The city of Barcelona suffered from a mysterious pestilence last week. Over several hours on both the Wednesday and the Thursday of last week, an unpleasant stench emanated from the Catalonian capital, which perplexed not only the citizens but also the authorities, as neither the City Hall nor the local Government – the Generalitat – were capable of finding the source of the aggravating pong. As for us, forever ready to lend a helping hand, we sent off several possible suggestions for the mysterious stench on Twitter. It would seem that one of these possible explanations went down well with the correspondent, Alaistar Dawber, writing for the English newspaper, The Independent, and he cited us in his article for that widely-read newspaper.

The newspaper article went on to say that the stench had its own hashtag on Twitter (#MalOlorBcn) and that a Company called Kukuxumusu, well-known for its drawings and designs for clothes and other articles, had tweeted various images to represent the smell, such as the one showing a smoking pile of fresh excrement, or another drawing which showed a flock of sheep gathered round a big pile of manure.

Here you have all our theories outlined about what we thought the smell might have been caused by, which, by the way, promptly disappeared as mysteriously as it had arrived, without leaving any kind of possible explanation for the whole thing.

Posibles causas del #MalOlorBcn 1: El #Caganer ha adelantado un mes su llegada #PesteBCN pic.twitter.com/urvpGl404x — Kukuxumusu (@kukuxumusu) noviembre 20, 2015

Posibles causas del #MalOlorBcn 2: Ha sido ÉL. #PesteBCN pic.twitter.com/pn78Ye9pFu — Kukuxumusu (@kukuxumusu) noviembre 20, 2015

Posibles causas del #MalOlorBcn 3: Tanto contar ovejas para dormir que… #PesteBCN pic.twitter.com/AUC99Qu6Dd — Kukuxumusu (@kukuxumusu) noviembre 20, 2015

Posibles causas del #MalOlorBcn 4: Kakaxumusu #PesteBCN pic.twitter.com/8ap3C2SNrf — Kukuxumusu (@kukuxumusu) noviembre 20, 2015