Juan More Chance

What has happened?

Find your line, ring the number, say the words. If none of these fits and someone is in danger, ring 112 — the operator will work out who to send.

Twelve situations, the number that answers, and what to do the moment they pick up.
If this has happened	Ring	Then
SituationSomeone has stopped breathing, is bleeding heavily, has chest pain, or one side of their face has dropped	Ring112	ThenGive the street address first, before anything else. Do not hang up until they tell you to.
SituationThere is a fire, or you can smell gas	Ring112	ThenGet out first, then call from outside.
SituationYou are ill and not sure whether to go to hospital	Ring061	ThenAsk for Tagalog. They can bring in an interpreter.
SituationYour phone, bag or wallet has just been taken	Ring112	ThenIf the thief is still nearby. Otherwise go to any police station and file a report — see “If you are robbed”.
SituationA man is hurting you, threatening you, or controlling your money and your papers	Ring016	ThenFree, 24 hours, 53 languages. In Catalonia you can also call 900 900 120.
SituationA child is being hurt or neglected	Ring116 111	ThenInfància Respon, the Catalan child protection line. Free, 24 hours.
SituationYou have nowhere to sleep tonight, no money for food, or you have just been evicted	Ring900 703 030	ThenCUESB, the city social emergency centre. Free, 24 hours, 365 days.
SituationYou feel you cannot go on	Ring024	ThenFree, 24 hours, confidential. Answered in Spanish; ask for English.
SituationYour card has been taken, or money has left your account	RingYour bank	ThenFreeze the card in your banking app first — it is instant. Then call. See “Cards and phone”.
SituationYou are Filipino and in trouble: detained, your employer has your passport, a death in the family	Ring679 324 462	ThenPhilippine Consulate General emergency line and WhatsApp.
SituationYou are being made to work for nothing, or you cannot leave a job or a house	Ring900 105 090	ThenMinistry of the Interior trafficking line. If you are in immediate danger, call 112.
SituationYou need to sort papers, housing or work and nobody speaks your language	Ring931 532 800	ThenSAIER, the city service for migrants and refugees. Ring first: the walk-in is urgent cases only, on a daily quota.

Which police force, and why the answer is nearly always 112

Catalonia has five forces with five short numbers, and almost nobody knows which is which. Here is the division of work — and the reason you should still dial 112.

088Mossos d’Esquadra
Catalonia’s own police force, across the whole region. Crime investigation, public order, road traffic. This is who takes your report when your phone is stolen.
Ring it for: A stolen phone. An assault. A burglary. A crime you witnessed.
092Guàrdia Urbana
Barcelona’s city police, run by the town hall. Streets, traffic, parking, everyday disputes, assistance to people.
Ring it for: A car blocking your door. A road accident. Trouble in the street outside.
062Guàrdia Civil
A national force. In Catalonia its job is customs, and the control of ports and airports.
Ring it for: A problem at the airport or the port. Customs.
091Policía Nacional
The other national force. Passports and official documents, identity documents, and immigration.
Ring it for: Anything to do with your NIE, TIE or immigration file — though for those you book an appointment, you do not ring.
080Bombers de Barcelona
The city fire service. Outside Barcelona the fire service is Bombers de la Generalitat, on 085.
Ring it for: Fire, flooding, someone trapped.

Dial 112, not 088 or 085 — the operator can find youCalls to 112, 088 and 085 all land in the same two rooms, at Zona Franca and Reus. But the mapping system that shows the operator roughly where a mobile is calling from works on a 112 call and not on an 088 or an 085 call. If you cannot describe where you are — a stranger’s doorway, a dark street, a metro corridor — that difference is everything. The Mossos d’Esquadra, the Guàrdia Urbana and Bombers de Barcelona all publish 112 as the number to ring, and none of them publishes their own short number any more.

A correction, because you may be holding the other versionThe Philippine Consulate’s ICON Kit (2nd edition, October 2025, page 34) lists 092 as the Mossos d’Esquadra and 088 as the Guàrdia Urbana. That is the wrong way round. The Generalitat’s own police training institute prints the table as 088 Mossos d’Esquadra and 092 Policia Local i Guàrdia Urbana, and the Department of Justice uses the same mapping. Everything else on that page of the kit checks out. If you are reading the kit alongside this page, that one row is the one to ignore.

Making a police report

To report something that has already happened, walk into any comissaria — police station. They are open 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and you do not need an appointment. Ring 012 and they will tell you the nearest one. The written report is called a denúncia, and you need it before an insurer, a bank or a consulate will act.

Being understood

The two emergency lines behave completely differently on language, and almost nobody is told which is which.

