This morning I cried for the first time since I arrived. Every day starts the same way here. I wake up at 7am and remember it is 6am in Ireland. I open the balcony doors, let the sunlight in, and search for the sound of Lough Melvin’s cold lapping, and for my mother’s daily call of “rise and shine”. Instead I see the city’s planted verdancy of London planes and fallen catkins. The trees tower over the wide streets of Barcelona, and I move on with my day.
I was 14 when I met my future. He came to my secondary school to learn English for four months. Later, in October 2019, just after I had moved to Dublin to begin studying English at Trinity College, I met my school sweetheart again. Finally, after more than three years of long-distance phone calls and an intimate relationship with Ryanair, I decided to follow my Catalan love to Barcelona.
I moved here from Co Leitrim in March. We are now living in Gràcia, a district hosting Barcelona’s bohemia. The place is like an extrovert friend encouraging you to leave the confines of your house. Outside of the explicit magnetism of its better-known haunts, beyond the sightings of daily life, one has to be prepared for its hidden unpredictability. Behind big doors are makeshift photography studios, expansive rooms housing classes in ceramics, and a community garden where plants may be purchased at the value you place on their leaves.
Bookstores are far from the clinical commercialism of international franchises. They either stage bathtubs filled with second-hand classics or faintly stuccoed walls happily encumbered by stacks and stacks of books, separated by reused pallets, suffusing that ineffable bookish stench. Liberia Saturnalia, just off Plaça del Sol, is a perfect example of this. It is a small bookshop enlarged by colourful volumes of poetry, theatre and contemporary Catalan literature, and broadened further by the international writers wallpapering its walls.
The rest of Barcelona lives up to its appeal.
When walking past the Sagrada Família I have yet to contain my touristic tendency to look up; its intricacy is unmissable. La Barceloneta, jutting out into the Mediterranean, is the beachy, carefree side of Barcelona, where one can find skateboarders, sports enthusiasts and sunbathers, and watch fleets of cargo and cruise ships arriving. It is lined with seafood restaurants all seeming to have been handed a similar upbeat design stipulation that insists on repurposed driftwood, bamboo ceilings and low-hanging lights. The laid-back atmosphere sprawls into Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter, where narrow streets trace a medieval path.
[ Irish in 1970s Coventry: ‘If Ireland’s that great, why don’t you f**k off back?’Opens in new window ]
In addition to my geographical location, I have also entered the lives of my partner’s family and friends. They are all different, of course, but all show their kind-heartedness through their eagerness to get to know me and where I come from. The people I have met in Barcelona are representative of the diversity of a city with a distinctly cosmopolitan mindset.
All of these places and people form the setting of the life I am hoping to build here. They are pillars of respite from the reality of living abroad. Navigating the bureaucracy involved in receiving the documentation required to work and live here is eased by a walk through the district of El Born. The feeling of inadequacy you have when trying to learn a new language is abated by this patient friend.
Being an expatriate feels like an emotional whirlwind desperately submerging you in waves of reasons not to stay. How much easier it would be to rely on a system to which I natively belong, how much more welcome I feel in the arms of Ireland, and how simply the sense of foreignness fades when I hear an Irish accent.
Tuning into Newstalk radio is almost an act of betrayal. Reading The Irish Times leaves me feeling dejected, as I am no longer directly affected by its news. And yet keeping up to date with Spanish reporting means trying to decipher a culture and political history without being privy to its inherent identity.
I cried this morning for the first time since arriving in Spain because I felt lost in the unpredictability of my future here and the possibility that I may regret it. I sobbed over the thought that I was missing the next dinner my family will have together and was convulsed by the feeling that I am losing sight of myself.
But then I heard the now-familiar sound of the garbage truck chugging by and was reminded that I know what time the truck arrives. I know my neighbour will be sitting on his balcony, smoking the same pipe. Víctor will ask me later where I want to have dinner, and I will know the restaurant.
George Bernard Shaw once said: “I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.” I believe the opposite to be true.
[ Despite riots and curfews, I loved Barcelona within days of arrivingOpens in new window ]
[ Welcome to My Place . . . BarcelonaOpens in new window ]
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