Barcelona Village

Living in Barcelona

This is the miscellaneous section with all the bits we can think of, but haven't quite found the right space for yet. Things like using public transport, bicing and concerns like crime and theft.

For instance, if you are coming to Barcelona and want to get from the airport to the centre by train and you are planning on spending two or three days here using public transport, then buy a T-10 travel ticket at the airport (€6.90), rather than a normal single ticket, or worse several single tickets if there are a group of you.

The T-10 is the carnet ticket, valid for 10 single journeys and covers a wider area than the normal metro tickets (for instance it extends to the airport), includes buses, metros and trains and much much more useful it is multi-personal - that means it can be used for several people on the same journey. If there are two of you for instance travelling from the airport, buy one T-10 then use the one ticket twice - use the ticket to let the first person through the barrier, then use the same ticket to let the second person through the same barrier - travel times are stamped on the back. You now have 8 journeys left for the rest of your trip.

Quick note: on public transport travel is free for under 4s (also entry to museums is free for under 7s).

	Cars	Buying, insuring, taxing and MOT for a car in Spain.
	Crime in Barcelona	Petty pilfering and pickpocketing are very real and persistent problems in Barcelona with large numbers of pickpockets operating in the main tourist areas and metros stations of the city, particularly during the summer months.
	Public transport	Public transport in Barcelona is fabulous and cheap and since we walk or ride everywhere we no longer feel the need for a car. There are tubes, bicing, trains and buses and all run very nicely thank you.
	Day-to-day shopping	If you live any where you quickly get used to shopping habits, the reason for including it is that there are a few things that catch you out on the odd occasion.
	Flow of the year	The Barcelona year is marked by its festivals and holidays many of which will be new and many of which are very locally based traditions.
	Bicing	Bicing is Barcelona's incredibly popular bicycle transport scheme. Around the city are Bicing parks. If you have a card, you swipe it and take a bike and have it free for 30 minutes.
	Flights to the UK	Barcelona is phenomenally well connected to the UK to all areas with a wide range of airlines so you have a lot of choice and can usually find deals.
	Renta (income tax)	Renta is the Spanish income tax and just about everyone seems to have to submit a tax form for the June 30th deadline salaried or not.
	Television	Many ex-pats may take Sky to keep up with UK news, but if you use free digital TV here, you can switch to the original English audio track for films and series on the digibox.
	Banking and finance	We sometimes use cash points to take money from our existing UK accounts. Note that in addition to the exchange rate you get charged 2.5% typically for withdrawing money in Euros, and if you are using a Spanish bank's ATM you get an ATM fee of 2% on top. That's £4.50 worth of charges on every £100 you withdraw.
	Renta and children's NIE	The Renta is the annual income tax declaration. When children reach the age of 14 to be included on their parents' renta form (eg for tax relief based on having children), they need their own NIE number.

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