illegal immigrant

watercolour and pen on paper

(210x297mm)

pencil on paper (work in progress)

I saw twice in less than a week a group of police-men and -women (the colours of their uniform are very nice: a soft blue with a particular shade of red) surrounding a presumably foreign man, checking his paperworks. The first time on Carrer de Blai and the second on Las Ramblas.

Does that mean illegal immigrant is an issue?

It makes me wonder, with the recession and scarcity of employment, whether there's a strong anti-foreigner sentiment.

But who and how do you ask this kind of questions? My Spanish and Catalan is non-existent and not many locals speak English.

On second thought, unless you look and sound different from the locals (a chinese who doesn't speak Catalan nor Spanish like me, for instance), it's probably difficult to pick you out as foreign.

The group I met so far are cosmopolitan and urbane, but will the locals be as receptive, say if I'm here competing in the job market?