061 answers in Tagalog. Almost nobody knows this.

The Catalan medical emergency service publishes its invitation in Tagalog on its own website, alongside fourteen other languages, and its operators can switch on interpreting in more than 90 languages and dialects. The service exists specifically to clear up language problems in consultations with patients from other countries — so if you are sitting in front of a doctor who cannot understand you, ask them to ring 061 and bring in a Tagalog interpreter.

Kung hindi ka nagsasalita ng alinman sa mga wika ng bansa at mayroon kang anumang mga katanungan, maaari kang tumawag sa 061 Salut Respon at sasagutin ka ng isang pangkat ng mga propesyonal.061 Salut Respon’s own words, on its own page. Print it, or screenshot it, and show it.

112 does not offer Tagalog — so open in English

112 operators answer directly in Catalan, Spanish, English, French and German, and can bring an interpreter in for 45 more languages. Tagalog is not on that list. English is the fastest route, and the operator will not mind at all.

Inglés, por favor.English, please. Say it first, then give the street address before anything else. Answer every question, and do not hang up until they tell you to.

Elsewhere

016, the violence-against-women line, answers in 53 languages, 24 hours, with legal advice from 08:00 to 22:00.
SAIER, the city’s service for migrants and refugees, can provide an interpreter — but only for people who have been in the country less than two years. Carrer de Tarragona 141, 931 532 800. The normal route is a booked phone assessment; the Monday-to-Friday 09:00–15:00 walk-in is for urgent cases only and has a fixed daily quota, so ring before you travel. Not an emergency line — but the right place for a lot of what comes after one.
Deaf callers can reach 112 through a 24-hour Catalan sign-language video service, and 061 through sign-language video in its app.

If you are robbed

The trick that is used most oftenSomeone stops you and asks for directions, or asks you to take their photograph. While you are looking at them, or at their phone, a second person takes your bag, your wallet or your phone and walks away. On the metro the same idea works differently: a sudden crowd at an escalator, a hand offering to help with your suitcase, or a shove just before the doors beep — they step off with your wallet and you are carried away in the carriage.

The first ten minutes

If the thief is still there, ring 112. Say where you are first. Then describe the person, and which way they went.
Freeze your cards in your banking app. It takes seconds and needs nobody to answer the phone. See Cards and phone.
Ring your mobile operator and ask them to block the line and the SIM.
Go to any police station and file the report. Any hour, any day. Without it you have no claim and no replacement papers. If you would rather do it with an interpreter, the Guàrdia Urbana runs a tourist assistance desk at Nou de la Rambla 43 — 932 562 431, 24 hours, Monday to Friday. See Being a foreign victim of a crime.

Your passport

Leave the passport itself at home and carry a copy — printed, photographed or in your email. If you hold a TIE residence card, carry that instead: it is the document you are expected to be able to show. If your Philippine passport is lost or stolen, the Consulate issues a Travel Document that gets you home, and you will need the police report to apply.

Philippine Consulate General, BarcelonaGran Via de les Corts Catalanes 601, Planta Principal, 08007 Barcelona — two minutes from Plaça Catalunya. Office 938 288 312, Monday to Friday 08:30–16:30. Emergencies and WhatsApp, 679 324 462. Jurisdiction covers Catalonia, Aragón, the Valencian Community, the Balearic Islands and Andorra. What the Consulate can do for you.

Cards and phone

Freezing a card in the bank’s app is instant, free, reversible and needs no phone queue. Do that first, every time, then ring.

900 404 090CaixaBank — 24 hours, every dayFrom abroad, or from a foreign SIM, use 93 887 25 25 instead: Spanish 900 numbers usually will not connect from outside Spain.
915 123 123Santander — fraud and emergencies, 24 hours, every daySantander’s own emergency line. It is a Madrid landline number, so it also works from abroad.
AppBBVA, Banc Sabadell, and everyone elseBlock the card in the app, then use the number printed on your bank statement or on the bank’s own website. We could not confirm a current card-blocking number for these from the banks themselves, so we have not printed one — see Sources.

A stolen phone

Ask your operator to block the line and the SIM.
Lock or wipe the handset remotely — Find My iPhone at icloud.com/find, or Find Hub for Android. If you never switched that on, change your Apple or Google password instead, which cuts the thief off from your files.
Change the passwords on anything the phone was signed into: cloud storage, social accounts, shopping sites, and anywhere a card is saved.
Turn off WhatsApp on the stolen handset. Put your SIM duplicate in another phone and activate WhatsApp there; if you have no duplicate, email [email protected] with your number in full international form and ask them to deactivate the account.
File the police report. Insurers and your operator will ask for it.

