The Barcelona of the 21st century is a city shaped by the '92 Olympics, a city transformed for and by the need to do justice to that great international event, with the effort involved in carrying through this transformation allowing the city to overcome a series of historic disadvantages and make major quantitative and qualitative advances in its services and its physical fabric. The Barcelona we see around us now, the Barcelona we enjoy today, is a new Barcelona, Mediterranean in keeping with its traditions, with its face to the sea and its arms open to other cultures and peoples, giving and receiving, happy to make and to share its riches. At the same time the Barcelona of the 21st century, for all its transformations, has not severed its ties with a proud history in which so many generations of cultural diversities have built the firm foundations on which the innovations of modern times have constructed an utterly unique city with a personality that is all its own. The Barcelona of the 21st century is a European capital of astonishing cultural energy and a passion for progress, a city whose day-to-day life brings together every imaginable facet of the most diverse activities: these are the potential that has fashioned the city's present and give it the impetus to move forward into the future.