Storms in Barcelona - Great Wide Open

Written on 4 October 2026; updated that evening.

We were at a party at Miramar in Barcelona, watching a storm approach the city, when everyone’s phones began sounding the same warning. Stay indoors from eight o’clock.

It is quite a way to interrupt a party. One moment you are looking at the weather; the next, the weather has sent instructions.

It wsd as little unclear whether this was advice or a mandatory instructions to go home and stay there! Party goers are not goo judges of these things. We decided to be cautious and taxi’d our way back to our hotel on the seafront at about half past seven, just as the rain began. Then the wind and rain hit the building. Water found its way inside, but we stayed dry.

Elsewhere, Spain was in the middle of another storm: anger over housing, rising rents and the threat of losing your home. We hadn’t witnessed the protests. We learned about them through the news. But after an evening when getting under a roof suddenly mattered rather a lot, the connection was difficult to miss.

The storm we watched arrive

Our experience was a small, sheltered part of a much larger emergency.

By Sunday morning, EFE was reporting flooding in Barcelona and neighbouring L’Hospitalet, more than 5,000 calls to the 112 emergency number by 7am, and over a thousand call-outs by Catalonia’s fire service. Around 17,600 electricity customers in Barcelona and parts of its metropolitan area had lost power. Flooding disrupted roads and rail services, while the rising Besòs prompted further emergency alerts.

The consequences elsewhere in Barcelona province were worse. Two deaths were reported, in Tordera and Montornès del Vallès, while emergency services continued searching for a missing person in Pineda de Mar. These were regional impacts, not incidents we witnessed from our hotel.

For us, the evening meant leaving a party, getting back in time and watching the hotel take a battering. For others, the same weather brought evacuation, loss and danger.

By Sunday morning, the authorities had lifted Barcelona’s mobility restrictions, although they continued to urge caution. The city began recovering, but transport disruption outlasted the worst of the weather. High-speed trains between Barcelona and Madrid resumed around midday, while work continued to restore local rail services. Further north, parts of the Empordà remained under restrictions because of the flood risk.

The other storm

Barcelona’s main Saturday housing demonstration was postponed because of the weather, with the protest rescheduled for Monday 5 October in Plaça d’Urquinaona. Demonstrations went ahead elsewhere in Spain, while Barcelona already had an ongoing housing protest camp in Plaça de Catalunya.

There had also been protests in Barcelona on Friday, including a march to the headquarters of Junts, the Catalan party whose votes helped defeat the government’s housing measures.

So these two storms did coincide, although the weather interrupted the housing mobilisation. A photograph published with Sunday’s reporting showed rainwater inundating the protest camp in Plaça de Catalunya.

We saw none of that ourselves. Our view was of the approaching weather and, later, the seafront hotel. The wider picture came afterwards.

What happened in parliament?

The immediate political trigger came on Friday 2 October, when Spain’s Congress rejected two government housing decrees. PP, Vox and Junts opposed both; other parties also voted against them.

The proposals included stronger protection against eviction for vulnerable people, extensions to rental contracts, measures covering seasonal and room rentals, and restrictions on certain investment-fund purchases. A separate decree proposed automatic renewal of rental contracts. These were attempts to give tenants greater security amid the housing crisis.

Opponents disputed the approach. The PP argued that the central problem was a shortage of homes; Vox said the measures would drive more rental properties off the market. Junts called for the government to withdraw its proposal and negotiate a different one.

Those arguments concern how to fix the crisis. For the people protesting, the immediate question is more personal: can they afford to stay where they live?

A city to visit, a place to live

For visitors, Barcelona offers an extraordinary amount within easy reach: the sea, the hills, neighbourhood streets and places to linger over a meal. We were enjoying that city ourselves.

But a place that attracts visitors also has to work for the people who live there.

Tourist accommodation is one part of Barcelona’s housing debate. The council’s tourism-management plan sets out its intention not to renew the city’s 10,101 holiday-let licences in 2028, with the aim of returning those properties to residential use. That is a separate local policy from the measures rejected in Madrid.

Housing insecurity also reaches far beyond people struggling with their next rent increase. Arrels Fundació counted 1,982 people sleeping on Barcelona’s streets in December 2025. That is a count of rough sleeping on a particular night, not the total number experiencing every form of homelessness.

The protest campers and people sleeping rough should not be confused. But a warning to stay indoors raises a painfully practical question for anyone without a home: where?

A final word

We had somewhere to go at half past seven. The hotel let in some water, but it sheltered us from the worst of the storm.

That is the detail that stays with me alongside the sound of all those phones. We could act on the warning. We had a door to get behind.

Barcelona’s weather and its housing crisis have different causes and demand different responses. Yet, for one evening, they made the same ordinary thing feel unusually precious: somewhere safe to stay.

Sources and further reading

Our account of the party and hotel is based on personal experience. The wider storm impacts and political background draw on the reporting below. Casualty figures reflect reports checked on 4 October 2026.