I just spent two weeks in the city of Barcelona, combining holidays with a Spanish language course. I realise that learning Spanish in the proud capital of Catalonia is a bit like 'cursing in the church' (as the Dutch say). Most Catalans strongly prefer their own langauge instead of Spanish, which they consider a foreign language and associate with a history of imperial rule and oppression. Still I managed to improve my Spanish and enjoy the city a lot at the same time.

Barcelona is a great place to spend your summer. As long as you know how to avoid the tourist crowds! Yes, I was one of those tourists myself too. But I tried hard to see much more of the city than only the obvious tourist hotspots. It was my third time in Barcelona already, so I knew my way around. I also tried my best not to annoy the local people too much and to respect their daily lives. Meanwhile, especially in the summer weekends, large parts of Barcelona's city centre seem to have become tourist resorts where one could hardly find anyone living in the city anymore.

Other parts of the city (near those tourist enclaves) have rapidly been upgraded from working class and migrant neighbourhoods to upper class residences. Usually this upgrading seems to happen quite straightforward: just demolish some decayed blocks and streets and replace them with fancy apartments, squares, boulevards and terraces. The displaced lower and middle income residents have a hard time finding a new place to live, but the city seems less bothered with that than with presenting itself as one huge postcard image.

How many tourists can a city handle without annoying its own citizens? And how many new apartments can be added without turning the city centre into a 'rich only' zone? How many Barceloneans still like to live in Barcelona?