A common aspiration in Spain is to become a Funcionario – a civil servant with a good salary, large pension and a job that is guaranteed. If you achieve this, you are set for life. If not, well that’s your problem. This creates a social duality that the politicians and the tourist industry seem to carefully avoid seeing.

The image of Barcelona portrayed in the brochures is a tad one-sided. It gives a view of  visitors strolling down La Rambla in a city filled with Gaudi architecture and expensively chic cafes and trinket stalls. But walk a few meters away from Plaça de Catalunya and a completely different vision of the city emerges.

All images were  taken with the Olympus OM-D E-M5 with 12mm lens at around f5. Manual exposure mode was used with a shutter speed of 1/400th to reduce motion blur. Manual focus was used to avoid AF hunting.