How to meet new people in Barcelona

This is the quickest way, because the evening is arranged for you. A small group who have not met, a table booked, nothing to organise.

• Socials by Detor (this site): 4 to 6 people at a social table for dinner, drinks, coffee or brunch, or a small-group activity meetup. We build the group from a few answers you give once, a person checks every group, and we send the venue's address the day before. Nobody sees a name until the table's chat opens, an hour before. A seat has a price per session, there is no membership, and you pay the venue for your own food and drinks.
• Timeleft: dinners for 4 to 6 on Wednesdays and Fridays at 21:00, plus a women-only dinner on Tuesdays. You pick Spanish or English and sit with people who speak it. You need a subscription, priced in the app.
• Populit: an app for Madrid and Barcelona that sets up shared restaurant lunches and dinners with strangers.
• Happy to Gather: two hours with no phones and no alcohol, for about 20 people at MAUI Beach Coworking in Poblenou, drinks and snacks included. The room is mostly internationals.

Good if the first hello is the hard part for you.

Ask anyone here and this is the first thing they suggest: a bar full of people who came to talk to strangers, for the price of a drink. Beginner Spanish is the point, not a problem.

• The Friday Language Exchange: Fridays 20:00 to midnight at a bar by Estació de França. One drink gets you in, and name tags show your languages, Catalan included.
• Barcelona Language Exchange: Mondays and Thursdays at 19:00 at Space Cowboy in the Born, Wednesdays at 19:00 at Soda Bus in the Eixample, and Saturdays at 20:00 at Trafalgar Pizza Club. There's a drink minimum of 4 to 5 euros.
• New in Barcelona runs its own Friday exchange at Dissidence (Carrer de Rauric 21), where they ask you to buy one drink.

New in Barcelona is the biggest. It has run since 2015 and has 11,499 members on Meetup, more than a hundred upcoming events and WhatsApp communities with over 17,000 contacts. InterNations runs events for internationals. This is where the first hellos come easiest.

The catch is that people who stay only in expat groups never get past them. Use them for your first month, then take the people you like along to the smaller things below.

Running here is free and weekly, and being outdoors in Barcelona works most of the year.

• CorrerJuntos Barceloneta: a timed 5K on Saturdays at 09:00 on the seafront. Free with a parkrun registration.
• RunnersFast in Gràcia runs on Wednesdays. Free.
• Nike Run Club starts from Passeig de Gràcia. Free.

A federated club costs roughly 15 to 40 euros a month.

Seeing the same people every week is how acquaintances turn into friends, and a centre cívic gives you exactly that. These are council-run neighbourhood centres with quarterly courses, amateur theatre among many others. There are 52 of them, with 10,778 activities and 138,070 enrolments in the last year counted.

Catalan courses at A1 and A2 from the Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística (CPNL) are free. Spanish is the everyday language of about half the city, but over 90 percent understand Catalan and it's the first language of 35 to 40 percent.

A few hours next to people with something to do together is easier than any party. Good places to start are Amigos de la Gente Mayor, which holds periodic sessions for new volunteers, Fundació Arrels and Càritas. Ask for a weekly slot rather than a one-off.

The Castellers del Poble-sec, a human-tower team, list a permanent open rehearsal at Carrer de Blesa 7. Days, times and cost aren't published, so ask first. Lluïsos de Gràcia and several civic centres have amateur theatre groups.

There are also free monthly book clubs, and stand-up nights.

• Keep the local clock. Lunch is around 14:00 and dinner around 21:00. Suggest 19:00 and you're marked as new.
• Pick weekly things and keep going back. Locals are reserved and slow to trust, and seeing the same faces each week is what gets you past that.
• Learn Spanish, and greet in Catalan when you can. Being greeted in Catalan and answering in Spanish is normal here. And "Barça" is the football club, not the city: say Barcelona, BCN or Barna.
• Drop "back home it was better". Locals put it near the top of what they cannot stand from newcomers.

For the fastest option, see this week's tables and meetups in Barcelona.