Barcelona was not always the busy, multicultural Mediterranean city it is today. In the Roman era, it began life as an insignificant collection of huts with an inconveniently shallow harbour, overshadowed by its southern neighbour Tarraco – now Tarragona – the walled capital of Rome’s Hispania Citerior.

Even after periods of prosperity – the spread of Aragon-Catalan influence and trade around the Mediterranean in the late Middle Ages and the industrial revolution of the 19th century – the inhabitants of Barcelona did not always look to the sea.