Monolinguisme et polyglossie dans la Barcelone d'aujourd'hui

Barcelona is today, together with many European capitals, a multilingual city, inhabited by diverse linguistic collectives and visited by a huge number of tourists. What is particular about the city resides in the fact that its growing multilingualism is based on a long-term bilingualism, which was institutionalised along the last quarter of the twentieth century through the status of co-official languages granted to the language of the state (Spanish) and to the language of the region (Catalan). In this text I will try to outline this geometrically variable multilingualism using data stemming from Administration sources, from a recent poll and from an on-going research project focused on young immigrants. I will pay special attention to the historical bilingualism characterising Barcelona.