I've been seeing this car everyday, on my way home from work, for the last two months. It's parked in an industrial area where it's not difficult to find other old and 'forgotten' vehicles. The first times I saw the car I didn't even think it was abandoned becaused it looked really nice. However, in the following weeks I noticed that the co-driver's window was already open and that someone had tried to force into the engine and the trunk.

One of my contacts at Flickr  told me that the car was a Trabant, a low cost model made in Eastern Germany between 1957 and 1991, which had a terrible success in the Communist countries of Europe. As you may have already figured out, the demolition of the Berlin Wall put an end to this small car, which had become technologically obsolete in the newly unified German market.

We have an obvious question here: How did this Cold War relic end up abandoned in the dark alley of an industrial area in the outskirts of Barcelona? The name painted on the car, 'Don Panini', belongs to a local restaurant, so I suppose that the owner bought the old Trabant for a few Euros (or even Pesetas) and customised it to advertise his business in a funny way. And when the car became a problem, he just left it there, I guess.

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