As the global economic crisis casts a pall over some of Catalonia’s most important industrial sectors, small victories are being celebrated as if they were resounding triumphs.

The fact that this year’s Automobile Fair is going ahead as planned in Barcelona is a case in point. After the cancellation last month of next year’s biennial London Motor Show, there were fears that the city’s own “Salón Internacional de Automóvil”, held every two years in May, would suffer the same fate.