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Where to park in Girona

The Onyar gives Girona no bank: the houses are built standing in the water, so where a quay should be there is a façade. Every piece of ground a car has here had to be built — under the squares, over the river itself, along the edge of the park — and none of it lies in the medieval half: you don't drive into the Barri Vell looking for a space, you drive in with an authorisation. And before it comes a second ring, the low-emission zone, which asks nothing about who you are and everything about which car you brought. Doobl is a free parking app for iPhone and Android that brings together every way to park near your destination: car parks, how likely you are to park on each street, EV chargers and accessible bays.

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The four options

The four ways to park in Girona

Here the four aren't shared out by neighbourhood, they're shared out by ground: there is an option wherever somebody built room for a car, and none where the river took the room away or where a medieval city never had any. Doobl works with three of them — the car parks, the street and the chargers — around your destination and compares them by what they’ll actually cost you in time and money.

  • Car parks

    Paid parking isn't the fallback from the kerb here: it is the ground the city had to manufacture when the river refused to provide any. It sits under the squares of the newer half and along the edges of the Devesa, where the flat land actually is, and it buys something that counts for more in Girona than the price: it leaves you a short walk from the old half without taking the car into it. In Doobl you get them with their price, beside the kerb and the chargers.

  • Street parking

    Regulated parking in Girona is called the zona blava, and the striking colour isn't blue — short rotation, as everywhere — it's green. That kerb is reserved for nobody: anyone may park on it. What changes is how long you're allowed to stay, graded by how local your address is: longest for people who live on those very streets, an intermediate stay for the rest of the city, shortest for anyone arriving from outside. And a physical limit comes before the legal one: kerb only exists where there is kerb, which means outside the medieval half. In Doobl those streets are set beside whatever else stands nearby, so you can measure the time you're given against the time you need.

  • EV chargers

    A plug needs exactly what Girona is shortest of: a car standing still for a good while somewhere it is allowed to stand still. That only happens on built ground — underground, along the park's edge, on the side of the newer half — and it never happens inside the Barri Vell, which a car may not even pass through. So the useful point isn't the nearest dot on the map. It's whichever leaves you on the side you were going to walk from anyway. In Doobl a charger goes into the same comparison as the car park and the kerb.

  • Accessible bays

    The bays reserved for people with reduced mobility come out of the same place as everything else here: the ground somebody had to build. They are in the covered car parks and on the streets of the flat side, not in an old half made of slope, steps and restricted access. So in Girona a bay like that decides rather more than a few metres: it decides where your walk begins and whether that walk climbs. And for the Barri Vell the matter isn't settled by a bay at all, it's settled by an authorisation, which is applied for before you leave home.

Where people head

Where to park in Girona, area by area

These five aren't the same distance from the problem: one is the half you don't park in because you don't drive in, another is the river that yields no ground, the third is that ground, the fourth is the knot everyone arrives and leaves through, and the fifth sits outside both perimeters. Read them in that order: first where the car fits, then how far you walk.

Barri Vell

Girona's medieval half isn't a pedestrian street or a closed-off stretch: it is an entire city on the far side of the river, with an access regime of its own, older than the low-emission zone wrapped around it. Only authorised vehicles circulate here, and the control isn't a sign: the main gate is the plaça Catalunya — a square built on top of the river itself — and there is a camera on it; further in, bollards and barriers. Outside, the question is which car you brought; here the question is who you are, and that answer can't be improvised at the gate.

The decision is taken before the river: once you're across there is nothing to look for, because there is nowhere to leave the car.

The Onyar and plaça Catalunya

Here the river doesn't hand out ground, it takes it away: the coloured houses are built standing in the water, so instead of a quay there is a façade and instead of a kerb there is a current. The one piece of ground the Onyar has given the city is a square raised above it, the plaça Catalunya, which works as the seam between the two halves and as the watched gate into the old one. Everything that looks like a riverfront on the map is either a façade or a bridge, and neither takes a parked car.

