This article presents a methodology which evaluates the seismic risk from a holistic perspective, that is, it takes into account the expected physical damage and also the conditions related to social fragility and lack of resilience, which favour the second order effects when a hazard event strikes an urban centre. Indicators are used in order to capture favourable conditions for direct physical impacts, as well as indirect and, at times, intangible impacts of hazard events. In the case of Barcelona, the seismic hazard has been simulated by using the CRISIS 2007 code. The vulnerability of the buildings in the city of Barcelona has been defined with vulnerability functions using the Vulnerability Module of the CAPRA platform. These functions are defined for each building typology; the used typologies were defined in ICC/CIMNE (2004). This case study is part of the results obtained in the MOVE project of the European Commission.