The city government of Barcelona has unveiled a blunt public awareness campaign titled 'Sin vergüenza' to target public urination, street drinking, and littering among residents and tourists.

Direct Messaging

The campaign uses explicit imagery and slogans like 'Shame on you' to target behaviors such as public urination and street drinking.

Civic Ordinance Enforcement

The initiative aims to reinforce the updated Civic Ordinance, granting the city greater power to fine offenders for public order violations.

Multilingual Outreach

Materials are produced in Catalan, Spanish, and English to ensure the message reaches both locals and the city's 12 million annual tourists.

Barcelona's city government on March 14, 2026, launched a blunt public awareness campaign against anti-social behavior, using the slogan "Sin vergüenza" — "Shameless" — to target residents and tourists who urinate in the street, hold impromptu drinking gatherings, and fail to respect public spaces. The campaign, backed by Mayor Jaume Collboni's administration, features large-format posters, banners, and short video ads deployed across the city, particularly in high-incidence areas. One of the campaign's direct slogans reads "Sin vergüenza. No mees en la calle" in Spanish and "Shame on you. Don't pee in the street" in English. The messaging is deliberately confrontational, pairing explicit imagery — people urinating in streets, scenes of street drinking — with sharp, moralistic language designed to provoke an immediate reaction.

The campaign is segmented by district, with messages tailored to the specific problems most common in each area, and targets both local residents and the city's large tourist population. Materials appear in Catalan, Spanish, and English to maximize reach across different audiences. According to reporting by La Vanguardia and 20 Minutos, the ads are described as both forceful and pedagogical in intent, aiming not only to shame offenders but to reinforce awareness of the rules governing public space. The 10-second video spots, banners, and large-format posters form a coordinated visual push across neighborhoods where incivismo has been most frequently reported.

The campaign follows the Barcelona city council's update last year of its Civic Ordinance — known in Spanish as the Ordenanza de Convivencia — which expanded the city's powers to impose fines for anti-social behavior. The ordinance update was intended to give authorities stronger legal tools to address persistent complaints about the degradation of public spaces, an issue that has grown alongside Barcelona's status as one of Europe's most visited cities. The tension between mass tourism and quality of life for residents has been a recurring political and social debate in Barcelona for several years.

The "Sin vergüenza" campaign represents the communications arm of that updated legal framework, translating increased sanctioning power into a visible public message. By deploying explicit imagery rather than abstract warnings, the city is signaling a shift toward more direct engagement with the behaviors it wants to curb. The initiative reflects a broader effort by the Collboni administration to manage public space in a city that, according to the INE, had a population of 1,731,649 inhabitants as of 2025, while simultaneously hosting millions of visitors each year. Whether the campaign succeeds in changing behavior or primarily serves as a political statement of intent remains, according to the source articles, an open question.