If the navigation app pulls you towards the water to find a space, it is reading the plan of an ordinary city: in Girona the bank is a wall of houses.

Parc de la Devesa

The Devesa is the flat land the river left behind when it still flooded, which makes it the opposite of an obstacle: it is the largest stretch of open, level ground the city has, with its plane-tree wood inside it and room for cars around the edges. The catch is that this same flat land is what Girona uses whenever it needs space: the market is set up here through the warm half of the year, and the big temporary structures end up here too. When that happens, the city's largest parking reserve is holding something else, and there is no second reserve of that size to fall back on.

Before you count on the Devesa, check whether something is standing on it that day: when this ground goes, it goes whole.

Estació de Girona

Trains and coaches share a single building, with the tracks below it, on the side of the city that does have ground. That turns the streets around it into a place of short stops chained one after another — someone dropping a passenger, someone in from the province, someone leaving for a week — and also into the one big destination you reach without thinking about a perimeter at all. Almost all the kerb around it is regulated, so the real choice is between paying for a short spell up top or going down into a car park and forgetting the clock.

If you're dropping someone off, everyone around you is attempting the same manoeuvre at once: budget the extra minute rather than the lucky gap.

Hospital Josep Trueta

The Trueta stands to the north, outside the old town and outside both perimeters, and it is very nearly the only major address in Girona that the medieval half is never on the way to. That makes it simpler than it looks — no authorisation to decipher, no camera to pass — and drier as well: nothing you have read about the two halves helps here, only the site itself and the streets around it. And people arriving for an appointment rarely have time to spare for circling.

The usual mistake here isn't the space, it's the route: if the navigation app sends you through the centre, it has sent you into a perimeter you never needed.

The rules

The zona blava and Girona's two perimeters

  • Zona blava: one green kerb, three lengths of stay

    Regulated parking in Girona is called the zona blava. Blue does the predictable thing, short rotation for people who park and leave; the odd one is green, and it is worth reading slowly, because it doesn't behave the way it does elsewhere. That kerb is reserved for nobody: anyone may park on it. What is graded is time, according to how local your address is — a long stay for people living on those very streets, an intermediate one for the rest of the city, a short one for anyone from outside. Put another way, the colour here doesn't argue about your right to the bay, it argues about your minutes. In a city with so little level ground, sharing out time ends up being the only way to share out space.

  • Two perimeters, and they don't ask the same question

    Girona has an active low-emission zone, and it is the outer filter: it looks at the environmental badge, so the driver it weighs on is the one arriving from elsewhere. Inside it, and independent of it, sits the second one: the Barri Vell, older and considerably stricter. There a badge is no longer enough, because the criterion stops being the vehicle and becomes the person: only authorised vehicles circulate, the main gate is the plaça Catalunya — the square raised over the river — with a camera on it, and the streets behind it close with bollards and barriers. One asks which car you brought; the other asks who you are. The badges, the gates and the authorisations in force are listed on the council's own site.

The zona blava, the extent of the low-emission zone and the authorisations for entering the Barri Vell are on Girona City Council's website.

The app

How Doobl works in Girona

Search. Compare. Park. Doobl puts the ground that does exist here in front of you — car parks, kerb and chargers around your destination — with what it costs and what's left to walk. You know where to park before you get there.

  1. Search your destination in Girona

    Type the Cathedral, the station, the Devesa or the Trueta, and Doobl works on whatever surrounds that point.

  2. Compare real options

    Car parks, regulated kerb and EV chargers side by side, with their price and the walk left afterwards.

  3. Park at the best one

    Take the one that suits you and leave home with the route to the space already settled.

