Barcelona will be the first European capital of local trade

Barcelona will be the first European capital of local commerce for this 2026. This was the verdict of the jury of the first awards of the European Commission on European capitals of local and proximity commerce, European Capitals of Small Retail Awards, at a ceremony held today in Brussels (Belgium).

The choice of Barcelona as the first European headquarters for local commerce and to become a mirror of good practices in local commerce for European cities has been forged on a united candidacy among city administrations and commerce entities, based on the strengths and good practices in four evaluation criteria: sustainability of commerce; support for entrepreneurship and community involvement; digitalization, and city attractiveness and vitality.

A delegation from Barcelona has been in charge of presenting and defending the projects, led by Deputy Mayor Raquel Gil, together with Commissioner Nadia Quevedo and representatives of the entities Barcelona Open, of which Friends of La Rambla is a member (Gabriel Jené), Barcelona Commerce Foundation (Prósper Puig and Reyes de la Corte), Comertia (Ignasi Pietx), and the Guild Council of Catalonia (Joan Guillen).

Deputy Mayor Raquel Gil said that the award is "a recognition of a solid candidacy, very worked on with the merchants and that also recognizes the model of the city of Barcelona, where commerce is the backbone of the city and a fundamental tool because it generates economic activity, helps build neighborhoods and where merchants, as neighbors, are also an essential part." Gil explained that "we believe that we can highlight this model and the good practices and experiences that are replicable in other European cities but we also want to learn from the rest of the cities how to have better solutions for some of the challenges that the commerce world also faces." The Deputy Mayor pointed out that the activities program is being finalized, of which more than 100 activities have been outlined today, such as commercial fairs, markets, workshops, studies, meetings, and exchanges with other European cities, highlighting that Barcelona "is not a city with a single shopping center but with 21 commercial axes and more than 60,000 commercial premises where there is some type of economic activity, and the capital city can be a good opportunity to explain our model and create a campaign that helps to position the value of commerce to generate new customers among the younger people and that the city's merchants are more than economic activity, they are part of who we are as a city and therefore we must help them because we all win."

For his part, the president of the Barcelona Commerce Foundation, Prósper Puig, highlighted how the initiative was born, "from an idea in the midst of a pandemic, we have achieved something unheard of, that the European Parliament created a capital city that did not exist and that the first one is for Barcelona. It was a difficult goal but we persisted and we are immensely happy for the city of Barcelona and for our type of commerce where our neighbor is our customer," emphasized Puig.

Also, the president of Barcelona Open, Gabriel Jené, has highly valued the award as a recognition "of the effort and work of all these years so that the European Commission puts local commerce at the center of policies, reaffirms the commerce that is part of the territory, that forms a network and is very capillary and that there are many people dedicated to the sector and wealth is widely distributed, with creativity and a lot of capacity to do so, to structure the entire city and all neighborhoods and contribute to social welfare."

Barcelona arrived as one of the three finalists for the recognition in the "Visionary" category, of cities with more than 250,000 inhabitants, competing with Utrecht (Netherlands) and Zaragoza (Spain).

In the competition, Barcelona stood out as one of the main strengths its integral strategy to strengthen a sustainable, innovative, and resilient proximity commerce model, recognizing it as an essential driver of the economic, social, and urban development of the city.

The jury has recognized a candidacy that stands out mainly for the strength of a commercial sector present in all neighborhoods of the city, dynamic and with the capacity to combine tradition and innovation, with the purpose of building the city's economic construction and contributing to social cohesion and urban configuration of Barcelona. The candidacy has also highlighted the city's global position and the potential to take advantage of events taking place in 2026 such as the Grand Departure of the Tour de France or the Mobile World Congress, among others, as platforms for international projection.

The European capital of local commerce has a budget of close to three million euros from the European Commission to develop and finance the acts and activities organized around the initiative by the commercial entities, the City Council, and the entire sector. More broadly, Barcelona's candidacy for the European Capital of Proximity Commerce has the support of Barcelona Commerce, Barcelona Open, Foment Commerce, the Guild Council of Commerce, Services and Tourism of Catalonia, PIMEC, and PIMEC Commerce, Comertia, the Federation of Municipal Markets of Barcelona (FEMM); Association of Shopkeepers and Merchants of Catalonia; the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB); the Barcelona Provincial Council, the Government of Catalonia, and the municipal groups of Together for Catalonia, BComú, ERC and PP.

In fact, the initiative of the European capital of proximity commerce is an initiative promoted by Barcelona Commerce and Vitrines d'Europa, approved by the European Parliament in 2023, and was opened last July 2025 for the participation of all the cities of the European Commission. Barcelona confirmed its candidacy in October, at a unitary event chaired by Mayor Jaume Collboni and Deputy Mayor Raquel Gil, together with representatives from the entire commerce sector.