recalls councillor Pat Karney about informal meetings with Barcelona’s leader, Pasqual Maragall, the charismatic socialist mayor who declared at the 1992 Olympics closing ceremony: “We have reinvented the city as a cultural phenomenon.”

He advised Manchester’s chief executive, Howard Bernstein, to unleash the creatives but deprive them of budget control. The runaway £240m cost of the giant new performance arts space Aviva Studios contradicts his advice, though it is an investment in Greater Manchester’s creative industries and tourism worth £7bn a year.

Manchester’s emissaries saw a utopia in the Catalan capital, and not just for its pavement cafes. They marvelled at its political autonomy from Madrid. A........

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