Returning to a place that you used to call home can produce a strange emotion that seems to somehow straddle sadness and joy at the same time.

I learned fairly early on during my time at Camp Nou watching FC Barcelona. For this club success alone just isn’t enough. You need to deliver style as well.

Perhaps what the “How to be Spanish” article tells us is that it’s safer to poke fun at your own nationality’s stereotypes, rather than at others.

Barcelona in winter is quirky and brilliant, and offers a much more realistic view of the city than the one you get in the summer months. You’ll love it.

I realised that in a way, the view from my balcony that I had admired so much had also been like a view of Catalonia itself. Of the changing political landscape.

Now, when I’m not there, I miss the light of Barcelona too. If you live in the city, you get used to waking up to an apricot glow, squeezing through the shutters and slowly creeping up the walls of the flat.

Barcelona was fundamentally changed by the 1992 Olympics. “Para siempre”. The city still feels those changes to this day.

If I block out the other sights and sounds on my balcony, it’s the Catalan flags that I notice. There must be about 30 within view, fluttering in the summer breeze.

In the summer months in Barcelona, a message is sprayed in English onto walls and floors next to metro stations and tourist sites. In recent years it has become harder to miss. “Tourist go home”

I’ve often said that there’s no better combination than London and the sun. People are excited, spilling out of pubs, and running around parks like little kids.