Hospitals with an emergency department

In a real emergency, ring 112 and let them take you — the ambulance crew knows which department is open and which is full. These numbers are switchboards, for when you need to find a patient, chase a result or ask a question.

Not sure it is a hospital job?Ring 061 first. For something urgent but not dangerous when your health centre is shut, a CUAP is open 24 hours and will see you far faster than a hospital. How the health system works, and what it costs.

Being a foreign victim of a crime

A crime report in a language you do not speak is where most people give up, and the report is the thing you cannot get later. These offices exist to stop that.

Andorra runs on different numbers, and 112 is not the one you wantAndorra is in the Consulate’s district and an easy day out from Barcelona, but it is a separate country with its own emergency numbers. The Policia d’Andorra publishes: 110 police, 116 for the urgent medical service, and 118 for the fire service. In Andorra, 112 is mountain rescue. The police switchboard is +376 872 000; their central office at Escaldes-Engordany takes reports 24 hours a day, every day of the year.

Helplines

All free. All answered by people trained for the thing they are named after.

If someone is controlling you016 is free and confidential, and it passes emergency calls straight to 112, routes callers under 18 to the children’s line, and routes anything about trafficking to the Interior Ministry line. You do not have to be sure, and you do not have to be ready to report anything, to ring it.

Transport

Enquiries, delays and lost property. For an accident or an emergency on any service, it is still 112.

Staying out of trouble

Barcelona is not a violent city. It is a city with a very large amount of quiet theft.

In 2025 the police in Catalonia recorded 497,485 offences. Nearly four in five were against property, and within those, furt — theft with no force and no violence, which is what pickpocketing is — was 48.7%: 190,095 cases. That makes it the single most-recorded offence in Catalonia by a wide margin. It fell 6.3% on 2024. Fraud, most of it online, accounted for another 30,743 cases. Figures are Catalonia-wide, from the Mossos d’Esquadra’s own annual balance.

What the police themselves advise

Carry only what you need, and keep money, keys and documents in different places so one lost bag is not everything.
Bag in front of your body, zips facing inwards. On an escalator, stand sideways so you can see behind you.
On the platform, spread out. Avoid the first and last carriages — they are the fullest, and that is where thieves prefer to work. Do not rush the doors.
At a ticket machine, get your card or cash out before you walk up to it, and shield the keypad. People are robbed while validating a ticket, because that is the moment they stop watching their pockets.
At a cash machine, use one inside a bank during opening hours if you can, cover the keypad, and refuse help from strangers.
Turn down the street offers — the shell game, the tarot reader, the flower seller, the pavement stall. Street selling is illegal here and buyers can be fined.
Look before you step into a bike lane. They run between the pavement and the road, and bikes and scooters arrive fast and almost silently.
Treat online offers the same way you treat street offers. A flat let by someone who will not let you see it, a job that pays far too well, an agency that wants your passport: all of those are the same trick with a keyboard.

Report it immediately to station or security staff. Metro platforms and station halls have SOS intercoms — use them, they are answered.

Sources

Every number on this page was read off the organisation’s own website, or off the Ajuntament de Barcelona’s official list of useful numbers, on 9 September 2026 — with one exception, the Consulate’s two numbers, and that exception is explained below. Juan More Chance is independent of all of them.

