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I will do some homework for you, but you may need to look at pages in Catalan or Spanish. How long are you here for.  The standard lease is 5 years in BCN.  Most locals end up sharing apartments because the rent is high.  You will also need to provide three months rent up front, so be warned...

OK, I found a lot, although expensive when I googled 'expat Barcelona', that may be fruitful for you, especially as I don't know how long you are staying.

Try typing in 'lloguer pisos barcelona'...that means literally rent apartments barcelona, it will get you to Catalan pages.  You may want to find a hotel, and then find a real estate agent locally that deals with rentals and take it from there.

You may also want to contact one of the expat groups such as the International womens club, if your a woman I suppose, although I am sure they would answer queries...

If you go to hostels, they may also have listings of apartments that you could share, but you haven't given much information about your situation, so it is hard to answer...

Good luck, and I'll be happy to answer any more questions or look again if you give some more information to narrow the search...

I found mine on

I don't have much timpe right now but if you want me to do some research later on or ask my landlord if he has or knows of a flat in Poblenou, do not hesitate to contact me

I also found my apartment on loquo, and there are some listed on craigslist as well.  If you do a simple price range search and type in the neighborhood you're looking for with the CTRL+F function, you should find some results.  And of course, the public transport/metro is great, and relatively inexpensive, so if you're not finding many results you can always look a little further or in a nearby neighborhood. 

If you want something established before you arrive, you might find yourself asked to wire some sort of deposit.  For listed agencies this isn't as big of a problem, but most of the reasonably priced places we found were through private agents.  This was the scenario my boyfriend and I found ourselves in, and of course we were wary of being scammed.  I'm not sure how we found it - it took some time going through google - but we were able to find our landlord registered on a reputable website to back his credibility.  I definitely wouldn't send the money overseas any other way.

I would discourage anyone to wire monies to Spain/Barcelona for downpayments without even seeing a place. It is really necessary to inspect and measure the size of the flat, and to go through every single appliance, how it works, if it works, and so forth and to add this in a contract. If this is not done, you will be responsible to repair them or may not get your security deposit back. I had tremendous problems with everything from canceling my Telefonica when I moved (they did not want to cancel the service and made it very difficult) to getting my deposit back. I hired a lawyer to handle these issues on my behalf. It was rather amusing to hear all the strategies the lawyer had for his negotiations to assure monies would be paid back! I guess it's quite common to not get the deposit refunded.

Rental contracts are available in english. Insist on it or they may say there is none in english. Each are customized and you should be very careful what you sign. My husbands work mate lost over 3000 euro signing a contract for an apartment he cancelled before moving in. The walls were covered in mildew and had been painted over to hide it. According to law, a tenant should have 14 days on him to change his mind. But they had written the contract in Catalan only and worded it in such a way that he lost his pre-payment. The whole thing was handled by the agency's legal department. Luckily he did not finalize the whole deposit or he would have lost that too.