How this phrasebook
earns your trust.

HOW THIS PAGE WAS CHECKED

What we know, and what we don’t.

Everything here was checked against the source that would be quoted at you — the law, the operator, the ministry. Where that check failed, or came back contradicting itself, it says so below instead of guessing. 36 things could not be established, 10 earlier claims were withdrawn, and 168 sources are listed.

10 claims we withdrew

Kept on the record because each one shows which kind of claim on this page is fragile.

• Transbordament is the word on station signs.

  Now saysEnllaç.

  I had verified that TMB uses the word transbordament and inferred it was therefore the signage word. It is the fare word — cal validar el títol en cada transbordament. The physical sign says Enllaç. Lesson: a term appearing on an operator’s website is not evidence it appears on the operator’s signage.

• “TMB does not use avaria in notices.”

  Now saysAvaria reinstated; only Rodalies avoids it.

  I generalised from TMB’s Estat del servei pages, which say incidència, to all TMB output. TMB’s easy-read guide documents a red «avariada» sticker on lift doors, and FGC’s printed station posters use avaria. Lesson: a negative claim (“X does not use Y”) needs a much wider corpus than a positive one, and one channel is not one operator.

• Suprimit / supressió is how a cancelled train is shown.

  Now saysNo circula.

  Supressió de trens is genuinely official — it appears in Rodalies’ Condicions d’ús. But that is compensation law, not a screen. 104 unique Rodalies incident texts archived 2010–2026 contain zero occurrences of suprim* or cancel*. Lesson: legal register and passenger register diverge, and for a reading guide only the passenger register counts. This is the single most consequential correction on the page — a reader scanning for a word resembling “cancelled” would stand on that platform indefinitely.

• The street and doorplate abbreviations were first written capitalised (Av., C/, Pg.).

  Now saysThe official lowercase forms (av., c/, pg.), per the Generalitat’s Abreviacions.

  That is ordinary doorplate convention, but the official forms are lowercase — a fourth, minor correction of the same kind as the three withdrawn claims above.

• The brief listed servei alterat as the disruption term.

  Now saysTMB’s own service pages use incidència and afectació; Rodalies uses alteració del servei.

  The tables follow the operators, not the brief.

• The brief listed beca menjador.

  Now saysThe Consorci d’Educació de Barcelona’s official term is ajut individual de menjador / ajuts de menjador escolar.

  Both are given, because readers will search for one and receive the other.

• The brief listed transbord.

  Now saysTransbordament (the fare rule); enllaç (the physical sign).

  TMB writes transbordament — and for the physical sign, enllaç.

• The brief listed suprimit.

  Now saysNo circula.

  Rodalies’ passenger-facing word is no circula; supressió de trens is legal register only.

• Entresòl, written with an accent.

  Now saysEntresol, no accent, since the IEC’s 2017 reform.

  GDLC (Gran diccionari de la llengua catalana, Enciclopèdia Catalana) confirms entresol has carried no accent since the Institut d’Estudis Catalans’ 2017 spelling reform. A correction worth carrying into anything else on the site.

• Finiquito.

  Now saysQuitança.

  Finiquito is a Spanish word with no DIEC2 entry — DIEC2 returns zero records for it — and the Catalan is quitança. A correction worth carrying into anything else on the site.

36 things we could not establish

Written down rather than smoothed over. Several are cases where the honest answer is that no official source says either way, and inventing a reassurance would be worse than the gap.

• UNVERIFIEDWhat an Adif platform teleindicator physically prints for a cancelled train.

  UNVERIFIED. adif.es returns 403 to automated clients. The app and feed wording (no circula) is verified; the physical departure board is not.

• UNVERIFIEDThe verbatim strings “no efectua parada a” and “sense parada a”.

  Not found in any operator’s material. Do not print them.

• UNVERIFIEDFGC’s and Rodalies’ next-stop wording.

  TMB’s three channels are documented; the other two operators are not.

• UNVERIFIEDCatSalut’s own lab-instruction sheets, and whether any Catalan health page instructs 10 or 12 hours of fasting rather than 8.

  CatSalut’s document repository serves an anti-bot page and could not be read. Hospital wording is verified instead (Sant Joan de Déu, Althaia, Clínic) and is consistent at 8 hours. Also unconfirmed: whether any Catalan health page routinely instructs 10 or 12 hours rather than 8.

• UNVERIFIEDTMB’s live lift-status widget text.

  Station pages are client-rendered and the developer API is auth-gated. The physical red «avariada» sticker is verified; the on-screen string is not.

• UNVERIFIEDThe Barcelona flat-numbering convention (3º 2ª read aloud as tercero segunda, and bajos / entresuelo / principal / ático).

