ABSTRACT
The city of Barcelona is the capital of the Autonomous Community Catalonia that is made up of four provinces and forty-one districts. The city is also the capital of Barcelona province. The local government of the Barcelona city-region has two pillars: (1) the municipality and (2) the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB). The Barcelona Metropolitan Area is supposed to be replaced as a whole by a 'vegueria', the pre-Bourbonic model of Catalonian territorial division. The Region of Barcelona is, just like the rest of Western Europe, undergoing an ageing process of the population. In Barcelona and the surrounding areas, the proportion of elderly people is higher than the proportion of young people. Barcelona and the region have a relatively high economic growth rate. In 2008, about 10 " of the Barcelona wage earners worked in manufacturing; the largest manufacturing sectors were motor vehicles, chemical industry and paper and food production.
