The Rambla began as a small stream, a seasonal river whose channel was used in the dry season as a roadway. In the fourteenth century as the city grew it was included within new walls, and then in the eighteenth century the stream was diverted and became the street which Federico Garcý´a Lorca hoped would go on for ever. Some of the buildings are from the eighteenth century: the Virreina Palace, near the market, was built in the 1770s, as was the Casa March, further down on the other side. But most date from the nineteenth century, including the Liceu Opera House, which was built in 1847 and re-built after a fire in 1861.

A few of the buildings were constructed in the style for which the city later became famous: using tiles, mosaics and floral motifs, mixing medieval images with the idioms of the Art Nouveau movement, with decoration and colour on the outside of build-ings. L’Antiga Casa Figueres, for example, was first built in 1902, and is now restored and again in use as a cake shop.

Across the road one of the banks has bought and restored L’Antiga Botiga Bruno Cuadros, finished in 1885 with all the elaborate colour and subtle decoration of its original pastiche Japanese style. But these buildings stand out on the Rambla; by the time serious money was available for building in Barcelona, the Rambla had ceased to be fashionable, and was replaced by the Rambla de Catalunya and the Passeig de Gra`cia.

The atmosphere changes once you pass the Opera House and the coloured tiles designed by Miro´ into the more stable and solid world of the flower-sellers. People walk dierently, the clothes are smarter, no one wonders if you are easy prey. It is relaxed, as you walk past the bird-sellers’ stalls, towards the Plac¸a deCatalunya. As always, there was a queue that Sunday outside Agut, the