Over 350 graffiti tags and posters removed daily in Barcelona last year

The Barcelona City Council cleaned and removed up to 119,000 graffiti tags, posters and banners from the public streets between January and November of last year. 

In total, this resulted in an average of 360 clean-up actions per day, at up to 30,310 different postal addresses, according to data obtained by the Directorate of Cleaning and Waste Management Services. 

Nearly 30% of all such clean-ups happened in the Ciutat Vella district. Compared to previous years, with data available from January to September, 2025 was not exceptional. 

8,000 more actions (12.8%) were reported in 2025 in comparison to the year before. However, the figures show a decrease of 7,000 cleaning actions compared with 2023. Graffiti removal now accounts for 75% of the Barcelona City Council cleaning services.  

Ciutat Vella district accounts for the most interventions

Last year, the district of Ciutat Vella accounted for 28% of all municipal service actions, nearly 27,000 in nine months. Combined with 11,695 in the Sant Martí district (12%), and 10,952 in the Gràcia district (11.3%), they represent more than half of the city's graffiti cleaning and poster and banner removal operations.

Most of the interventions focused on graffiti removal, accounting for nearly 75% of all actions during the same period last year. These efforts primarily targeted building façades, which represented 45% of cases. Other commonly affected surfaces included lamps (13%), utility cabinets (9%), and infrastructure walls (5.7%).

360 cleaning and removal operations per day

The City Council has also provided a list of all the addresses where its municipal service went in 2025 to clean graffiti or remove posters and banners.

It shows that the city council cleaned and removed up to 119,000 pieces of graffiti, posters, and banners from the city's streets during 10 months of last year, with interventions at up to 30,310 different postal addresses in the city.

This amounts to an average of 362 pieces of graffiti and items cleaned and removed daily at 92 different locations. The busiest month of the year was October, with more than 13,000 clean-up operations by the municipal service. The monthly average was nearly 11,000.

More than 100 pieces of graffiti and posters removed in the same location

The data also reveals patterns of repeated activity in certain locations. This is partly because a single location and date often records more than one cleaning action. This means that more than one piece of graffiti was cleaned and more than one poster was removed at that same address on that same day. 

In fact, more than one action is recorded for 60% of the addresses (18,565 locations), regardless of the day it occurred. At most of these locations, the municipal service has intervened between 1 and 10 times, but there are nearly 2,000 where the number is higher.

In this regard, about thirty hotspots stand out, where between 100 and nearly 600 interventions have been recorded in just 11 months of the year. The main one is the Barceloneta seafront promenade at up to three locations. 

The Castella Square (Ciutat Vella district), the Alta de les Roquetes road (Nou Barris district), Doctor Aiguader Street in Barceloneta (Ciutat Vella district), the street of l'Espanya Industrial (Sants-Montjuïc district), the Passeig de la Vall d'Hebron (in Horta-Guinardó district), or Plaça del Diamant (Gràcia district), are other notable points.

Citizen requests on the rise

In recent years, there has also been a significant increase in citizen requests to remove graffiti from public property, particularly between 2023 (2,138 cases) and 2024 (8,231). Last year, followed the same trend, and with data only through October, more than 11,000 requests had already been filed through the City Council's IRIS (Incidents, Complaints, and Suggestions) system.