El Gat de Botero has been in Barcelona since 1987, though for its first 16 years it couldn't quite find a home.

The city bought the bronze sculpture on a whim, months after winning the 1992 Olympic bid. Then proceeded to park it in Parc de la Ciutadella, relocate it to the Olympic Stadium, tuck it behind the medieval shipyards, and finally, in 2003, settle it at the foot of the newly opened Rambla del Raval. It wears the expression of a cat that has seen things.

Colombian sculptor Fernando Botero gave it his signature treatment: swollen, voluptuous forms that hover somewhere between satire and affection. It stretches seven metres long and weighs two tons.

VoiceMap's self-guided audio tour of El Raval and the Gothic Quarter uses El Gat to introduce Botero's "Fat Animals" obsession, point out his companion horse hiding in Terminal 2B of Barcelona airport, and relay the urban legend about what happens if you rub a particularly prominent part of the cat's anatomy.