Setting up enterprises

Is your company interested in expanding or setting up in Barcelona? Need help with setting up a business? Are you an international entrepreneur wishing to launch a start-up here?

If you’ve thought about questions like these, we can provide support and help you to choose our city. Whether you’re a multinational, an SME or an individual entrepreneur, all we ask of you is to help our city and its economy prosper and to generate quality jobs.

Create a business or launch a start-up

If you’ve got a business idea and you think Barcelona is the place to develop it, you’re in luck. The city has a vibrant and highly dynamic business ecosystem, with plenty of organisations offering support.

Barcelona Activa, the City Council’s economic development agency, can provide you with step-by-step support through the process of setting up a business in the city. The agency offers personalised advice, training, events and spaces, connections with the main stakeholders in the city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and access to funding to develop viable businesses successfully.

To access the support services offered to entrepreneurs by Barcelona Activa, you need to attend an information session on starting an enterprise. This two-hour session will introduce you to the key concepts when it comes to starting a business and tell you the steps you need to take to validate your business project and get it off the ground.

Information sessions on starting an enterprise are offered in person, via streaming or through pre-recorded online content. You must register in advance. Bear in mind that most sessions are offered in the local languages (Catalan and Spanish), even though there are regular sessions in English too.

Once you attend this initial information session, you will get a user ID and password giving you access to the various tools and digital resources, such as the online business plan. You can also sign up for face-to-face or online training activities, or request specialist advice so that a team of experts can analyse your project, provide you with resources and content and respond to your queries. This advice is offered in both Catalan and Spanish, with some time slots in English too. These services can be requested in person, by phone or online.

Barcelona Activa also offers a series of reports on key aspects when starting a business, based on the needs identified through experience and the different stages in the creation of a company. Each report offers detailed information on topics such as the business idea, the various legal forms, the business plan, tax matters and wages.

More information at Barcelona Emprenedoria by Barcelona Activa.

Set up a foreign company

Are you an owner or representative of a foreign company planning to set up in Barcelona? Want to create a subsidiary or company branch in our city? Got an internationalisation or investment project?

Whether you’re considering different locations for your company expansion or you’ve already chosen Barcelona, we can help you.

We know that for a business the decision to open in new locations is a strategic one, with many variables to be taken into account. We understand this complexity and we have the information and resources to provide specialist support for managerial teams from companies preparing their decision-making.

We know all the ins and outs of Barcelona and we are connected with key figures in universities, the administration, the business network and the entrepreneurial ecosystem. A business installation project which is well-aligned with the city and its priorities is much more likely to be successful.

If your company has already decided to set up in Barcelona, the City Council’s economic development agency, Barcelona Activa, offers comprehensive support (as a one-stop shop), with support for your investment project which is free and entirely confidential.

Go to the business landing service at Barcelona Activa and discover everything we offer: support with constituting a subsidiary, finding offices or business premises, support with recruitment, with administrative procedures etc.

If you would like more information on Barcelona as a centre for doing business, or investing in the Barcelona area and discovering its opportunities and potential, check out the section “Invest and do business” on the website Meet Barcelona.