Where Barna stands among the big clubs of Catalan basketball

Barna's pyramid, from the inside

The club's official record at basquetcatala.cat shows more than 34 teams, from Pre-Mini (8-9 years old) up to senior, with parallel girls' and boys' structures and, in most age groups, up to three levels (A, B and often a third development side). Both senior sections — women's and men's — have a first team and a reserve, and both first teams play in the Super Copa FCBQ, the top regional division in Catalonia.

The four benchmark clubs

Among the Catalan clubs with a first team in the ACB or the Liga Femenina Endesa, the usual pattern is that the youth section and the senior first team are not the same organisation.

• FC Barcelona — 10 league teams in Catalonia, all boys', from Mini to Júnior, with no Pre-Mini. Right now it has no girls' youth team of its own: the Barça CBS project, with CB Santfeliuenc, played in the Liga F Endesa until it was closed for financial reasons at the end of the 2024-25 season. Their men's reserve team plays in the Copa Catalunya, not the Super Copa; the first team plays in the ACB.
• Joventut Badalona (la Penya) — the largest youth section in Catalonia: 53 teams, from Pre-Mini to Júnior, for both girls and boys. No senior team of its own in this organisation, women's or men's: anyone who makes it to the top leaves the club.
• Bàsquet Manresa — in fact two different clubs depending on gender: the boys' youth section (17 teams, no senior side) and Manresa CBF for women, a separate organisation with its own board, budget and brand, with a senior team in Liga Femenina 2, the national league.
• Fundació Bàsquet Girona — 23 teams, from Pre-Mini to Júnior, for both girls and boys, chaired by Marc Gasol. It has no senior team of its own either, in either gender: the first team plays in the Liga Endesa, outside this record.

And what if your child wants to start at Barça?

FC Barcelona's basketball school takes children from 4 to 12, but the club's federation record — 10 teams, all boys', from Mini to Júnior — has no Pre-Mini team at all, the 7-8 age group. A child who starts there therefore has no league team to move up to inside the same organisation when they reach that age. At CB Grup Barna there is a team at every age group from 4 onwards — Escoleta, Premini, Mini and all the rest — for both girls and boys, with no gap and no need to change club along the way.

For a girl, the same question runs deeper still: today FC Barcelona has no girls' youth team of its own (the Barça CBS project closed in 2025), while Grup Barna has 8 girls' league teams, with the same budget and the same number of teams as the boys' side.

And among Barcelona's neighbourhood clubs?

Beyond the four big clubs above, Barna also compares with the other neighbourhood basketball clubs in the city. Among those that publish their number of teams, Grup Barna leads:

Teams per club, Barcelona neighbourhoods

Club	Neighbourhood	Teams	Players
CB Grup Barna	El Clot	34+	~450
CB Roser	Fort Pienc	33	—
CB Pedagogium	Gràcia	17	~220

Among these clubs, Barna is also a reference point for inclusive basketball: the Barna Màgics play in the ACELL league on equal terms with every other team, and their model inspired the EQUALS category at the 3x3 Westfield Glòries tournament, since taken up by other Catalan clubs.

At the big clubs, the youth section and the first team are almost never the same organisation. At Barna they are: the same player who joins the Escoleta at four can end up playing in the Super Copa without ever changing shirt.

What makes us different

Of the clubs analysed, Grup Barna is the only one with two senior teams — a first team and a reserve — for both women and men at once, inside the same organisation that runs the whole development pyramid, with both playing in the Super Copa FCBQ. We are not the club with the most teams in Catalonia — la Penya has 53 — nor the best known. We are, though, one of the few where developing players and competing at the top level happen at the same club, without ever breaking the thread, for both women and men.

For the detail on women's basketball specifically — the Barna Method, the figures and the players who came through — see Women's basketball. For the full analysis of the FCBQ age-group system, read the article on the blog. And to understand why the club develops before it competes — with the scientific evidence and the same path Marc Gasol took in Girona — see Barna's development model.

Digital community: where Barna stands on Instagram

League teams tell you the size of the structure; Instagram followers tell you the size of the community. Comparing @cbgrupbarna (7,096 followers, August 2026) with the 22 verified development clubs in Catalonia and Spain — counted account by account, not through third-party indexes — Barna comes 6th in this benchmark and 1st in the city of Barcelona, ahead of historic clubs such as Laietà and SESE.

Source: public Instagram profiles (92 accounts reviewed, additions verified on 16/08/2026) and FCBQ club records, 2026-27 season (23 records). Compiled by CB Grup Barna's marketing department.

The second reading is more revealing than the ranking: cross-referencing followers and league teams, Barna is the third largest development structure of the 13 compared — only Boet Maresme and UE Mataró are bigger — and the only one of the three with no team in the national FEB divisions to pull it up. We convert 222 followers per team, below the women's-only specialists (Sant Adrià, 532; Almeda, 455) but above any club with a structure the same size as ours or larger.

Some of the benchmark clubs in this field — Penya, Barça, Girona, Manresa — are in fact two or three separate federated organisations with separate accounts (professional company + foundation + youth section): they are not added together as if they were one, so as not to inflate the ranking. Barna gets there with one organisation, one brand and one account.

In the neighbourhood: Barna and Club Esportiu Diagonal Mar

Beyond the city benchmark there is a closer comparison: Club Esportiu Diagonal Mar, a multi-sport club in Sant Martí and Poblenou, is Barna's most direct neighbourhood rival for local families. Where things stand:

Public data: each club's Instagram profile (August 2026) and their respective official websites. Compiled by CB Grup Barna's marketing department.

We are already ahead on the indicator that weighs most — digital community and SEO signals — but CE Diagonal Mar has a real asset we have yet to systematise at Barna: agreements with schools as a recruitment funnel. That is the missing piece, not a brand shortfall.

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