On our recent visit to Barcelona, we booked a tour through Viator, a company we learned about through Trip Advisor. Viator is a tour aggregation company that arranges with local private tour companies to book tours. I’ll have a couple of semi-reviews of our tours in Barcelona and Rio in upcoming Travel Tuesday posts.

Carrer del Regomir is a historic street located in the Gothic Quarter of Barcelona, Spain. The street is known for its lively atmosphere, narrow alleys, and picturesque architecture, and it is a popular destination for tourists visiting the city. It is home to a variety of shops, restaurants, and bars, as well as a number of historic landmarks.

The name “Regomir” is thought to come from the Latin word “rigomellum,” which means “small stream.” In the past, the street was situated along the banks of a small stream that flowed through the area. According to an Internet search, most people in the city speak Castilian Spanish but over 50 percent of the population speaks Catalan as well. The Spanish word for street is “calle” and the Catalan word is “carrer.”

About the photo: The image was captured through the windshield of our tour vehicle with my Samsung S23U. I imported it into Adobe Lightroom where I used the perspective adjustments to straighten the tilt of the buildings. I sent it off to Luminar Neo where I removed some power lines crossing the street and erased a trash bag laying on the ground next to one of the buildings. On the left are a scooter and e-bike rental outlet and a ladies’ clothing store. Regomir Street is too narrow for vehicle traffic, but we were able to save the shoe leather and drive slowly down the street bypassing the barricade that was in our way.

Our tour vehicle has a distinctive blue license plate, unlike the normal plates of Barcelona vehicles. As taxis and other commercial vehicles have similar plates, I didn’t think anything much about it until our tour guide showed us the magic.

As we drove downtown in the heavily pedestrian center of the city, the driver pointed the car toward Regomir Street where there was a large round post in the street’s entrance. He stopped at a call box and communicated with someone in Catalan. Moments later, the barricade descended into the street with its top flush with the pavement. You can see the top of the retracted barricade in the photo above.

Many of the downtown streets have similar barricades, but not all of them have call boxes. Those blue license plates are the key to an automated system. The driver told us that there is special training for those who are allowed to drive on the narrow streets. Small tour vehicles, taxis, delivery vans, and other special-use transports are assigned those blue license plates. When our vehicle came within a few feet of a barricade, it lowered automatically on those streets where there is no call box.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s acceptable as well. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, and, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner