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Learning Spanish and Catalan

What each course costs, when it runs and what it proves — so you can tell in a minute which one fits your week. Most beginner courses in Barcelona are free.

Sources checked 9 September 2026

You speak Spanish

At work, at the shop, at the health centre, with neighbours. Both languages are official and people switch to Spanish if you ask. Nobody needs Catalan to live in Barcelona.

You read Catalan

Council letters, school notices, health-centre appointments and most official forms arrive in Catalan. A letter you cannot read is a deadline you can miss. Catalan is also what a public-sector job usually asks for.

Which one to learn first, by what you need it for
What you needLearn this first
Talk to people — work, shops, the doctor, your children’s schoolSpanish. Any course. Start speaking before you worry about certificates.
Understand the letters that arrive at your flatCatalan, reading only. You do not need a course for this — a word list is enough. See the phrasebook.
A public-sector job, or a course that asks for a language levelCatalan, with a certificate. CPNL courses give one, and A1 and A2 cost nothing.
Papers — arrelament social, or renewing a permitEither, on the welcome course. Its certificate is evidence in your file, and it covers 90 hours of each language. It keys on being on the padró, not on holding a permit.
A Spanish passportSpanish, and two exams. Learning helps you pass, but the exams are separate — see below.

Find a class you can actually attend

Twelve routes into Spanish and Catalan in Barcelona. Filter by what you can pay and when you are free. Most of them cost nothing.

LANGUAGE
COST
WHEN

12 of 12 routes

Two routes here publish no timetable or price at all. They stay in the list whatever you filter, marked Call first — better a phone call than a route you never saw.

The five providers, side by side

Same facts as the cards above, arranged so you can compare one column at a time.

Spanish and Catalan course providers in Barcelona, 2026-27. Prices are first-enrolment prices before any discount.
ProviderLanguagesCostLevelsWhen it runsCertificateWho it suits
CFASpanish and CatalanFreeLevels 1–3, beginner upwardWeekday mornings and afternoons. No evening band published for 2026-27.Course certificate onlyAnyone free in the day. A passport is enough — no NIE.
CPNLCatalan onlyFree to A2; 68 € at B1; 262,67 € at C1. 70% off if unemployed or in hardship.A1 → C2Fixed hours in a classroom or live online — or no fixed hours at all in the asynchronous online mode. 4.5–5.5 hours a week.Yes — equivalent to the Generalitat’s official Catalan certificatesAnyone who needs a Catalan level on paper, and anyone whose shifts move.
EOI DrassanesSpanish (and Catalan, and 13 more)305 € at A1–A2; 333,65 € at B levels. Free on several grounds.A1 → C2A1–A2 four mornings a week, 09:30–14:00. B levels two afternoons. No Fridays.Yes — official, and it excuses you from the DELE A2 for nationalityPeople with free mornings who need an accredited level. Not shift workers.
Voluntariat per la llenguaCatalan onlyFreeYou need some Catalan alreadyWhenever you and your volunteer agree. Online version available.NoAnyone whose week is never the same twice.
Community and councilMostly Spanish — this is where the Spanish teaching isFree where published; unstated elsewhere — askBeginner and conversationThe only evening and Saturday option. Centro Filipino Tue–Sat 17:30–20:30; free civic-centre classes on Mondays.No — except the Primera Acollida certificate, which counts for arrelamentLive-in carers and anyone whose only free time is an evening or a Saturday.
Self-study onlineSpanish (Language Transfer) and Catalan (Parla.cat)Free, or free tierBeginner upwardWhenever you open it. Audio works while your hands are busy.NoEveryone, as a second thing alongside a class — or as the first thing while you wait for a place.

What we looked for and could not find

So you do not spend an evening searching for something that is not there.

Searching yourself. The council’s own directory lists 78 organisations offering language courses and you can filter it by district: novaciutadania.cat/cercador ↗. Two things to know before you use it: it does not separate Catalan from Spanish, and a large share of the entries are CPNL, which is Catalan only. Read each entry rather than trusting the count.

