27 January

I'm not popular in thinking tourism and travel are a bit of an unrecognised plague on the planet, driven hugely by Westerners who use up other places to try to relieve a deep existential boredom, that they feel but don't understand. Barcelona has had enough. "As tourists, we hate it when our trips are spoilt by them. But we often don't recognise ourselves as part of that selfsame heaving mass. What cities need, we tell ourselves, are people like us, and not those we define as undesirable. The undesirables, meanwhile, are eyeing us with the same thought. Perhaps to make cities like Barcelona a better place for everyone, we should all consider sacrificing our own visits and find somewhere a bit more off the beaten track to ruin."