Persianes Lliures, Murs Lliures and Wallspot: how painting Barcelona’s walls became legal

Barcelona currently has 19 free-use walls where anyone can paint without asking permission, without booking a slot and without submitting a proposal. In 2005 a municipal by-law banned it outright, with fines of 600 to 3,000 euros. This page explains how the city got from one to the other over fourteen years, through three successive platforms: Persianes Lliures, Murs Lliures and Wallspot.

On this page: the starting point · Persianes Lliures · Murs Lliures · Wallspot · Murs Oberts · where to paint today · everything that was done · the map · how it applies to another town

Fourteen years in one table

The whole process comes down to a single thing: the gradual disappearance of the paperwork. This is the map of what the rest of the page explains.

The path, in four steps

Each phase solves the problem the previous one left open.

The history of Barcelona’s legal wallsFull talk at the Centre Cultural Albareda (2018) · 56 min

The starting point: a ban with no alternative (2005-2010)

Barcelona’s by-law on measures to promote and guarantee civic coexistence in public space was approved in 2005 and came into force in early 2006. It banned painting in public space and set fines of 600 to 3,000 euros ▶ min 4:35.

The ban was comprehensive, but it came with no alternative. That had three effects on the practice ▶ min 2:45:

1. Geographic displacement. Anyone who wanted to paint properly went out to the dry riverbeds and industrial estates of neighbouring towns — Sant Boi, Sant Just: places where you bother nobody, but where nobody sees you either.
2. Time displacement. Those who could not travel painted close to home, at night and fast.
3. Worse visible results. Less time and more risk means a less worked piece. The ban did not reduce painting: it lowered its average quality.

A news report from those years put it the same way: «since Barcelona banned painting in the street, the people who do it had moved away» ▶ TV3.

The problem was not the willingness to paint, but that no space existed where it could be done legally.

Phase 12010-2012Persianes Lliures

What it was

An exchange system between shopkeepers and urban artists. The shop owner offered up the shutter of their business; an artist painted it for free, with whatever they wanted and with no aesthetic brief. The shop got a shutter in good condition and free of tags; the artist got a highly visible surface to paint on in daylight, with time and no risk of a fine.

Rebobinart acted as the intermediary and provided the system: a website where shopkeepers registered their shutter and where artists could see which ones were available, pick one and download the permit signed by the owner before turning up. Nobody was paid: not the artist, not the shop, not the organisation.

The visible result was a street that kept changing: in the Guinardó neighbourhood, the shutters on the scheme were repainted every month ▶ TV, 2010. Television described it as «an exchange of favours between shopkeepers and graffiti writers» ▶ TV, Guinardó.

It worked in Horta-Guinardó, grew to 77 shutters, and had a single-day mass edition in Malasaña (Madrid). It was also applied outside retail: municipal markets, social centres, a healthcare facility and a prison.

The problem it solved: no legal surface was available

It started from a domestic fact —one of the founders painted graffiti and was piling up fines he could not pay— and a practical question: if the wall is private and the owner agrees, what is stopping us? El Periódico covered the origin story in 2024.

Shop shutters met three useful conditions: they are private, they are highly visible, and they were in poor shape, so the shopkeeper got something out of it.

What it proved

• Demand on both sides. From the initial 22 shutters ▶ min 9:03 it grew to 77 ▶ min 10:08, and within a few months there was no need to go door to door: the shopkeepers were calling.
• It could scale to another city. On 6 February 2011, in Malasaña and together with the local paper Somos Malasaña, around 140 shutters offered by 72 shops were painted in a single day by more than a hundred artists (El País), documented one by one. Artists came from London and Bristol ▶ min 10:33, and the Madrid festival Pinta Malasaña acknowledges it as its origin.
• That a well-documented private permit functionally replaces an administrative one… as long as the administration does not legislate against it.

It also made clear that opening up a free space has a cost for somebody: there were people making a living painting shop shutters, and part of the scene responded by painting over the work at night ▶ min 11:03.

Pau Garcia on Persianes LliuresHow it all started, first-hand · 19 min

Why it ended

In 2011 the city’s Urban Landscape Institute brought shutters inside the definition of the public façade. The new conditions ▶ min 12:59: only 15 % of the surface could be freely painted, the rest had to match the neighbourhood’s colour range, a six-month procedure was required, and the fine now extended to the shop that allowed it.