  Accurate to common Barcelona usage but could not be verified against a citable source in this pass — the search budget ran out. Worth one confirmation from a local before it ships. The WebSearch budget had hit its session cap of 200 and the Tavily plan quota was exhausted before this could be sourced.

• UNVERIFIED¿Quién es el último? as the standard Spain queue phrase.

  Same situation as the flat-numbering convention: correct to the best of my knowledge, unverified against a source here — the search budget ran out before it could be sourced.

• UNVERIFIEDWhether CatSalut or Barcelona CAPs run a named interpreting service.

  Could not be confirmed. The copy therefore tells the reader to ask at reception rather than to request a service by name. Worth someone confirming in person before adding it.

• UNVERIFIEDTMB’s exact printed wording for disrupted service (alteracions / afectacions / servei alterat) and for feiners vs laborables.

  tmb.cat is JavaScript-rendered. The words given are correct Catalan; which one is on the poster is unconfirmed.

• UNVERIFIEDPrincipal as a floor label, and the baixos → entresol → principal → 1r ordering.

  Every word is a real DIEC2 headword, but the stack is community knowledge, which is why the copy says “count the buttons in the lift”.

• UNVERIFIEDThe exact letter string “en el termini de deu dies hàbils”.

  The legal rule behind it is verified (Llei 39/2015 arts. 30, 68); the printed phrasing on a Barcelona letter is not.

• UNVERIFIEDThat the Spanish sentences are standard Peninsular usage, checked against Spain-versus-Latin-America divergences, but not individually source-attested sentence by sentence.

  The specific factual claims attached to them — 112’s languages, dar de alta, interna/externa, coger — are sourced separately.

• UNVERIFIEDThe “~4,000 loanwords” figure that circulates for Spanish loanwords in Tagalog.

  UNVERIFIED, and appears to be a mix-up with the estimated number of native Spanish speakers in the Philippines. The sourced figures are ~33% of dictionary root entries (Llamzon & Thorpe 1972) versus ~20% of words in actual use (Quilis 1973; Steinkrüger 2008 p.213; Baklanova 2019).

• UNVERIFIED112 works with no SIM card.

  UNVERIFIED. Official pages confirm only: works without the PIN entered, and without your own operator’s coverage if another network is reachable. Not written into the copy.

• UNVERIFIED061 is free of charge.

  UNVERIFIED. Five official pages checked; none says gratuït. 24/7 operation is confirmed. The copy therefore says 061 is answered 24 hours and does not claim it is free.

• UNVERIFIEDTagalog available on 112.

  NOT AVAILABLE on the published list. CAT112 publishes all 45 interpreter languages and Tagalog is not among them. The copy directs readers to English at 112 instead.

• UNVERIFIEDTagalog on 016.

  UNVERIFIED. 14 of 53 languages are named publicly; Tagalog is not one of them and the other 39 are unpublished. Stated as such in the copy.

• UNVERIFIEDTagalog on 900 900 120.

  UNVERIFIED. 11 of 124 named. Copy says it is the best chance after 061, without promising it.

• UNVERIFIED016 leaves no trace on the phone bill.

  UNVERIFIED — deliberately not claimed. The word factura appears nowhere on the Ministry’s page. The copy tells readers to assume the opposite. This is the most commonly repeated unsourced claim about 016 and we have refused it.

• UNVERIFIED024 language support.

  UNVERIFIED. Not stated on the Ministry of Health page. Copy says so.

• UNVERIFIEDAn in-person Tagalog interpreter bookable at a CAP.

  UNVERIFIED. Phone interpreting via 061 in 90+ languages including Tagalog is confirmed, and confirmed as available to staff as well as patients. On-site mediadors interculturals exist but CatSalut publishes no per-language list. The copy says exactly this.

• UNVERIFIEDConfidentiality of health records from immigration authorities.

  PARTLY VERIFIED — see the copy. Ley 41/2002 art. 7 gives every person, with no immigration exception, the right to confidentiality of health data. No law was found requiring or permitting health services to report patients. No official “we will not report you” statement exists, and the copy says so rather than inventing one. It also flags the real asymmetry: padró data is directly accessible to immigration authorities under LO 4/2000 DA 5ª.

• UNVERIFIEDWhether CatSalut has adapted to RD 180/2026.

  UNVERIFIED, and flagged in the copy as a live risk. RD 180/2026 is confirmed in force since 13 March 2026 (BOE núm. 63). Every relevant CatSalut page still states the old “more than three months of padró” rule and dates from November 2025 or earlier; none mentions the Real Decreto. Which rule a given CAP applies today is unknown, so the copy tells the reader what to do when the old rule is quoted at them.

