On Friday afternoons, Barcelona's beaches are full of locals-outsiders who take advantage of the sunny days to play volleyball. On any weekday, the city center is an anthill of young foreigners who work remotely, many of them in the multitude of coworking spaces that exist, for example, in Ciutat Vella. This is the case of Andrew McGarvey, a 33-year-old Scot; Estefanía Gordillo, Colombian, 27, or Justin Varilek, American, 35. All three have higher education. All three face a fact with numerous consequences: Barcelona is specializing in attracting an internationally qualified population.
Antonio López-Gay, director of the Center for Demographic Studies, explains that in 2022 (the last year with data) Barcelona and Madrid received around 40,000 people from abroad with higher education, while the former attracted only 10,000 other provinces of Spain for the 30,000 captured by the second. Thus, despite the fact that Barcelona has almost half the population (1.7 million for 3.2 million), the same number of foreigners chose it as Madrid, which, conversely, is the main protagonist of internal migrations and it accumulates half of all the positive balance for movements between provinces of young people between 16 and 34 years old.
Other data also affect this point. The number of international immigrants aged 15 to 34 is 113,000 in Madrid and 98,000 in Barcelona, despite the 5.5 million inhabitants of the Barcelona province compared to nearly 7 in Madrid. And Barcelona also attracts more immigrant population from high-income places than Madrid, 77,000 compared to 68,000, as published a few days ago by La Vanguardia, who are concentrated where there is also more population with higher education, in the diagonal that goes from the Villa Olímpica to Sarrià and surroundings. More data: the INE confirms that Barcelona leads the percentage of the population with higher education among the country's main cities, which is close to 47% for the population aged 16 and over. Madrid reaches 45%.
One of them is Andrew McGarvey, who studied computer science and business, works in his family's HR firm focused on the UK financial sector and only goes to Scotland for occasional meetings. He has been in Catalonia for 10 years. He says that the climate draws him as much as the international atmosphere of the city.
Yoann Groleau, a 48-year-old French industrial engineer, is the director of the automotive division of the consultancy Capgemini Engineering. Groleau arrived in Barcelona in 2002 with the aim of acquiring local companies. And it continues here, in "European California", in his words. The tech environment (which is now also seen on a smaller scale in Málaga), the "open" character and the "quality of life" stand out. Groleau, however, compares past and present and concludes: "Change makes me sad. I tried to integrate, to speak Spanish and Catalan, because it is logical, I am the one who came. Now many do not make this effort, they speak in English and they could be here as well as in Slovenia".
"The profile of the qualified international migrant is increasingly varied and the origins are very diverse. There are Europeans, but in recent years the population with university degrees from Latin America has also been growing a lot. For example, from Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela", continues López-Gay.
Estefanía Gordillo, a 27-year-old Colombian, meets the profile. He arrived in Barcelona four years ago for a university internship in Audiovisual Communication. She had a friend in town and he helped her. Then he started a master's in Cultural Management and, with covid, he stayed. He started working as a community manager in a coworking space near the cathedral. In his case, it is not clear that he will continue here in the future. "It is difficult to make time relations, there are many people who come and go", he expresses.
Justin Varilek is 35 years old, he is from Iowa (USA), where he studied international relations with a specialty in Russia, and has lived in the Eurasian giant, in Germany and in London until he decided with his partner to look at the map and go wherever they find "quality of life, international and startup atmosphere, being able to live in English, learn a useful language, good food...". Now he works in IT. He wants to stay in the city also for his son, "at least seven years", he says.
The parallel problem for all of them is that, despite everything, it is also the place in Europe where there is more overqualification for workers aged between 20 and 64, whether you look at it by country of birth or look at it by nationality. Almost 35% of employed people who were born in Spain are overqualified, but among foreigners the figure is 45% among those born in another EU member country and over 50% for non-Europeans by birth, according to Eurostat.
