I have just arrived in Barcelona. What do I do first?

Start with the padrón, and start this week. The padrón (padró in Catalan) is Barcelona City Council’s register of everyone living in the city, it is free, you can register whatever your immigration status, and almost everything else on this list depends on it. Here is the order.

• 1. Register on the padrón. Free. Book at ajuntament.barcelona.cat/cita, do it online at barcelona.cat/empadronament, or call 010, the council’s information line, free from within the metropolitan area. Bring your passport — for a Filipino citizen a Philippine national ID is not accepted — plus a rental contract or a written authorisation from the person who holds the home. If you have no housing paper at all, apply anyway — the council phones you and sends staff to check that you really live there.
• 2. Get your health card. Free. Being on the padrón is the requirement, not your papers: CatSalut’s rule is that everyone “must necessarily meet the basic requirement of being registered on the padrón in a municipality of Catalonia”. Go to your CAP (centre d’atenció primària, the public health centre for your address) with your passport and your padrón certificate, or start online with CatSalut. What you get is the health card (TSI, targeta sanitària individual).
• 3. Set up a digital identity, so you can do the rest from your phone. idCAT Mòbil is free, never expires and needs nothing installed. There is a route that works with only a passport, using a selfie. Start at idcatmobil.cat.
• 4. Learn your two phone numbers. 010 for anything Barcelona City Council does, free from within the metropolitan area, or 931 537 010 from outside it. 112 for an emergency, free from any phone.
• 5. If you have children, enrol them in school now. Your child has the right to free, compulsory basic education because they are under 16 and living in Spain. It is a right and a duty, and it does not depend on your papers or on the padrón — that is article 9.1 of Ley Orgánica 4/2000. What the padrón does is feed the enrolment process: schools ask for the volant de convivència, the council paper showing who lives at your address, so request it at the same time as the padrón and save a second trip. Do not delay enrolling a child because your registration is not finished.
• 6. If you have a residence process, or expect one, deal with the card and the deadline. A granted residence authorisation must be turned into a TIE card (Tarjeta de Identidad de Extranjero, the foreigner identity card), applied for in person within one month. The first card cost €16.08 on the Policía Nacional fee table read on 9 Sep 2026. If you have no residence authorisation, this step is instead a SAIER appointment, step 7.
• 7. Book SAIER early. SAIER is the Servei d’Atenció a Immigrants, Emigrants i Refugiats, Barcelona City Council’s free service for migrants and refugees: legal advice on residence, arraigo (arrelament in Catalan, a residence permit based on time spent in Spain) and family reunification, plus interpreters for people who have been in the country less than two years. Book at ajuntament.barcelona.cat/cita/saier or call 93 153 28 00. Do not wait until something goes wrong.
• 8. Start a language course and keep the certificate. Beginner Catalan at the CPNL (Consorci per a la Normalització Lingüística, the public body that teaches Catalan) costs nothing at Inicial and at every Bàsic level in the 2026–27 course year; ask about welcome courses at acollida at cpnl.cat (where this guide writes “at”, type the at-sign), or on 933 428 080. The CPNL teaches Catalan, not Spanish. For Spanish, Barcelona has 25 free adult schools, called CFA (centre de formació d’adults), and most of them teach it — the council’s list shows which levels each one runs. This is not only useful: the social-integration report used in an arraigo social application asks for a minimum of 45 hours of Catalan and Spanish training.

What to keep, from day one

A folder, real or on your phone, with:

• your passport
• your volant de residència
• your rental contract or authorisation
• your health card
• every payslip
• anything with a date on it that shows you were in Spain

Travel tickets, course certificates, invoices. Two years from now you may need to prove a continuous stay, and gaps are what sink applications.

How long it takes

The first three steps can all be done in your first week. The padrón takes about seven calendar days to process. The health card and the digital identity are quicker.

What happens next

• With the padrón you can get healthcare and a school place.
• With the health card you can see a doctor.
• With a digital identity you can do most of the rest from your phone.
• With the padrón running from the earliest possible date, a residence route through arraigo becomes possible two years from that date rather than two years from whenever you got round to registering.

What goes wrong

• People wait. They wait to register because they think the padrón will expose them, or because they are between rooms, or because they expect to move. The council registers people whatever their immigration status, and it registers people with no housing document at all, by phoning and visiting. The lost months are lost for good.
• Second thing that goes wrong: paying a fixer for step 1, 2, 3, 7 or 8. All five are free and you can do them yourself, or with SAIER’s help.

Useful words

• Padró, padrón: the council’s register of residents.
• Empadronament: registering on it.
• Volant de residència: proof you are registered.
• Volant de convivència: proof of who lives with you.
• TSI, targeta sanitària individual: health card.
• CAP, centre d’atenció primària: local public health centre.
• OAC, Oficina d’Atenció Ciutadana: council citizen help office.
• Cita prèvia, cita previa: advance appointment.
• Arrelament, arraigo: a residence route based on time spent in Spain.
• SAIER: the council’s free service for migrants, emigrants and refugees.

Read next

• How do I register on the padrón? Do I need papers?
• How do I get a health card (TSI)? Do I need papers?
• Where do I get free legal advice on immigration, arraigo or family reunification?

Official source

Barcelona City Council, “Empadronament”, the first step and the one the others depend on. Barcelona International Welcome collects the rest of the arrival formalities at barcelona.cat/internationalwelcome. The right to schooling is article 9.1 of Ley Orgánica 4/2000 at boe.es.