The 2030 Barcelona Healthy and Sustainable Food Strategy is intended to transform the city’s current food systems into more sustainable ones. As an original signatory of the 2015 Milan Urban Food Policy Pact, Barcelona fosters initiatives that promote local and organic food; create shorter, fairer and more balanced food chains; and deliver healthy, sustainable food for all. The city’s network of markets is one of the municipal instruments for implementing this strategy. Barcelona’s 39 public markets, under the umbrella of the Institut Municipal de Mercats de Barcelona (IMMB), are considered the cornerstone of the city’s food system and key components of the socio-economic fabric of its neighborhoods. The aim of this project is to assess how this strategy is affecting the food sustainability of municipal markets, using the Sant Antoni market and its Comerç Verd (Green Business) initiative as case study. Our analysis, using the 9 goals mentioned in the Strategy as a reference, will take into account the four dimensions of food sustainability: environmental, social, economic and food security and nutrition. We expect to find evidence of the level of transformation occurred in the city’s markets due to the strategy’s new approach to food systems.

Xavier Salvadó Granel
Universitat Rovira i Virgili, PhD Program “City, Territory and Sustainable Planning”
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