In 1973, the advertiser Lluís Bassat was walking down Consell de Cent street when, at the height of the Sala Adrià, which was run by Francesc Mestre, an exhibition by Serra de Rivera caught his attention. Inside awaited Bañista, an enigmatic painting (the naked figure of a woman in a flooded room who sinks an arm into the water that reaches halfway up her leg) that not only stole his heart but changed his life. That afternoon he not only left with the canvas under his arm but also with 35% ownership of the gallery (he later convinced seven friends to acquire another 35%), and until 1980, when it closed its doors, they organized more than eighty exhibitions. “There I began to get to know the artists; and with my wife, Carmen, we bought one or two works from each of them. And so, almost unintentionally, we built a collection that today has more than 3,000 works.”

Tourists and foreign residents (the famous expats, expatriates) are in the spotlight of many people in a Barcelona that, like other cities, lives with regret its dizzying loss of identity. A linguistic acrobatic has turned the initial use of…