Barcelona will open its first public supermarket in 2027 in the Marina district

Mayor Jaume Collboni announces a pilot store managed by a social entity in a public housing building. The opposition from Junts and PP labels it as unfair competition.

The Barcelona City Council will open its first public supermarket in 2027. It will be located in the Marina district, a growing area with limited commercial offerings, as announced by Mayor Jaume Collboni.

The store will be set up in a public housing building and will be managed by a social entity or NGO. The project includes a job insertion programme and vocational training for local residents.

The announcement comes after Collboni's meeting with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a city that already has a budget of 70 million euros to deploy a similar network. There, the administration will cover costs such as rent and apply tax reductions to make basic food items 30% cheaper.

In Barcelona, the City Council argues that the network of shops is denser than in the United States, with 39 municipal markets selling fresh produce. “In the United States, food deserts prevail, and it is very difficult to find fresh produce,” warns Adrià Rodríguez, a researcher at the IDRA institute.

“Public policies work, institutions act,” defended Collboni.

Inflation in Spain has risen by around 25% in the last five years, while food prices have increased by 35%, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

The municipal opposition has rejected the proposal. The president of the Junts group and mayoral candidate, Jordi Martí Galbis, describes it as “ideological populism” and warns that he will not support it if it becomes “unfair competition” against local businesses.

“Opening publicly funded establishments with municipal funds means, in practice, that the City Council will directly compete with municipal markets and local shopkeepers using the money that the same merchants contribute in the form of taxes and fees. This is unacceptable,” stated Martí Galbis.

The PP has also rejected the initiative. The sector expects the model to resemble that of the United Kingdom, where social supermarkets sell surplus goods from large retailers at prices 10% to 30% lower than traditional chains.

The City Council anticipates that the Marina store will operate as a pilot plan before extending the model to other neighbourhoods. The measure will benefit local residents, who will have a new option for purchasing food at lower prices.