Barcelona loading bays for bars and hotels start six-month trial
Three reserved bays, eight distributors and seven vehicles per site: the city is testing whether a truck that parks once and delivers on foot cuts traffic. The council has not published the hours.
Barcelona loading bays reserved for the trucks that supply bars, restaurants, cafés and hotels came into use on Friday 9 October: one at the corner of Pau Claris and Casp, in the Eixample, and two on the Rambla del Raval, in Ciutat Vella. The trial, called Horeca Hub Barcelona, will run for at least six months, the city council says.
Eight drinks and food distributors take part: DDI, the Damm group's distributor, Disbesa, Coseral BCN and five others. Seven vehicles are assigned to each of the three locations and book the bay by time slot through a digital platform. The council's note does not say which hours they are.
The idea is that the truck stops once and stays put. From the bay the driver delivers on foot or with light equipment to the venues nearby and, on the way back, collects empty bottles, crates and kegs. For what those crates end up next to, see our guide to what to eat in Barcelona.
A bay designed for a parcel van does not automatically suit a round of kegs.
Why Barcelona loading bays do not suit a keg round
The proposal comes from the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC), working with Adiscat, the Catalan association of drinks and food distributors. Cristian Castillo, the UOC lecturer who coordinates it, says in the council's note that loading rules were designed for parcels, while supplying hospitality means heavy goods, kegs, crates, very frequent drops and the return of empties. When the UOC presented the project in November 2025 it put numbers on the mismatch: a round often serves 25 to 30 customers, and the standard limit in a bay is 30 minutes.
The council's own diagnosis is that goods distribution accounts for 17% of mobility in the city and that hotels, restaurants and cafés receive 22.2% of those deliveries.
What the six months will measure
Sensors, RFID tags and a web application record when each vehicle arrives, how long it occupies the bay and every delivery and collection. The team will analyse delivery times, routes and the number of vehicles needed. "We are moving from diagnosis to a real test," says Anna Masuet, deputy director of Adiscat.
What follows is left open. The note says only that, depending on the results, the method could be studied for other parts of the city and adapted to other municipalities. It gives no cost for the trial. In 2025 the UOC said the whole project had €125,000 and 18 months, and named Plaça Reial as the first site, which is not among the three now in use.
Three Barcelona loading bays, in a city where by the council's count more than a fifth of goods deliveries go to hospitality, are a measuring instrument and not yet a policy.