The lesson carried into the next phase: exploiting a gap in a by-law works once. To make it last, the permission had to be public, explicit and immediate.

The interlude that refined the method (2011-2012)

Activity shifted to spaces where permission was not the obstacle: a shelter for homeless people, the Castelldefels market, the perimeter wall of a healthcare facility in Sant Boi —300 metres, painted with neighbours and service users before demolition—, the P-Art festival ▶ TV and the Quatre Camins prison: «the exact opposite of a free wall; it was a closed wall» ▶ min 15:26.

These projects did not solve the legal problem, but they contributed what would later be half the model: the intervention is not made by an artist alone; it is made with the community that uses the space.

Phase 22012-2016Murs Lliures

What it was

A network of municipal walls made available by the City Council so they could be painted legally, managed by Rebobinart. The change from the shutters is one of ownership: these are no longer private walls but public space opened up by agreement with the district.

How it worked, for anyone who wanted to paint:

1. You registered on the website —and, from 2014, on the mobile app.
2. You chose which wall and which day.
3. You downloaded the permit instantly, with no sketch or proposal to submit.
4. You went and painted, in daylight and with the permit on you.
5. You photographed the piece and uploaded it: each wall built up its own record of interventions.

The works were ephemeral and rotating: after a while, the wall opened up again. There was no filter —not of quality, not of track record, not of content: a veteran writer, an illustrator who had never painted outdoors or a neighbour could all use it.

It began with a single wall —the Tres Xemeneies gardens, on 28 October 2012— and spread to Sant Martí and Sant Andreu, with close to 600 registered artists in the first year alone.

The problem it solved: opening up public space without anyone taking it over

In January 2012 the association was set up to negotiate the handover. Roger Pous drafted its terms and describes the negotiation: one year, four consecutive levels —mayor’s office, district, neighbourhood technical staff and the administrative officers—, each with the power to block it. The initial obstacle was not about planning but about definitions: the first discussion was whether graffiti is art at all ▶ min 3:10.

Roger Pous on negotiating with the City CouncilFour levels, one year and the permit with no sketch · 10 min

The five design decisions

1. Whoever manages the wall does not paint on it ▶ min 0:40. Other collectives had obtained legal walls elsewhere, and the usual pattern was that they became that collective’s wall. «Since we did not want to paint, we wanted to open the walls to everyone.» It had a cost: the organisation sat between two camps —too much of an outsider for the scene, too much of a writer for the administration— ▶ min 2:24.

2. No quality or track-record filter. This is the decision that widened the user base well beyond graffiti, and the one the artistic direction would later defend through Kant: if there is no universal canon of beauty, nobody can decide who deserves a wall ▶ min 38:53.

3. Immediate permit, no sketch ▶ min 6:43. The existing municipal permit required a sketch of the work and a justification, and took weeks or months: incompatible with the practice, and a form of prior content control.

4. Systematic documentation. Visibility for an ephemeral work, traceability for the administration.

5. Social groundwork before any wall ▶ min 7:33. Three or four hundred meetings in a year with residents’ associations, local organisations and schools ▶ min 37:17. A free wall without the neighbourhood behind it becomes a local conflict at the first complaint.

Outcome

On 28 October 2012 Barcelona’s first legal wall opened: «just one wall, but a legendary one» ▶ min 8:29. Television was there ▶ min 1:15:

It democratises art. It makes no difference whether you are Dalí or you or me. There is no better gallery than a city.Television report, 28 October 2012

«There is no better gallery than a city»Television report from the day the first wall opened, 28.10.2012

There were around 600 registered writers, and the City Council attached an explicit condition: it was a pilot project and, if it worked, expanding it would be considered ▶ min 1:53. The next day, La Vanguardia ran the headline «Graffiti with permission». That same year the project was recognised at the BDigital Innovation Awards, in the innovative ideas and pilot projects category ▶ video.

The pilot expanded to Sant Martí in 2013, where the available space allowed it to move much faster ▶ min 8:41, and to Sant Andreu in 2017.

The main effect was on who took part: people who had never painted outdoors started doing it. Visual artist Enric Font explained it in 2014 ▶ min 1:32:

I had never painted in the street until I started going through the app.Enric Font, visual artist

More in his interview and in Núria Toll’s. Many more women also came in. The assessment at the time was cautious: «it is not an easy city… but it is all a process» ▶ min 0:56. In 2015 the project received Barcelona Activa’s Social Entrepreneurship Award ▶ TV2, min 2:45.

