919), Rubí (80,044), Manresa (78,877), Vilanova i la Geltrú (68,854), Castelldefels (68,427), Viladecans (66,677) and El Prat de Llobregat (65,516).
At the other end of the list, two municipalities in the Berguedà region continue to be the smallest in Catalonia in terms of population. Gisclareny closes the ranking, with 27 inhabitants. This town has remained unchanged in this position since 2017, when Sant Jaume de Frontanyà, which on January 1, 2023 had 29 people registered, surpassed it in number of residents.
According to the data provided by the INE, Catalonia was the autonomous community that saw its population increase the greatest during 2022. The year-on-year increase was 140,140 inhabitants, 1.8%. The communities of Madrid and Valencia also experienced growth during the analyzed period, with increases of 128,649 and 108,079 people, respectively.
Catalonia has had negative natural growth (it registers more deaths than births) since 2018, but its population is increasing as a result of the contribution of foreign immigration.
