Santiago Calatrava’s City of Arts and Sciences is a monumental achievement. I’ve no idea - and can’t easily discover - how much the complex cost to build but it must have been several hundred million Euros.

As for the maintenance costs, well, the little red tape you can see in this picture cordons off an area where a man, aboard a hydraulic lift, is cleaning the outside of the Science Centre (El Museu de les Ciències Príncipe Felipe). Such was the scale of his task that, during the three days I was there, he only managed to progress about 20 metres.

Calatrava’s masterpiece has rapidly become a source of pride for Valencians and a symbol of their city’s determination to be a pioneering knowledge-based economy. Sure, it has its detractors (tell me a piece of architecture that doesn’t) but it now attracts artists and visitors from all around the world.

And so the silly question: why won’t we make this sort of investment in the UK?