• UNVERIFIEDThe Llei 9/2017 arrelament route (art. 2.3.b).

  NOT USABLE. The implementing reglament was never approved; CatSalut’s own 2017 Resolució says so. Padró remains the only working route. Left out of the copy entirely.

• UNVERIFIEDThe Llei 9/2017 art. 3.4 pharmacy exemption for social or economic vulnerability.

  UNVERIFIED in practice — depends on a reglament. Left out. The copy gives only the confirmed 40% figure for segon nivell.

• UNVERIFIEDPIAD’s Friday closing time.

  CONFLICTING between two official Barcelona pages (19:00 vs 16:00). Times omitted for PIAD; the copy says “by appointment” and gives the number.

• UNVERIFIED“Apptcat112” as an app name.

  DOES NOT EXIST on official pages. The real names are My112 and 112 accessible.

• UNVERIFIEDSVisual as a 112 channel.

  INCORRECT. SVisual and Telesor are 016 accessibility channels. Placed correctly in section 8.

• UNVERIFIEDWhether water is allowed when en dejú.

  UNVERIFIED. The copy says water is usually allowed and tells the reader to ring the number on the letter.

• UNVERIFIEDRD 180/2026 versus CatSalut’s un-updated guidance.

  One thing to escalate before publication. RD 180/2026 is real, in force, and verified from the BOE consolidated text — but CatSalut’s public guidance contradicts it and has not been updated. This section resolves that by telling readers the state rule and warning them the desk may quote the old one. Someone should confirm with CatSalut or SAIER how the 2026 rule is actually being applied at CAP receptions in Barcelona before this goes live, and revise the warning box accordingly. It is the difference between a person being turned away and a person walking out with a provisional document.

• UNVERIFIEDResearch limit — the web-search budget.

  The session’s web-search budget was exhausted early; everything above was verified by fetching official pages and BOE texts directly, which worked, but it means no broad keyword search was run to rule out a newer CatSalut instruction adapting to RD 180/2026, or a second source on any single point.

• UNVERIFIEDResearch limit — CatSalut Instrucció 08/2015 and a real scanned appointment letter.

  scientiasalut.gencat.cat, the Generalitat’s health-document repository, blocks automated access, so CatSalut Instrucció 08/2015 could not be read in full and no real scanned appointment letter could be pulled — the Catalan letter vocabulary in section 7 is verified word by word against the normative dictionary (DIEC / Viccionari) and against CatSalut’s own appointment and pharmacy pages, not against a photographed letter. If anyone has a real full de visita to hand, check section 7 against it.

• UNVERIFIEDResearch limit — currency of phone numbers, opening times and URLs.

  Re-check every phone number, opening time and URL on the day of publication — several of the pages behind them carry “last updated” dates inside the last twelve months.

• UNVERIFIEDCITE (Centre d’Informació per a Treballadors Estrangers, Via Laietana 16) as a P1 directory entry for free immigration advice.

  Not a safe P1 entry as of September 2026. On 21 January 2026 the board of the Associació per a l’Orientació, Formació i Inserció de Treballadors Estrangers (CITE) resolved to file for concurs de creditors — insolvency proceedings — and CCOO published the decision on 23 January 2026. The notice states CITE no longer provides the immigration advice service in a list of municipalities, tells residents of those municipalities to go to their own town hall instead, and says service continues only at the remaining usual offices, with an updated list to be consulted separately; attention at the Manresa, Terrassa and Tarragona union premises is now only for people registered (empadronats) in those municipalities. Verified by reading the CCOO announcement in full. Also confirmed: the page CCOO links for the current office list returns 404, so the “updated list” is not currently reachable there. Not verified: whether any specific CITE office is closed or open today. CCOO de Catalunya’s switchboard and WhatsApp, 933 100 000, is the stable route instead.

• UNVERIFIEDSAT Llar’s published schedule and WhatsApp number.

  The published schedule and WhatsApp number (689 850 808) date from 2022 and should be treated as indicative, not current. CCOO’s switchboard 933 100 000 is the stable route and is what the copy leads with. One of two live-currency risks to re-check before each republish.

• UNVERIFIEDAny secondary source still quoting €1,184/month or €9.26/hour for the SMI.

  Out of date. Real Decreto 126/2026, de 18 de febrero, set the 2026 SMI at €40.70/day, €1,221/month, €17,094/year, and €9.55 per hour for hourly live-out domestic workers, effective 1 January 2026, after the 2025 SMI’s prórroga was annulled (the Congress repealed RDL 16/2025 by resolution of 27 January 2026).

Sources