Brian Viner: 'I'd been warned about pickpockets in Barcelona – and then I was robbed'

We went to Barcelona the weekend before last, just Jane and me, leaving the children – bless the cotton socks strewn over their bedroom floors – here in Herefordshire in the capable hands of my parents-in-law. We were excited about the trip; weekends away sans enfants, or in this instance sin los niños, are rare and precious. Moreover, Jane had never been to Barcelona before, and her anticipation was not at all blunted by the number of people who warned us to beware of pickpockets, for which Barcelona, and in particular its most famous thoroughfare, the Ramblas, are notorious.

Ten years ago, our friends Shelagh and Jim were stitched up like Catalan fishing nets. On the Ramblas a woman came up to Jim and, with a toothless smile, popped a carnation in his jacket buttonhole. Shelagh thanked her with a few pesetas, only to find, a little while later when they went into a bookshop to buy a book about the celebrated local architect Gaudi, that in fixing the flower in place the woman, or an accomplice, had deftly unzipped Jim's inside pocket and lifted a wad of banknotes. "I was worried for you as soon as I saw the carnation," said the woman in the bookshop.

She directed them to the police station, but on the way a well-dressed man stopped them and pointed out that the backs of their jackets had been splattered with wet plaster from a construction site. He very kindly took them into the lobby of a nearby business school to help them clean themselves up, and at the same time, it transpired after he had left them with a great flourishing farewell, helped himself to Jim's credit cards. A strange, disturbing afternoon then became positively surreal. They got to the police station, where the policeman who took the details of the two robberies, noting that Jim was a retired architect, insisted on taking them on an hour-long tour of the building, which he considered to be of striking architectural merit.

That was by no means the only cautionary tale we took with us to Barcelona, just the most bizarre, and by the time we embarked on the obligatory stroll down the Ramblas I had turned myself into a kind of walking Securicor van. We duly got back to the hotel with cash and credit cards untouched, although I was half-expecting to find my boxer shorts gone from underneath my trousers, such was my belief in the dastardly ingenuity of Barcelona's street thieves.

The next day we went up to the Parc Güell, the Gaudi-designed park overlooking the city. The concierge said that a taxi would be quickest, but that we could also take the number 24 bus from directly outside the hotel, and this we did, complimenting ourselves on being savvy tourists, for a bus ride puts you in touch with a city's vibe so much more than the back of a cab.

I hardly need add that it also put a pickpocket in touch with the back pocket of my jeans, all the caution of the previous day having given way to cheerful complacency. Not until I went to pay for two coffees at the Parc Güell did I find that the day's allocation of cash, 150 euros, had gone. And it was then that I remembered the fleeting contact I had felt on a crowded bus, and thought nothing of at the time.

Jane was sanguine about the theft. Just money, nobody's hurt, nothing of sentimental value, that sort of thing. But I've always considered myself a fairly streetwise sort of fellow, and I'd just presented someone with the easiest pickings of their day, if not their week. I felt like such a mug.

The thing about Barcelona, though, is that you can't feel dispirited for long. You know how you always find dock leaves near nettles? Well, it's an urban equivalent of the same thing. Pickpockets targeting stupid tourists on one corner, and on the next the most fantastic tapas bar you've ever seen, just the place to rub your grumpiness away. Not to mention the Boqueria market, where we stood at the counter of a frantically busy little cafe and ate an extraordinarily tasty dish of baby squid stir-fried in garlic butter and heaped on top of two fried eggs. It was a sumptuous and memorable treat, not least because it's impossible to find really fresh shellfish here in north Herefordshire. On the other hand, we don't have many pickpockets either.