Barcelona’s mayor, Jaume Collboni, unveiled a flagship cultural-mobility initiative at the Guadalajara International Book Fair on 30 November: the ‘Narrar Barcelona’ residency, a three-month, €80,000 fully funded stay for a Latin-American or Caribbean author to live and write in Spain’s second-largest city.
The programme, run with Casa Amèrica Catalunya and the Barcelona Libraries Consortium, will provide housing, a stipend, and curated introductions to local publishers, translators and literary agents. The inaugural call opens in February 2026, with the residency scheduled for September-December.
![Barcelona Launches €80,000 Literary Residency to Deepen Latin-American Cultural Ties]()
For the city council, the project is more than cultural diplomacy. Officials see it as soft-power leverage that can eventually feed Spain’s broader talent-attraction strategy: resident writers who decide to stay longer may upgrade to the recently streamlined Highly Qualified Professional permit or the Cultural Contribution visa.
The initiative mirrors similar schemes in Lisbon and Bogotá but is the first Spanish municipal programme funded at this scale. Barcelona’s foreign-investment office hopes the media buzz will reinforce the city’s appeal to Latin-American start-ups that value a Spanish-speaking ecosystem and relatively straightforward immigration pathways compared with other EU hubs.
HR departments relocating creative personnel should monitor tax implications: while the three-month stay is below Spain’s 183-day tax-residency threshold, ancillary promotional visits could push individuals over the limit; the ‘Beckham Law’ flat-tax regime may apply if authors later take up longer contracts.
The programme, run with Casa Amèrica Catalunya and the Barcelona Libraries Consortium, will provide housing, a stipend, and curated introductions to local publishers, translators and literary agents. The inaugural call opens in February 2026, with the residency scheduled for September-December.
For the city council, the project is more than cultural diplomacy. Officials see it as soft-power leverage that can eventually feed Spain’s broader talent-attraction strategy: resident writers who decide to stay longer may upgrade to the recently streamlined Highly Qualified Professional permit or the Cultural Contribution visa.
The initiative mirrors similar schemes in Lisbon and Bogotá but is the first Spanish municipal programme funded at this scale. Barcelona’s foreign-investment office hopes the media buzz will reinforce the city’s appeal to Latin-American start-ups that value a Spanish-speaking ecosystem and relatively straightforward immigration pathways compared with other EU hubs.
HR departments relocating creative personnel should monitor tax implications: while the three-month stay is below Spain’s 183-day tax-residency threshold, ancillary promotional visits could push individuals over the limit; the ‘Beckham Law’ flat-tax regime may apply if authors later take up longer contracts.