The emergency numbers, and who answers them: Ajuntament de Barcelona, Telèfons d’utilitat — barcelona.cat/ca/viure-a-bcn/telefons-dutilitat; Generalitat de Catalunya, Telèfons especialitzats — web.gencat.cat; CAT112, Preguntes freqüents sobre el telèfon 112 — the 50-language list, and the confirmation that operators answer directly in Catalan, Spanish, English, French and German — 112.gencat.cat
088 is the Mossos d’Esquadra and 092 is the Guàrdia Urbana: Institut de Seguretat Pública de Catalunya, Capacitació per a la planificació de l’autoprotecció en l’àmbit local, Mòdul A, Bloc A3 — the table “Telèfons d’emergència dels cossos operatius” gives 061 medical, 062 Guàrdia Civil, 080 Bombers de Barcelona ciutat, 085 Bombers de la Generalitat, 088 Mossos d’Esquadra, 091 Policia Nacional, 092 Policia Local i Guàrdia Urbana. The same document records that 085 was folded into 112 in June 2001 and 088 from February 2007, that all three ring into the same two rooms, and that mobile location works on a 112 call but not on an 085 or 088 call — ispc.gencat.cat; Mossos d’Esquadra, La policia a Catalunya — what each force does, and the instruction to use 112 — mossos.gencat.cat · updated 4 November 2022
Language: 061 Salut Respon, Servei en altres llengües — the Tagalog text quoted above is theirs — sem.gencat.cat; Ministerio de Igualdad, Teléfono 016 — 53 languages, 24 hours, and the routes to the children’s and trafficking lines — violenciagenero.igualdad.gob.es
Theft, and how it is done: Mossos d’Esquadra, Balanç de seguretat i activitat policial 2025 — 497,485 offences, 390,292 against property, furts 48.7% of those at 190,095, down 6.34% — mossos.gencat.cat (PDF); Mossos d’Esquadra, Transports públics and Consells de vacances segures — the escalator, platform, ticket-machine and cash-machine advice — mossos.gencat.cat; Guàrdia Urbana de Barcelona, Seguretat personal — the street, cash machine and street-selling advice — ajuntament.barcelona.cat; Mossos d’Esquadra, Què heu de fer si us roben o perdeu el mòbil — the stolen-phone steps — mossos.gencat.cat
Hospitals: Each hospital’s own contact or emergency page, cross-checked against the Ajuntament list — Clínic · Sant Pau · Vall d’Hebron · Hospital del Mar · Sant Joan de Déu · Bellvitge · Germans Trias
The Philippine Consulate’s two numbers: The Consulate’s own In-Country Orientation and Navigation (ICON) Kit, 2nd edition, October 2025, which prints 938 288 312 as the office line and 679 324 462 three separate times — as the emergency number, as the gender-and-development hotline, and as the WhatsApp contact. Its website was unreachable from here on the day this page was checked, so these two rest on the Consulate’s own publication rather than on the site — barcelonapcg.dfa.gov.ph. The old Rambla de Catalunya address and the 934 288 312 number that still circulate are both from the office the Consulate left in 2025.
Foreign victims of crime: Guàrdia Urbana de Barcelona, tourist assistance service — Nou de la Rambla 43, 932 562 431, 24 hours Monday to Friday — ajuntament.barcelona.cat; Policía Nacional, the national register of SATE offices — the complete list is Benidorm, Granada, Eivissa, Madrid, Benalmádena, Estepona, Málaga, Marbella, Sevilla and Gandía. There is none in Barcelona, Mallorca or Menorca — policia.es; Policia d’Andorra — 110 police, 112 mountain rescue, 116 medical, 118 fire — policia.ad
Social emergencies, and helplines: Ajuntament de Barcelona, Urgències i emergències socials — CUESB, 900 703 030, free, 24 hours, 365 days, Carrer Llacuna 25 — ajuntament.barcelona.cat; Canal Salut, Línia Verda — 900 900 540, free, 24 hours, 365 days — canalsalut.gencat.cat · updated 5 May 2026
Transport, and the banks: TMB tmb.cat · Tram tram.cat · Renfe renfe.com · Aena aena.es; CaixaBank caixabank.es · Santander bancosantander.es
What we left out, and why: BBVA, Banc Sabadell, Mastercard and Visa card-blocking numbers. Older lists give 900 814 500, 900 712 356, 900 971 231 and 910 507 330. None of those four could be confirmed on the company’s own website, so none is printed here. Use the app, or the number on your statement. A dead emergency number is worse than no number.; The claim that pickpocketing is Barcelona’s most-reported crime. The version we could actually source is Catalonia-wide, from the Mossos’ 2025 balance, and it is stated that way above rather than repeated as a Barcelona city ranking.; “High accident rate on bike lanes.” We found no current published figure, so the advice above states the behaviour without the claim.; Four hospital numbers in circulation are wrong. Older lists give Bellvitge as 932 607 575, Sant Pau as 932 919 191, Hospital del Mar as 932 483 011 and Vall d’Hebron as 932 746 000. The first three are simply not the hospitals’ numbers. Vall d’Hebron really does publish 932 746 000, but as the second of two switchboards; the number in its own tap links is 934 893 000, and its emergency department is 932 746 250.; SATE Barcelona, 932 853 832. This number appears on no Ajuntament, Guàrdia Urbana or Policía Nacional page. There is no Policía Nacional foreign-victim office in Barcelona at all; the service that exists is the Guàrdia Urbana desk at Nou de la Rambla 43, on 932 562 431. We have not printed the old number.; Mallorca 902 102 112, Menorca 971 157 800, Andorra +376 891 190, and Ibiza 871 511 267. None could be found on any police or government site, and the national register shows no foreign-victim office in Mallorca or Menorca. The 902 prefix is a premium-rate range that public services were required to give up, so that one is almost certainly dead. Replaced above with the numbers those forces do publish.

These numbers change. If you ring one and it is dead, tell us — that is the single most useful thing anyone can send this page.

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