What is no longer here
Three corrections, because older accounts offer all three as reasons to visit.
- The killer whale. Barcelona's orca, Ulisses, was transferred to San Diego in 1994. Any account presenting an orca as an attraction is more than thirty years out of date.
- The dolphins. The last three — Blau, Tumay and Nuik — were flown to a zoological park in Athens in July 2020, two others having gone to Valencia in 2016. Barcelona declared itself free of captive cetaceans, and the dolphinarium is gone: the old Aquarama site has been rebuilt as a temporary reserve for animals displaced by works elsewhere in the park.
- Snowflake. The albino gorilla, Floquet de Neu, was the zoo's emblem for nearly four decades. He was taken from Equatorial Guinea in 1966, after the rest of his group was killed, and died on 24 November 2003, aged about forty, of a skin cancer linked to his albinism. His remains went to scientific research rather than to taxidermy — a blood sample was later used to sequence his genome, which established that his parents were closely related — and there is no stuffed specimen and no permanent memorial on display. His descendants are among the gorillas here.
What the zoo is becoming
In May 2019 the city approved both a citizens' initiative on how animals are kept here and the zoo's own strategic plan, and together they commit it to a different model.
- Fewer species, chosen for conservation value rather than display.
- Captive breeding only where there is a reintroduction plan for the species concerned.
- Elephants and dolphins to disappear as the present animals die or move to sanctuaries.
- Taking in confiscated and rescued animals, and an end to killing animals for collection-management reasons.
- An ethics and scientific committee assessing each species plan.
Three new spaces were announced in October 2025 for the following five years: an interactive observatory on the evolution of species, an area built around island ecosystems and local reintroduction work, and one on the Mediterranean and its deltas. The zoo stays open throughout and is not moving or closing, though staff and some political parties have argued the plan amounts to a slow closure — a view worth knowing about and not worth adjudicating here.
What it means in practice for a visitor: fewer animals than an older account promises, more explanation, and a site partly under construction for several years.
What is worth seeing
The zoo's genuine distinction is in breeding programmes for species in real trouble, which is less photogenic than an orca and more defensible.
- The Mallorcan midwife toad, found in a single mountain range on Mallorca and thought extinct until 1980, has been bred here as part of the programme that returned it to the wild. It is the best thing in the zoo and it is a small brown toad.
- The Mhorr gazelle, extinct in the wild, survives through a European breeding network in which Barcelona has played a part.
- Iberian wolves, Eurasian otters and the Pitiusan wall lizard of the Balearics are the other conservation stories.
- Gorillas remain the headline primates, with gibbons and mangabeys.
- Among the larger animals a visitor will find pygmy hippopotamus, giant anteater, red panda and a substantial collection of herons, egrets and storks that nest freely in the park.
An immersive exhibit on biodiversity opened in 2025. The reptile house is a reliable half-hour with children.
The park around it
The Parc de la Ciutadella is worth as much time as the zoo. It was laid out on the site of the citadel built to hold the city down after 1714 and demolished in the 1860s, and it was the site of the 1888 Universal Exhibition, which is why it contains:
- The Parlament de Catalunya, in the citadel's former arsenal. This is where the Catalan parliament sits — not on the Plaça de Sant Jaume, where older accounts put it.
- The Castell dels Tres Dragons, Domènech i Montaner's brick exhibition café of 1888, an early landmark of Modernisme.
- The Cascada, a monumental waterfall on which the young Gaudí worked as a student assistant.
- The Hivernacle and Umbracle, a glasshouse and a slatted shade house, both from the exhibition and both free to walk through.
- The Arc de Triomf at the far end, which was the exhibition's gateway.
Practicalities
Entry is charged and children under three go free. Winter hours are considerably shorter than summer ones, and the ticket office shuts before the gates. Metro to Ciutadella-Vila Olímpica, Arc de Triomf or Barceloneta.
One more correction worth making: a marine zoo at the Fòrum, promised since the early 2000s and sometimes still mentioned, was abandoned. Foundations were laid in 2007 and the project was dropped about four years later. The unfinished platform is now the subject of a separate and contested plan to complete the city's seafront.
General practicalities for the city are on the Barcelona page.