Phase 32016-2024Wallspot

What it was

The same system turned into an international platform. Wallspot was not a single-city project: it was the tool that let any wall owner —a city council, a company, an organisation, in any country— make it publicly available, and let any registered artist use it.

1. The owner registered the wall, with its conditions of use.
2. The artist booked it and obtained a licence of up to three days.
3. They painted, and uploaded a photograph of the work.
4. Each wall had its own public geolocated gallery, with every layer painted over the years.

It was, at once, a permit management system and an archive: the memory of an art form that by definition disappears. Photographers had a role of their own, not an ancillary one.

• 106walls in 22 cities
• 33,000documented interventions
• 22,000registered users
• 12Wall Labs

The problem it solved: the model worked in one city and was not exportable

Murs Lliures was a local agreement with permits handled manually. It had to become infrastructure. Wallspot was born in October 2016, designed by Huaman Studio; Domestika called it «the Airbnb of urban art» —a comparison the founders had already used back in 2010 for the shutters ▶ min 9:47— and in February 2017 VICE gave it its international launch.

The underlying change: permission stops being requested

Under Murs Lliures, each intervention was authorised one by one: the wall was available, but the artist requested a permit for a specific day. With Wallspot the process on the website is practically the same, and yet it comes to be called something else ▶ min 5:26:

Before, artists asked for permission on the website; now they make a booking on the website. Painting the city of Barcelona is legal in certain spaces, but now we call it a booking.Marc Garcia, Centre Cultural Albareda, 2018

It is a change of vocabulary, and that is precisely why it matters: booking only makes sense once the space is already designated for that purpose. Nobody asks permission to use a municipal tennis court; they book an hour. Once the wall stops being an exception authorised case by case and becomes a standing facility, the process stops being an authorisation and becomes scheduling.

The clearest image of it came in December 2016, painting the inner walls of the Sant Andreu football ground ▶ min 0:38:

We always say this is the bike lane. We have built the bike lane of art. Anyone can come here and paint whatever they want. These spaces may last a week, a month or a year, but you know your work will eventually disappear.Marc Garcia, December 2016

«We have built the bike lane of art»The walls at the Sant Andreu ground, December 2016

Both halves of the sentence are the whole model: a bike lane is always there, it does not assess who rides on it, and what happens on it does not stay.

Programming the wall, not just opening it

An open wall with no programming tends towards saturation and repetition. From December 2018 the system was complemented with four formats:

The platform’s own data produced a finding that opened up a separate strand of work: 96 % of those booking a wall were men. Womart came out of that.

The model was exported to Madrid (2020, Moratalaz and Puente de Vallecas) and Terrassa (2021), and received the Catalan Government’s Civic Award (2018), a grant from the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (2019) and recognition from Spain’s Ministry of Culture (2022). In 2018 there was a retrospective exhibition at the Centre Cultural Albareda —the source of the talk that documents this article— and another at Montana Gallery.

The model’s two limits

1. Financial and technical. A platform with an app, a database and a gallery carries permanent maintenance costs out of all proportion to the size of the sector.
2. Structural. A free wall provides space, permission and visibility, but no fees. Artists raised that objection from day one and they were right: working for free is sustainable for an experimental space, not as a professional relationship. The answer to that limit is not the free wall but paid commissioned work.

Phase 42023-todayMurs Oberts

In April 2023 the Barcelona Institute of Culture launched Murs Oberts: a municipal network of free-use walls managed directly by the City Council. It started with 14 walls; today there are 19.

In September 2024 Wallspot closed: the technology costs were no longer sustainable, the city already had its own tool and the sector had shifted towards commissioned murals and festivals. It was covered by betevé, El Periódico and La Vanguardia.

What is gained and what is lost

Stability is gained. The walls no longer depend on an agreement or on one organisation staying afloat: they are an ordinary municipal facility, the way a skatepark is.

The record is lost. And that can be quantified: over twelve years, Wallspot documented 33,000 interventions with authorship and date. Since 2023, none are documented. Today there is no way to know how many works have been painted on Barcelona’s walls, who made them, or what was on that wall before. The city has gained the infrastructure and lost the memory of what happens on it.

