In today’s guest blogging spot, Dave Hall writes in with another great taste of life in Barcelona Dave can also be found blogging at pepino-bcn.blogspot.com:

Has Barcelona been earmarked for a G8 summit? Are the Olympics back in town again? Or is it that the Queen is coming to make a white-glove fingertip dust inspection at any moment?

Well, maybe it’s none of these, but you could certainly be forgiven for thinking the mother of all events was on its way to Barcelona given the sheer scale of improvements and roadworks going on around the centre of the city (apparently concentrated on the Eixample districts). It seems that I can’t step outside my front door these days without being almost swallowed up into a monumental-sized cavern that’s suddenly appeared courtesy of the local authority planning department. For example, where I live is just 4 short blocks from La Rambla de Catalunya, but navigating a way through on the most direct street has become a real chore. And then when you get there, you’re faced with more of the same between La Diagonal and roughly until you get past Aragó.

We’re all used to those strange little holes appearing overnight, surrounded by a flashing light, a mini-barrier and accompanied by a little sign apologising for the mysterious spot of trouble, but the work going on around here lately is much more extensive. The bulk of it is in preparation for the AVE high speed train, which by the way, is actually causing more of a stir above ground than below, with countless residents in the buildings above complaining of cracks appearing in their walls (and this is just from the preparation work, the trains haven’t started running yet!) Many balconies have signs dangling from them imploring the authorities to send the path of the train around the city rather than directly under it, but it’s all way too late for that now – the first train is set to roll into Sants station by the end of the year.

The Metro system (which is already pretty neat, tidy and efficient for the most part it has to be said) is also having its fair share of facelift surgery. Of my two nearest Metro stations, Hospital Clinic has temporarily lost all its escalators, while Diagonal station is covered in signs with those “artists impressions” of great things yet to come, although closer inspection reveals that it’s nothing more than a shiny new walkway, but still, it’s nice to be “done up” once in a while!

A friend perfectly summed-up the whole situation to me recently as we were trying to make our way down the pavement. After having been forced to needlessly cross the road for what seemed like the 38th time, he literally stopped in the middle of the street and had a massive red-faced huff, complaining out loud that, “Toda Barcelona está rota!!!”.

I couldn’t help but agree.

Don’t forget to check out Dave’s blog at pepino-bcn.blogspot.com