{"id":90633,"date":"2025-10-19T13:05:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-19T13:05:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/90633\/"},"modified":"2025-10-19T13:05:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T13:05:07","slug":"an-irishman-in-barcelona-the-irish-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/90633\/","title":{"rendered":"An Irishman in Barcelona \u2013 The Irish Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

Castleknock-born Daragh McCarthy had a yearning for travel<\/a> in the years after graduating from Waterford Institute of Technology and UCD. It took him to the southern hemisphere, including a three year stint working in New Zealand<\/a>. <\/p>\n

When he arrived back in Dublin<\/a> in 2018, he encountered a challenging rental market<\/a> and decided to take his chances somewhere else<\/a> in Europe. Barcelona, which he had visited briefly, seemed an attractive choice and he secured a position in Google, later moving to Gartner, before joining his current employer, Benevity, a software firm that facilitates companies and their employees in donating to and volunteering for non-profits. <\/p>\n

McCarthy has found Barcelona a welcoming city and feels at home there. Language wasn\u2019t a barrier, either, while he developed his linguistic skills. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an easy city to settle into and there\u2019s a large expat community from all over the world. The perception is that Barcelona is a big city, and it certainly is in population terms (around 1.7 million people live in the metropolitan area) but it is also quite concentrated. Many of the building are seven storeys high so it doesn\u2019t have the sprawl of Dublin. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018You\u2019d have to have been a turkey not to have made money in venture capital in 1997\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

It\u2019s easy to navigate too with good metro, bus and tram systems.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Barcelona you can get by without much Spanish when you first arrive and I know people who have been here for over 10 years and still don\u2019t speak a word, but it really helps if you can develop your proficiency as you go along, as it opens up a whole new world.<\/p>\n

\u201cRents have gone up significantly and availability has gone down even in the time that I have been here. Tourism has been growing steadily in recent years and, since the pandemic, you\u2019ve had a surge in people who want to live here for a year. <\/p>\n

\u201cA digital visa system, similar to the one that has been operating in Portugal for many years, has seen a wave of people coming from the United States and Australia, among other places.\u201d <\/p>\n

Over-tourism has become an issue and there have been isolated incidents of open hostility to visitors reported in the media, but McCarthy says he has not come across widespread antipathy to tourists in the city. <\/p>\n

Nonetheless, there has been a concerted attempt in recent times by the city authorities to reduce the number of short-term rentals on platforms such as Airbnb. Thousands of non-licensed rental properties have been removed from the market and this summer, Barcelona\u2019s mayor, Jaume Collboni, announced that, from November 2028, tourist-use apartments won\u2019t be allowed within the metropolitan area. <\/p>\n

While rents have increased, they definitely remain more affordable than Dublin and the cost of living is generally cheaper as wages are lower. \u201cSome cafes have opened up targeting the tourist and short-stay markets and they are charging \u20ac3.50 for a latte. That\u2019s extortionate. In a local cafe, you\u2019d pay just \u20ac1.50 for the same thing,\u201d McCarthy says. <\/p>\n

[\u00a0\u2018Everyone gets the same amount of profit share whether you\u2019re the kitchen steward or the CEO\u2019Opens in new window<\/a>\u00a0]<\/p>\n

Barcelona\u2019s favourable climate facilitates outdoor dining for most of the year, and McCarthy enjoys spending time on the terraces of the city\u2019s tapas bars, soaking up the atmosphere with friends in the warm evenings. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a lot of street parties, festival and parades from April through to September. The city also has a really vibrant arts scene, and you can really feel that culture when you talk to local people here who are very artistic in nature. Catalonia has so much to offer and is one of the most beautiful places in Europe. An hour\u2019s journey gets you amazing beaches, forests and mountains.\u201d <\/p>\n

McCarthy makes the 15-minute commute to work by metro every day from the suburbs into Benevity\u2019s city centre offices. His position as growth marketing manager involves managing the organisation\u2019s paid digital advertising activities across the globe. The 1,000 strong Canadian-owned multinational firm helps its clients, mainly large corporates, to run their social impact programmes through specialist software that it licenses. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe culture here is the strongest of all the companies I\u2019ve worked for. Our employees also advocate for a lot of the causes that are helped by our clients. People are very active in volunteering. It\u2019s nice to work for an organisation whose north star is to make the world a better place.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the few downsides of living in southern Europe is the intense heat in the summer months, he says, with some very high temperatures. But it is a price McCarthy is willing to pay for a city he truly loves.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are times when I\u2019ve considered moving to a new city just to get a change of scene. I\u2019ve compared Barcelona to other cities and, for me, nothing has ever stacked up as being as good as what I have here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Castleknock-born Daragh McCarthy had a yearning for travel in the years after graduating from Waterford Institute of Technology…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90634,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60,10970,27079,1962],"class_list":{"0":"post-90633","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-ie","10":"tag-ireland","11":"tag-irish-abroad","12":"tag-wild-geese","13":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=90633"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90633\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=90633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=90633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=90633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}