Sabadell

Sabadell is a city and municipality in Catalonia, Spain, about 20 km north of Barcelona on the River Ripoll. It is one of the two capitals of the comarca of Vallès Occidental, a role it shares with its long-standing rival Terrassa, and with 224,589 residents in 2025 it is the fifth-largest city in Catalonia. A Roman-era village called Arraona and the medieval village of Sabadell, which had about 600 inhabitants in 1378, grew into a wool-producing town; the railway arrived in 1856 and in 1877 the town was given the title of city. Its textile mills made it the most important wool city in Spain, nicknamed the Catalan Manchester, and many of those mills are now homes and offices. Modernista buildings such as Hotel Suís, the Caixa d'Estalvis and the Torre de l'Aigua date from the early twentieth century. Today the economy is mainly commercial and industrial, anchored by Banco Sabadell, and the city is linked by the C-58 and AP-7 motorways and two railway lines.