To the right was the Plac¸a Reial; the much-maligned Plac¸a Reial, reputed to be the source of all the crime now in the city centre, the place where the handbag-snatchers and the dope dealers hang out, the square where tourists and thieves and touts meet, but which respectable natives of the city stay away from. The square was built in a French neo-classical style between 1848 and 1860; in 1879 Antoni Gaudý´ designed the lamps in the centre, one of his first commissions. A fountain has been added, and there are tall palm trees. On sunny winter mornings – the winter sky is usually clear and sunny in Barcelona – the square can be very beautiful and in the summer you can drink beer and eat tapas until after two in the morning. But still, the place is seedy. In the early 1980s the municipality tried to clean up the square and at night police cars now patrol the perimeter. Then the authorities began to put on jazz concerts on a Sunday night; a trendy architect did up the buildings, and writers and singers were reputedly about to move into the square at any moment. Yet none of this has had the slightest impact on the indigenous population of the square, who haven’t changed much since 1975. You still have to watch yourself there, and it seems that nothing will ever change in the Plac¸a Reial.

Ye t onthat Sunday night of the Merce` festival every seat at every outside bar was taken. For once the plan was working: the middle classes were sitting comfortably in the Plac¸a Reial. The waiter brought us glasses of beer, squid deep fried in batter and slices of lemon. All around us were Catalan voices. The same Catalans who had abandoned the Plac¸a Reial to the foreigners and the outsiders were back tonight, back in the downtown that they had learned to fear. This fear had been born not just in previous years when the sale of heroin had become rampant in the area, but in the years after the Cuban War at the end of