The two exams for a Spanish passport

This is not a language course. It is two exams you book and pay for yourself, and Filipinos have to sit both of them. Learning Spanish helps you pass the first one; it does not replace it.

Two lists. The Philippines is on one and not the other.

The Philippines is named in the law that cuts the residence requirement from ten years to two. It is not named in the list of countries excused the Spanish language exam. Those are two different laws with two different lists, and guides that quote the first one to answer the second are the reason people arrive at the Registro Civil a year late.

A Filipino applicant: two years’ residence, and both exams.

Two legal lists compared: the Philippines appears on the two-year residence list but not on the DELE exam exemption listTwo panels side by side. The left panel, headed “2 years, not 10” from Código Civil article 22.1, lists Latin America, Andorra, the Philippines, Equatorial Guinea, Portugal and Sephardic Jews; the Philippines is highlighted with a tick. The right panel, headed “No DELE A2 exam” from Real Decreto 1004/2015 article 6.5, lists Latin America, Equatorial Guinea and Puerto Rico, and notes it is a closed list of twenty countries where Spanish is an official language. A dotted line runs from the Philippines on the left towards the right panel and is stopped by a cross, showing the Philippines is not on the second list. Equatorial Guinea appears on both, which is why the two lists are so often confused.2 years, not 10Código Civil art. 22.1Latin AmericaAndorraPhilippinesEquatorial GuineaPortugalSephardic JewsNo DELE A2 examRD 1004/2015 art. 6.5Latin AmericaEquatorial GuineaPuerto RicoA closed list of 20countries where Spanishis an official language.
In words: the Philippines is on the two-year residence list (Código Civil art. 22.1) and is not on the DELE exemption list (RD 1004/2015 art. 6.5), which names twenty countries where Spanish is an official language. Equatorial Guinea is on both lists — that overlap is why the two get confused. Spanish stopped being an official language of the Philippines under the 1987 Constitution, which is why the Philippines is not on the second list.

DELE A2 — the Spanish exam

138 €

Reading, listening, writing and speaking, about 2½ hours in total. You need 30 out of 50 in each of two halves — a good overall score does not rescue a weak half.

VALID
For life. Sit it once.
IF YOU FAIL
You pay the full 138 € again.
IN BARCELONA
13 accredited centres in the province.
NEXT SITTING
February 2027. Every Barcelona centre is already full for November 2026 — it sold out before its own deadline. Registration for 2027 opens 18 November 2026, and the February deadline is 7 January 2027.

Find a centre ↗

CCSE — the Spain exam

85 €

25 questions in 45 minutes on the constitution, government, geography, culture and everyday paperwork. You need 15 right. Wrong answers cost nothing, so answer everything.

VALID
Four years.
IF YOU FAIL
The 85 € covers a second attempt.
IN BARCELONA
24 centres, and booking is open.
NEXT SITTINGS
29 October 2026 (register by 8 October) and 26 November 2026 (register by 5 November). Then monthly, last Thursday, except August and December.
PREPARE
All 300 possible questions are published free, and there is a free official app. Use the 2026 manual — a quarter of the questions changed.

Free manual and app ↗

What it adds up to. 138 € + 85 € + 100 € for the application fee = 323 €, before translations or resits. Two things in your favour: Spain does not ask Filipinos to renounce Philippine nationality, because the Philippines is named in Código Civil art. 24.1; and if you hold an official EOI certificate in Spanish, you do not sit the DELE at all. What the Philippine side requires of you is a question for the Consulate, not for this page. Our arraigo and nationality guide sets out the whole residence route.

Going to enrol

Screenshot this and take it with you. It is for a CFA — the free adult school — but the same four things work at a CPNL centre.

Enrolling at a CFA

Free Spanish or Catalan at a public adult school. Where places are left you can enrol without having applied, from 4 September.

