As the plane bucks, shakes and plunges above Barcelona, we who feel we are about to die offer up a silent prayer to Wilfred the Hairy. He alone can be called upon in a life-or-death emergency in this locality. For under his real name of Guifré el Pilós he made Barcelona an independent city-state in AD 878. When the emperor dipped his hand in the slain Wilfred’s blood after a battle and smeared it in four stripes down his gold shield, he created the Catalan flag.

When the plane starts falling towards the big marble quarry to the south of Barcelona, we have time between screams to gain an intimation of the debt owed to this marmoreal mother lode. For Wilfred’s city is now paved in marble, as we shall discover when we land. (Yes, reader, we survived). From the airport itself to the pavements of the big boulevards to the main railway station: marble, marble, marble. True, the station is paved in a leftover marble no one wanted, a sort of sickly yellow, while the airport is floored with a gleaming, roseate pink. But who cares about fine distinctions when he has survived a plane journey and is visiting, for just the second time, a beautiful and lovable city.