Woody Allen’s latest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, has plenty of detractors – Spaniards in particular have mocked the improbable romantic plots involving two naïve American holidaymakers and a pair of passionate Spanish artists – but the city of Barcelona is not complaining about the free publicity.

Like Cédric Klapisch’s earlier L’Auberge Espagnole (Pot Luck in the English title), a multilingual tale of student life in a shared apartment, the film is set in the sunny, architecturally elegant and socially tolerant Barcelona of contemporary reality. Dark underbellies, dirt and violence are reserved for the human characters, not the urban setting.