Gràcia
Gràcia: the town of squares, self-built hills and Park Güell.
Gràcia was an independent industrial-residential town annexed in 1897. The Vila keeps a square-based public life; hill barris (Vallcarca, Coll, Salut) add self-built and park-tourism layers. Housing pressure in the core is among the city's sharpest. The district groups 5 neighbourhoods with a combined registered population of about 126,830 (padró 2026). The comparative table uses the same definitions and years for every barri. Internal inequalities — income, density, tourism, self-built or Eixample histories — are best read neighbourhood by neighbourhood. Each has its own page with sources.
Neighbourhood directory
| Neighbourhood | Population | Density | Income (section mean) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vallcarca i els Penitents | 16,928 | 135.3 | 30,944 |
| el Coll | 8,056 | 228.2 | 23,822 |
| la Salut | 13,947 | 215.2 | 29,059 |
| la Vila de Gràcia | 51,477 | 389.7 | 28,444 |
| el Camp d'en Grassot i Gràcia Nova | 36,422 | 559.5 | 28,596 |
- Vallcarca i els Penitents — Vallcarca i els Penitents is a valley where planning can be seen on the ground: houses adapted to slope, a viaduct jumping the void, plots opened by decades of acquisition and demolition, and community facilities trying to turn imposed transformation into a habitable city.
- el Coll — El Coll is a mountain pass turned neighbourhood: a compact, steep fabric between Vallcarca, la Teixonera and Park Güell, made from popular housing, quarries, unusual houses, a comic publisher, a park cut from rock and a metro station so deep that the lift is part of the journey.
- la Salut — La Salut is the neighbourhood that continues when the Park Güell postcard ends: a residential mountain of chapels, schools, homes, stairs and streets pressured by a global park that began as a failed private development and now also serves as an everyday route for nearby residents.
- la Vila de Gràcia — La Vila de Gràcia is an old town inside the city: squares functioning as collective living rooms, streets older than the Eixample, markets, cooperatives and festivals sustained by residents, all under housing, visitor and night-time pressure that turns the neighbourhood’s success into a daily contest.
- el Camp d'en Grassot i Gràcia Nova — Camp d’en Grassot i Gràcia Nova is the seam where an estate, brickworks and industry became streets; where Gràcia’s fabric negotiates with the Eixample chamfer; and where a former silk factory saved by resident mobilisation still shows how a neighbourhood manufactures its own institutions.