The uninviting, dirty bar next to the building where I work in the Raval district of Barcelona has been turned into a film set. The bar was probably chosen to suit the aesthetic requirements of the film being made. The head of a bull, killed in a long-gone "corrida", decades before Barcelona Council forbade bullfighting, looks down from one wall at regulars who have spent most of their lives and money here, playing dominoes and cards at the cracked Formica tables. Meanwhile, other locals watch the special-guest chat shows on the opposite wall's enormous television screen. The volume is turned down.

Today, however, the handful of old-timer two-drink per day locals have been kicked out and are observing events from the other end of the street. Being a film location is probably more lucrative for the owner than running a bar.

Rumour has it that the film is about the life of Camaron de la Isla, the Elvis of Flamenco (although Camaron never got so bloated). I am no authority on Flamenco in sixties Barcelona but the bar's ambience seems right. So does the Raval district, one-time scene of Spanish organised and disorganised crime and now home to Moroccan-, Rumanian- and Bulgarian-run drug pushing and prostitution.

Film set gophers and grips rush about looking busy while several hundred other people hang around, some waiting for their chance to stop Mohammed, our neighbouring Pakistani shopkeeper, and the "guiris" (northern European tourists) staying at a local hotel from appearing in the background. They wouldn't have been here in the sixties. Others are there to prevent the doors of neighbouring buildings from slamming.

Something for the locals to talk about for months to come.