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He's put lamps at funny angles, hired an on-site choreographer to change the lights, colours and 'fragrances' every month, and installed Wi-Fi and all the modern techno knobs and buttons.

Including solar panels on the roof to attract the new generation of eco-warriors. They're unlikely to power even the lights in the cocktail bar, never mind offset the carbon emissions of your flight to Barcelona. But it's a nice gesture. Less promising is the news that we'll be subjected to water-saving technologies in the bath. Cramped, half-filled, tepid baths don't chime with luxury to us.

Saab's also got his friend and acclaimed chef Jaume Brichs in, to rage through the kitchen like a bull in a china restaurant. The theme's 'Mexiterranean', a fusion of Mexican, Catalan and Mediterranean flavours. It's unlikely to be burritos on the menu and we doubt the prices will be Mexican, but it will almost certainly be good.

We're waiting for one of you to go and sleep under the shiny grey bedspreads and tap around on the wooden floors and then tell us about it. Good thing there is a deal going on here---you'll get a room nearly half-price - 160 euros (around $235) a night until the end of March.

Casanova was an 18th-century Italian dandy who got thrown out of the church, thrown out of the army, thrown out of high society when he killed a friend in a practical joke involving a freshly-buried corpse, thrown out of his home town of Venice accused of rape and witchcraft, and then thrown out of almost all of Europe.

He regularly went bankrupt and relied on his reputation and, allegedly, blackmail to get loans from friends which he never paid off. He finally died quietly as a librarian in the Czech Republic.

Let's hope Barcelona's Casanova has a more successful life than this.

[Photo: BIGpol]

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