¨Calcots, what is zis?¨ came the voice our Group Sales Manager across the office the other day.

¨they are a bit like small leeks¨ I replied, knowing full well what the next question would be.

¨Leeks, what is zis?¨

On the 6^th of January 1911 34 hardy souls set out from the barrio Sarria in Barcelona to compete in the very first Tour of Catalonia. Only 24 made it to the finish at the Sants Velodrome with Spaniard Sebastia Masdeu becoming the first winner of the locally called the La Volta .

I was chatting to one of our interns this week about our promotional days for April. He was reeling off a list of potential dates when I asked if Sant Jordi was on the agenda. The blank look said it all.

A quick flick through the sporting agenda in Barcelona over the next couple of weeks and any sports fan would be drooling on the carpet, phoning the boss with an imaginary but highly contagious illness and emptying the kid’s piggy bank.

Once upon a time there was a nasty dragon who lived in a cave above Barcelona. To keep him happy the locals fed him a virgin a day. (100% of the daily recommended dose). This was all well and good for a while but the townsfolk were rapidly running out of acceptable women. The Elders were on the verge of contemplating some sort of virgin import system, when some bright spark suggested they turn to their King for help.

There was a bit of a discussion going on at GoCar central this week, in between the very hectic groups schedule and the aftermath of FC Barcelona’s miserable 7 days, about the fast approaching Sonar Music Festival.

Firstly a very ‘happy New Year’ to everyone on the Western calendar and a ‘hope December was fun’ to everyone else.

Here in Barcelona we are just getting ready for the Three Kings, the final phase of the festive season which involves even more presents, some fuel-based child abuse and of course a cake.

What do you call two Spanish firemen?

No I haven’t lost the plot, well at least not yet. Writing a weekly blog related to our fair city of Barcelona can be a little tricky at times. Fortunately, more often than not, there is an event or theme to grab hold of and get the creative juices flowing. But what do you do as an impoverished blogger in the second week in January? Everyone has just gone back to work, broken most of their New Year resolutions and are looking at a bank balance that wouldn’t keep a teenager in download money for a week.

My nephew Charlie has just returned from a week sliding down an Alp. His school, before letting loose two coach loads of kids on Italy, quite correctly inquired of each one if they had any skiing experience. “Sure” said Charlie brightly, “ I learnt in Spain”. I am told that the teacher patted him sympathetically on the head, told him to fetch an atlas and to stop drinking cider during school hours.

Regular readers will have noticed I like to give a cryptic preview by way of the title, then attempt to weave the three threads together, hopefully into an entertaining read. For the newbies, it goes something like this.

This Saturday, in the barrio Gracia of Barcelona, is the festival of St Medir. Groups of locals ride around on horses and lorries, accompanied bands of wondering minstrels, throwing literally tonnes of sweets to people in the streets. All jolly good fun, especially if you are a five year old or have a toffee fetish, but it does beg the question, why?

You might want to take a walk, after you’ve had a good time in Barcelona meanwhile you were driving your GoCar with a GPS Guide incorporated.

Probably citizens, tourists of Barcelona and also GoCar users can feel jealous with the people living at 113 Girona street or those that work or live at 293 Mallorca street, without to mention those where their office are located at 35 Passeig de Gràcia avenue. That is because they are working or living at Casa Lamadrid, Casa Thomas or Casa Lleó i Morera, three buildings built by Lluís Domènech i Montaner, one of the most important architects of Catalan modernism. Unfortunately these three buildings are not open to the public and visitors are not allowed, so they only can be admire from the outside.

Barcelona has a perfect street for chocolate lovers, located in the Gothic quarter of the Catalan capital, parallel to Las Ramblas and perpendicular to Portaferrissa, two of the most important shopping streets of the city, it is the Petritxol Street, known by all the locals as the chocolate Street.

Now perhaps they don’t quite fit our normal customer profile, but nevertheless last November the cast and crew from MTV’s reality show Geordie Shore pitched up at GoCar HQ to do some filming for the current series. After we had found someone who could translate Geordie into English and we’re told to ‘haddaway an’ shite’ after turning on the safety video, they all headed out to ‘gan roond’ the city.