Be glad they didn’t get your passport and/or credit cards and concentrate on investing whatever’s left in the many wonderful things the city has to offer: world-class museums, first-class food and classy shops.

The Articket is a good investment: 15 euros will get you into 8 of the most important museums and Gaudi buildings, from the Casa Batllo and Casa Pedrera to the Tapies and Miro collections, plus the Centre for Contemporary Culture, the Contemporary Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum and the superb Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya up on its Olympic hilltop at Montjuic.

All this museum-hopping is guaranteed to work up an appetite. Senyor Parellada, the dining room of the admirable Hotel Banys Orientals in the Barri Gotic, is busy, lively, colourful and cheerful. Waiters dash about in mild chaos, triumphantly brandishing delicious plates of food that you mostly didn’t order but sort of wished you had, they look so good. 

Try the home-cured salmon, or grilled sardines, or the sonorous-sounding butifarra (Catalan sausage) with beans. For mains there’s proper old-fashioned stuff like oxtail, roast baby lamb with loads of garlic, and squid stuffed like a plump, self-satisfied cushion. It’s bewilderingly cheap – if you keep off the prawns and the Iberian ham you won’t spend much more than 4 euros on starters, and mains are 8-10 euros. 

Tapas are an integral part of a day of culture. Up near La Pedrera is the Cerveseria Catalana, open 7.30 a.m. till 1.30 a.m. next day. There are bars with stools to left and right, and further seating inside. Flights of glistening, multi-coloured tapas dance before your eyes in a dazzling, beautifully choreographed display. When a plate on the bar is even slightly depleted, it is promptly removed and a fresh one emerges from the kitchen. 

It helps to have to wait for a seat – that way you can watch the dishes flash past and decide what looks good. Then you can work your way from the old-faithful ‘Russian salad’, through bite-sized triangles of tender steak on crusty bread, skewered squid and shellfish, Serrano ham with a roasted peeled chilli on top, to the classic tortilla with potatoes, or the more adventurous version with artichokes and mushrooms.

If lunch was late and copious, and you don’t feel like tapas again for supper, the new wave Cata 181 on Valencia, a wine bar with up-market snacks, could be just the ticket. There are plenty of (mainly Spanish) wines by the glass – not a particularly economic way to drink, but fun if you’re on your own or want to try out several different wines. Snacks include silken pillows of ravioli filled with a brandade of salt cod with hummus and ceps or a salad of some nameless and wonderful part of the pig, crusty without/melting within, and basking on a bed of white beans. Salads include one of rocket, sausage and grated raw apple, and for mains there’s salt cod (not thrilling) and tiny lamb chops with Szechwan peppercorns – finger-licking good. 

You perch in considerable discomfort on high bar stools at tables for 5 or 6, exchanging impressions (or even wine and food) with whoever happens to join you. Intrigued by an item on the (all-Catalan) menu – ‘bikini trufat’ – we consulted our neighbours. There ensued a lively discussion on the food (seriously trendy, twice the price of tapas, exquisitely original, good for grazing). 

We learnt a thing or three about Catalan wines (watch out for Les Terrasses), licked our lips at la senora’s description of her planned paella for the morrow (blackened with squid ink and served with tiny broad beans) and laughed at the idea of the ‘bikini trufat’ (an itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny triangular sandwich laced with truffles). 

We came a cropper at Els Pescadors, billed as the best of ancient and modern Barcelona and good for fish. It was empty and echoing on a Sunday night, the mussels were tepid and had to be sent back and the restaurant had clearly never heard of the concept of value for money. (One starter, chickpeas with clams and chipirones, had a few of the first, three clams and hardly any chipirones – a bad buy at some 13 euros/GBP8.50.) The barman spent the whole of dinner energetically scouring everything in sight, clanking glasses together con brio and crashing plates into stacks, until finally we had to beg for mercy.

Before you board your plane, stock up on almonds, dried fruit, Manchego cheese, chillis, herbs and spices at the Boqueria market, pausing briefly for a fino at one of the bars at the back (Bar Pinotxo is good). Or cross over the Ramblas to Cal Pep in the Barri Gotic, stand in line outside and patiently await your turn for sensational seafood tapas: tiny flash-fried fish with soft-cooked egg leaking over it, grilled baby squid, prawns freshly scouted from fish auctions up the nearby coast and sautéd garlicky clams.  

Senyor Parellada, Argenteria 37, Tel. +34 93 310 5094
Cata 181, Valencia 181, Tel. +34 93 323 6818
Cerveseria Catalana, Mallorca 236, Tel. +34 93 216 0368
Cal Pep, Placa de les Olles 8, Tel. +34 93 310 7961