2023 Barcelona City Council election

The 2023 Barcelona City Council election, also the 2023 Barcelona municipal election, was held on Sunday, 28 May 2023, to elect the 12th City Council of the municipality of Barcelona. All 41 seats in the City Council were up for election. The election was held simultaneously with regional elections in twelve autonomous communities and local elections all throughout Spain.

Incumbent mayor Ada Colau's party, Barcelona in Common (BComú), fell to third place behind Xavier Trias-led Together for Catalonia (JxCat) alliance and the Socialists' Party of Catalonia (PSC), which scored its best result since 2011. PSC's Jaume Collboni was able to become the new city's mayor following an alliance with BComú and the surprise support of the People's Party (PP), which aimed at preventing the city's government from falling into the hands of pro-Catalan independence parties.

Electoral system
The City Council of Barcelona (Ajuntament de Barcelona, Ayuntamiento de Barcelona) was the top-tier administrative and governing body of the municipality of Barcelona, composed of the mayor, the government council and the elected plenary assembly. Elections to the local councils in Spain were fixed for the fourth Sunday of May every four years. Voting for the local assembly was on the basis of universal suffrage, which comprised all nationals over 18 years of age, registered and residing in the municipality of Barcelona and in full enjoyment of their political rights, as well as resident non-national European citizens and those whose country of origin allowed Spanish nationals to vote in their own elections by virtue of a treaty.

Local councillors were elected using the D'Hondt method and a closed list proportional representation, with an electoral threshold of five percent of valid votes—which included blank ballots—being applied in each local council. Councillors were allocated to municipal councils based on the following scale:

The mayor was indirectly elected by the plenary assembly. A legal clause required that mayoral candidates earned the vote of an absolute majority of councillors, or else the candidate of the most-voted party in the assembly was to be automatically appointed to the post. In the event of a tie, the appointee would be determined by lot.

Council composition
The table below shows the composition of the political groups in the City Council at the time of dissolution.

Parties and candidates
The electoral law allowed for parties and federations registered in the interior ministry, coalitions and groupings of electors to present lists of candidates. Parties and federations intending to form a coalition ahead of an election were required to inform the relevant Electoral Commission within ten days of the election call, whereas groupings of electors needed to secure the signature of a determined amount of the electors registered in the municipality for which they sought election, disallowing electors from signing for more than one list of candidates. For the case of Barcelona, as its population was over 1,000,001, at least 8,000 signatures were required.

Below is a list of the main parties and electoral alliances which contested the election:

Opinion polls
The tables below list opinion polling results in reverse chronological order, showing the most recent first and using the dates when the survey fieldwork was done, as opposed to the date of publication. Where the fieldwork dates are unknown, the date of publication is given instead. The highest percentage figure in each polling survey is displayed with its background shaded in the leading party's colour. If a tie ensues, this is applied to the figures with the highest percentages. The "Lead" column on the right shows the percentage-point difference between the parties with the highest percentages in a poll.

Voting intention estimates
The table below lists weighted voting intention estimates. Refusals are generally excluded from the party vote percentages, while question wording and the treatment of "don't know" responses and those not intending to vote may vary between polling organisations. When available, seat projections determined by the polling organisations are displayed below (or in place of) the percentages in a smaller font; 21 seats were required for an absolute majority in the City Council of Barcelona.


 * Color key:

Voting preferences
The table below lists raw, unweighted voting preferences.

Preferred Mayor
The table below lists opinion polling on leader preferences to become mayor of Barcelona.


 * Color key:

Aftermath
At the first meeting of the council on 17 June 2023, Jaume Collboni of the PSC was elected as the new Mayor of Barcelona after receiving the support of his own party, Barcelona en Comú and the PP for a total of 23 votes, above the threshold of 21 votes required for the mayorality not to be automatically assumed by Xavier Trias as the leader of the most-voted candidature.