Don't get taken for a ride in Barcelona

A BBC film crew fell foul of a surprisingly chatty taxi driver in the Catalan capital, reports Virginia Eastman

"The hotel is safe", a leaflet in my hotel room assured me. By the end of the day, I wanted to add: "Everywhere else isn't." Of course every popular tourist destination in Europe comes with a health warning: watch your wallet. But Barcelona has a reputation for being one of the worst.

On my first visit to the Catalan capital last autumn a pickpocket had taken my wallet from my zipped-up handbag in a shop only four hours after I'd landed.

But I'm still trying to come to terms with what happened recently on my second visit. There were three of us: my producer John, Martin the cameraman and me on an assignment to film millionaire John Caudwell sign a £405m deal with Singlepoint. After a day's filming on his yacht we set off tired but happy to the bliss that is Barcelona's best tapas restaurant: Txapala on Plaza Catalunya. We'd flown from Luton airport at 6am, so we felt we'd earned it.

After we had paid for our early evening snack it became obvious that a trip to the ATM was needed. So Martin went to retrieve €250 (£180) for expenses such as the taxi fare back to our hotel. He placed the fresh notes in John's top shirt pocket for safekeeping.

It was John's first visit to Barcelona so he'd never seen the spires of Sagrada Familia. So we took a taxi home via Gaudi's unfinished cathedral. The surly taxi driver was persuaded to take the scenic route to our hotel. Martin and I - exhausted after our pre-dawn start - slumped in the back seat and dozed. John in the front seat tried out his best Spanish. I remember thinking of the taxi driver "well, he's certainly perked up".

The upping of the conversational tempo and the occasional gasp of wonder coming from the front passenger seat were possibly the only clues as to what happened next. During the half-hour ride, John was straining his neck to see the "medieval this" and "Gaudi that" which seemed to be to his far right then left in turn. I marvelled at how a little knowledge of Spanish can cheer up a taxi driver.

At the hotel, we tumbled out of the taxi and waited for John to pay the driver. He reached into his top pocket and pulled out - nothing. The cash had vaporised somewhere between the ATM and the hotel. None of us could believe it. John, who comes from New York, was furious. "I am a New Yorker. We invented mugging. No!" Rage melted into bewilderment.

Martin was dispatched to another ATM to take out 250 more euros. We explained to the taxi driver (who seemed to be totally uninterested in our plight and not at all concerned about being paid) that the money would arrive very soon. John apologised profusely in his best Spanish. I marked time on the pavement, wondering if all taxi drivers in Barcelona were this sanguine about being paid by foreigners who have to go to the ATM to get the cash. It took some 10 minutes - meanwhile the meter was off. We paid him and disappeared to the comfort of our hotel, John still incredulous that this could happen to a New Yorker.

A night's sleep and sense of humour regained: over breakfast the same thought occurred to us all. Whodunit? It had to be the taxi driver. There wasn't anyone else. We hadn't rubbed shoulders with anyone in an empty street or been brushed by passers by. We'd got straight into a taxi after picking up the money. While Martin and I slumbered in the back, the suddenly animated taxi driver must have leaned forward and slipped the cash out of John's top pocket as he peered to his extreme right. It was the only possible answer. The Sherlock Holmes school of deduction says: "Remove the impossible and what's left, however unlikely, is the reality."

The audacity of it took our breath away. We're used to being figuratively robbed by taxi drivers, who go around the houses or charge foreigners three times the going rate, but this one did not even bother with subterfuge. The hotel's A4 piece of paper warning tourists to be careful lists nine things to watch out for; I would add a 10th: beware of taxi drivers.

Virginia Eastman is Consumer Affairs Correspondent for BBC2's 'Working Lunch'