Answers

Common questions about parking in Girona

How do I park in Girona?
By choosing ground before distance. The river gives the city no bank to leave a car on, so what exists is built ground: car parks under the squares of the newer half, room around the edges of the Devesa, regulated kerb on the flat. In the medieval half you don't park because you don't drive in without an authorisation, so the last stretch is always done on foot. Search your destination in Doobl and put the covered parking, the regulated kerb and the chargers around it side by side before you set off. Doobl is free for iPhone and Android.
Where can you park for free in Girona?
There is unregulated kerb, and it is where you'd expect it: as you move away from the flat ground where everything concentrates. Here, though, that comes with two unusual catches. The first is green: parking there is not parking free, it is parking on a clock graded by your address, and the shortest clock belongs to whoever came from outside. The second is that the open ground of the Devesa, the city's biggest reserve, isn't always available to cars: some days the market is holding it, some weeks a temporary structure is. Compare what you save against what a car park next door costs, in Doobl, before you pick up the keys.
Where do you park in Girona during Temps de Flors?
On the flat, and on a longer calendar than the programme suggests. The flowers go up inside — courtyards, staircases and monuments of the Barri Vell — which is to say in the half a car doesn't enter on any day of the year, so your problem isn't where the flowers are. It is outside: the council publishes the traffic and parking restrictions over a window wider than the festival itself, because putting the displays up and taking them down occupies street too. And since everything that doesn't fit inside leans on the city's open ground, the reserve along the park's edge is exactly the one that suffers. Choose the parking in the newer half and make the entrance on foot.
How does the blue zone (zona blava) work in Girona?
Regulated parking in Girona is called the zona blava, and there is one twist in it that catches out nearly everyone who arrives. Blue is short rotation and asks nothing. Green doesn't ask who you are in order to let you park either — anyone may — but it does ask in order to decide how long: the maximum stay is graded by how local your address is, longer for people who live on those streets, intermediate for the rest of the city, shorter for anyone from outside. Put another way: the colour hands out minutes, not permissions. In Doobl we tell you the current tariffs and conditions, and you can check them against Girona City Council's website.
Can I drive into Girona's Barri Vell?
Only with an authorisation, and it is a different regime from the low-emission zone. The two perimeters sit one inside the other and ask different questions: the outer one looks at your car's environmental badge; the inner one, the Barri Vell, looks at you. It is older and stricter, and the control is at the gate: the main one is the plaça Catalunya, the square built over the river, where there is a camera, and the streets behind it have bollards and barriers. For a visit, the practical answer is to leave the car on the flat and walk in. What the low-emission zone admits at any given moment, and which authorisations exist for the old town, is set and updated by the City Council.
Where do you park in Girona on market day?
Away from the ground the market is holding, and that ground moves with the season. The weekly market isn't always in the same place: in summer it goes under the plane trees of the Devesa, in winter it moves to the Ribes del Ter, and those are precisely the two large open stretches the city otherwise leaves to cars. That is the small irony of a city with no bank: the market and the car want the same flat land, and the market gets there first. On the days it is up, the sensible move is to settle on a car park in the newer half before you leave; where it is set up, and on what calendar, is published by Girona City Council.
Where are the EV chargers in Girona?
Wherever a car can genuinely stand still for a while, which here is a stricter condition than it sounds. Charging is standing time, and standing time only fits on built ground: under the squares of the newer half, along the edges of the park, never inside the Barri Vell, which you can't enter without an authorisation. So the useful point isn't picked by metres on a map, it's picked by the walk afterwards and by which side of the city it leaves you on — the difference between this and a list of plugs. And if it occupies a regulated bay, that bay’s sign still governs — charging is not an exemption. In Doobl the chargers turn up in the same list as the car parks and the kerb nearby.
What is Doobl and how much does it cost?
Doobl is a free parking app for iPhone and Android that brings together every way to park near your destination: car parks, how likely you are to park on each street, EV chargers and accessible bays. In Girona that turns into one very concrete comparison: the ground that genuinely exists for a car, which is built ground, and which lies outside the medieval half. Doobl is free.

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Your city parks every day. Nobody was measuring it.

Doobl measures how a city’s parking actually works: where spaces are missing, when each street fills up, how much the regulated zone turns over — and turns it into information a one-off traffic count doesn’t show.

The result is an objective basis for planning supply, adjusting the regulated zone or backing a SUMP with evidence.

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