Vaccination checks in Barcelona

That's an excellent question indeed --to which I am afraid I can't be of much assistance this time over, sorry!-- and I hope some non-EU residents visiting can add their experiences.

Across all towns and cities in Catalonia, and since Dec 3rd, to access restaurants, bars, gymnasiums and other establishments -a list which currently does NOT include shops or museums!- one needs now to show the "COVID passport", a certificate issued by the Health authorities certifying you have been vaccinated or have had a negative PCR within the last 72h. If you're sitting on the terrace of the bar/restaurant you do not need to present this document.

This document can be either printed on paper or downloaded on one's phone, as 90% of the residents do for convenience, and it's to be shown when entering one of these premises. On the other side, the employees of these premises check the validity of the document on-the-spot with an app that has been provided by the Health Dept. They scan the QR Code present in the document which tells them whether it's valid or not.

As per the enforcement of this new procedure, it's something very new and one can still find some laxity in some smaller restaurants but it seems there are going to be random checks by the police at the restaurants so I would expect the enforcement is going to get stricter within the coming days/weeks. Having said that, and knowing the idiosyncrasy of fellow Catalans regarding COVID matters, I am pretty sure it won't be necessary and that most restaurants will end up enforcing this soon enough. I can't really see police spot-checking whether patrons have their certificates, that'd be raising a lot of eyebrows.

This requirement is standard now in many regions of the European Union and the more contagions the more regions that add this requirement. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_21_1187

Any EU resident (note I said "resident", it doesn't matter one's nationality) can download this "passport" and it's valid across the whole European Union and this includes non-EU nationals legally residing in any of the EU member countries.

And this is where I can't help you anymore... because I am not sure how it works in practice for non-EU residents as you can't access to download this passport. Still, it obviously HAS TO BE a procedure in place, otherwise, non-EU residents would not be allowed to fly in. What I was able to stumble upon is this https://certificatproves.catsalut.gencat.cat/#/ from the Health Dept. of the Government of Catalonia (choose the English version on the right upper corner) which says:

Download your Negative COVID-19 test certificate, valid in the European Union. This certifies that you have had a COVID-19 test performed within the last 72 hours (in the case of a PCR test) or in the last 48 hours (in the case of a rapid antigen test) and that the result was negative.

Choose the tab "DNI, NIE or Passport", try it and let us know how it works for US residents.

Update: some US colleagues told me that they've been moving around in restaurants without any problem just showing their CDC card and a photo ID ... I dunno, that's what they said :)

By the way, the initial debut of this new requirement a couple of weeks ago caused a bit of a fiasco here in Catalonia because the app wasn't clear enough on the procedure and people didn't realize you can physically download a PDF of the passport on your phone instead of continuously requiring the central servers to re-create the document every time you need to present this COVID passport. This caused some overloads at certain moments and the app wasn't responsive.

There's an option that says "Download your certificate" (or something like that, I can't remember), USE IT so your phone doesn't need to be dependent on the central servers... or have it printed on paper.

Ahhh, here this should help (or not!): https://canalsalut.gencat.cat/ca/salut-a-z/c/coronavirus-2019-ncov/ciutadania/certificat-covid-digital-ue/preguntes/index.html#googtrans(ca|en)

That was exactly what I was looking for! It says:

They [tourists] must present an identification document and the certificate accrediting the vaccination of their country or the negative PCR test or negative TAR. In short, the same documents they used to enter Catalonia.

Thanks for your help!

Cheers,
Steve

I saw a few posts in Tripadvisor that others were using the spth QR code and it worked for them.

Might be worth to try for folks that are there now visiting.