  1. Your passport, NIE or DNI. A passport is enough.
  2. Your address in Barcelona.
  3. Ask for Llengua castellana for Spanish, Llengua catalana for Catalan.
  4. They will ask you a few questions to put you in the right level. That is normal.

Quiero apuntarme al curso de castellano. I want to sign up for the Spanish course.

¿Quedan plazas? Are there any places left?

Juan More Chance Checked 9 September 2026

More sentences for counters, appointments and the health centre are in the phrasebook. That one is for getting through today; this page is for signing up to learn properly.

Learning while you work

None of this replaces a class. All of it is free, and all of it fits into hours a class cannot reach.

You already speak more Spanish than you think

Tagalog has the same five vowel sounds as Spanish — a, e, i, o, u, one sound each, no long and short. That is the hardest part of Spanish pronunciation and you already have it. Filipino speakers of English usually have to unlearn English vowels to sound clear in Spanish; you do not.

Tagalog also borrowed heavily from Spanish. Two published counts: Llamzon and Thorpe (1972) found 33% of the root words in Panganiban’s Tagalog dictionary were of Spanish origin; Quilis (1973) put the figure at 20.4% of the Tagalog lexicon. Either way, a fifth to a third of the vocabulary is a head start nobody else in the class has.

Words you can use today

TagalogSpanishEnglish
mesamesatable
silyasillachair
kutsaracucharaspoon
tinidortenedorfork
kutsilyocuchilloknife
basovasoglass
platoplatoplate
kamacamabed
bintanaventanawindow
kusinacocinakitchen
kuwartocuartoroom
sabonjabónsoap
sapatoszapatosshoes
kotsecochecar
kalyecallestreet
trabahotrabajowork
orashora / horashour, time
pamilyafamiliafamily

The days of the week and the clock came across whole. If you say alas dos and Lunes at home, you are already saying a las dos and lunes here. Spanish spells the days in lower case.

Four that will trip you

You meanThey hearSay this instead
siguro — maybeseguro — certain, safe; also insurance on a contractquizás, a lo mejor
syempre — of coursesiempre — alwaysclaro, por supuesto
libre — free of chargelibre — free as in vacant, availablegratis
ruweda — Ferris wheelrueda — any wheelnoria

One more, and it is the useful one. Tagalog marks respect with po and opo. Spanish does it with a different word for “you”: usted instead of tú. At a counter, with a doctor, with an employer, with anyone older — use usted. It is the same instinct you already have, in a different place in the sentence.

Related questions

Sources & checks · 9 September 2026

Original summaries by Juan More Chance from official sources. Juan More Chance is independent of every service named here and does not handle enrolments, exams or applications. Prices, timetables and enrolment windows change every year — confirm before you plan around them.

Not confirmed, and written around rather than asserted. What the Servei de Primera Acollida costs, and its timetable — the official page states neither. What Centro Filipino teaches, when, and for how much: only its opening hours and its services in general are published, which is why the card says phone first. The hours and levels of the Creu Roja Spanish classes reached through SAIER. Parla.cat’s prices, which sit behind its registration. Which television programmes carry same-language subtitles. Whether individual CFA centres ask a small contribution for books or photocopies — none is set in the Department’s fee schedules and none appears anywhere in the enrolment process, but ask. Which CPNL courses run in the evening: hours are published per course in the finder rather than as a policy, so the card says check rather than promising one. Whether the Philippine oath under RA 9225 must be taken before or after Spanish naturalisation — that belongs to the Consulate.

Verified at system level, not by walking in. The CFA route here rests on the Consorci’s published offer table, the Generalitat’s enrolment calendar and its documentation rules. No individual CFA was contacted. The council names these centres as the route to learning Spanish, so a phone call to the two or three nearest the Raval — asking hours, places and whether a passport alone is accepted at the counter — is the highest-value thing anyone could add to this page.

Deliberately not here. Private language academies. Immigration advice. Anything about what to say at a counter, which is the phrasebook’s job.

Ask Juan Learning Spanish and Catalan · Juan More Chance guide