The Barcelona of the 21st century is a city shaped by the '92 Olympics, a city transformed for and by the need to do justice to that great international event. The Barcelona we see around us now, the Barcelona we enjoy today, is a new Barcelona, Mediterranean in keeping with its traditions, with its face to the sea and its arms open to other cultures and peoples, giving and receiving, happy to make and to share its riches.

The traces of this history and diversity can be followed as you walk through the city: through its Gothic Quarter, built on the Roman ruins; through its art-nouveau Eixample district, presided over by Gaudi's exuberant architecture, which at the same time reveals an ordered and rational urban layout.

The present-day Barcelona is an European capital of astonishing cultural energy and a passion for progress, a city whose day-to-day life brings together every imaginable facet of the most diverse activities: these are the potential that has fashioned the city's present and give it the impetus to move forward into the future.