Everything that was done

Twelve years left more than seventy documented actions. This is the full record, grouped by programme: each entry links to its own page with photos, artists and context.

Where you can legally paint in Barcelona right now

These are the 19 Murs Oberts in the municipal network, by district, as listed today in the Institut de Cultura catalogue. No permit or booking needed. Each wall’s address, photo, directions and the rules are on the practical page: Legal graffiti walls in Barcelona: where to paint today.

• Ciutat Vella (3): Camp de futbol Parc de la Catalana · Passeig de Circumval∙lació · Plaça de Terenci Moix
• Gràcia (3): Jardins de Caterina Albert · Jardins de Manuel Torrente · Travessera de Gràcia 104
• Horta-Guinardó (1): Pas soterrat Velòdrom Horta
• Les Corts (1): Jardins Àurea Cuadrado (General Batet amb Manuel Azaña)
• Nou Barris (1): Ronda de la Guineueta Vella 51
• Sant Andreu (4): Basconia amb Riera Sant Andreu · Estadella amb Santander · Exterior Nau Bostik · Skate Park Baró de Viver
• Sant Martí (2): Aragó amb Bilbao · Doctor Trueta amb Àlaba
• Sants-Montjuïc (4): Jardins Walter Benjamin · Jardins de les Tres Xemeneies · Metal·lúrgia amb Motors · carrer Papin

See all 19 walls with map and photos →

Source: Institut de Cultura de Barcelona (Murs Oberts). Data updated on 12/10/2026.

Map of the 19 walls

Each point is a City Council open wall. Click it for the address and to open it on a map.

We draw this map ourselves from the Barcelona Institute of Culture’s public data: their own page cannot be embedded.

How this applies to another town or city

The model is transferable, and it is what we design for local authorities and institutions. Six minimum components:

1. An inventory of surfaces in municipal ownership, or private with consent: perimeter walls, hoardings, underpasses, sports facilities, vacant plots.
2. A short, written régime of use: what is allowed, what is not, and who is responsible for what.
3. Zero or immediate paperwork. Anything that takes more than a few days switches off real use of the space.
4. No prior content control, with limits set by general law rather than by aesthetic judgement.
5. Prior agreement with the neighbourhood, its organisations and local facilities.
6. Documentation and upkeep: who photographs, who cleans and how often the space reopens.

To explore how it would work in your municipality, see murals for institutions and public art.

The outcome: from exception to ordinary public provision

In fourteen years the city has gone from banning to tolerating, from tolerating to authorising, and from authorising to providing. The walls are no longer an exception somebody has to defend every year: they are part of Barcelona’s ordinary public provision, like a football pitch or a tennis court. That was the goal, and it is the reason the project that pushed for it was no longer needed.

Frequently asked questions

Where can you legally paint in Barcelona?

On the 19 walls in the City Council’s Murs Oberts network, with no permit or booking, respecting its code of conduct. The list is on this page.

Do I need to ask permission or book a slot?

No. Until 2024 you had to book the wall on the platform; now you just turn up.

What happened to the works documented on Wallspot?

The platform closed in September 2024 and the public gallery is no longer accessible. The projects produced by Rebobinart are kept on this website.

Can my municipality have free-use walls?

Yes. The section above sets out the six components. It is one of the services we provide to public authorities.

Does Rebobinart still manage free walls?

No. They have been managed directly by the City Council since 2023. Rebobinart produces murals, community urban art and festivals.

Video archive

• 2018 · 56 minThe history of Barcelona’s legal walls (full talk)
• 2018 · 19 minPau Garcia — Persianes Lliures
• 2018 · 10 minRoger Pous — Murs Lliures
• TV · 2010Persianes Lliures
• TV · 2010Persianes Lliures brings together writers and shopkeepers in the Guinardó
• TV · 2011P-Art, a car park in Les Corts
• 2012BDigital Innovation Awards
• TV · 28.10.2012Opening of the first legal wall
• TV3«Murs lliures» to paint on
• 2014Launch presentation of the Murs Lliures app
• TV · 2014The app goes live
• TV2 · 2015«Tinc una idea» — Barcelona Activa Social Entrepreneurship
• TV · 2016The walls made available in Sant Martí
• TV · 12.2016The Sant Andreu ground and «the bike lane of art»