A surface area of about 18,000 square metres and the capacity to hold more than 600,000 volumes. They are talking about the great Public Library that will be built right next to the Estació de França, a great public work for which the City Council’s Governing Committee has just granted the building permit. 

The procedure that has just been completed represents the achievement of one of the objectives set by the Joint Monitoring Committee, made up of Barcelona City Council, the Ministry of Culture and the Generalitat. This committee, which was reactivated in 2021, has adapted the project to the new urban planning regulations and has also polished some details. When it becomes operational (expected between 2027 and 2031), the centre will fulfil all the functions of a public state library, as well as those established by the Catalan Library System. The ownership of the equipment will be state-owned, although management will be transferred to the Generalitat.

In December 2022, work began on the site to be occupied by the future library.  With an investment of around eighty million euros, the library has been designed by Josep Maria Miró (of Nitidus Arquitectes), and will be located on land ceded by Barcelona City Council that forms part of the Ciutadella Master Plan. The future facility will not only be the largest public library in Spain, but one of the largest in Europe. There you will find services and sections common to all types of libraries, with reading rooms, information rooms, a room for accessing general and specialised collections, a children’s and young people’s collection, a daily press room, an assembly hall, multifunctional rooms, internet access points, self-checkout machines, a rest area, an exhibition room, a cafeteria-bookshop, an auditorium and a parking area.

This facility will complement the Barcelona Library Network and reaffirm the importance of Barcelona’s publishing sector, as well as the city’s status as a Literary City, a declaration that Barcelona obtained from UNESCO in 2015. In fact, the centre will help to shape the library map of Barcelona and the metropolitan area.

In this new library, words will meet images and other forms of expression in a series of spaces and activities dedicated to offering experiences, encouraging reading and writing and thus fostering the development of the creative talent of the city’s citizens.

If you want to know more about the project, we recommend you read this article from the magazine Barcelona Metròpolis about the future Biblioteca de l’Estat in Barcelona.