EDITOR'S NOTE  ·  BARCELONA

SOMNI

BARCELONA

The story with Barcelona started for me sixteen years ago. Actually, the obsession with Spain started when I was thirteen and randomly watched an old Almodóvar movie on Polish TV. I didn't understand much of it. But the heat of it — the emotional chaos, the quirkiness that is double-layered and makes you think for hours later, the characters who loved too much and said too little — that stayed. It planted something. A certainty that one day, I would be living in Spain.

Although it took me twenty-three years to materialise this plan, I finally visited Spain for the first time in 2010 — and that was Barcelona.

I came with cinematic expectations — I won't pretend otherwise. I was convinced Almodóvar's transvestites from Todo Sobre Mi Madre were somewhere out there, walking the Ramblas. A Catalan abogado, slightly older than us, kind enough to show us the city, looked at me sideways when I asked where to find them. Are you looking for prostitutes? he said. Because if yes, there's a small street near the Camp Nou.

I was not looking for prostitutes. I was looking for the Almodóvar vibe.

He showed me and my friends the city anyway. And when I got sick — properly sick — it was him who took care of me and made sure I got on the bus home first. That kind of gesture stays with you. Quiet and practical and completely without drama. Very Catalan, I would later understand.

There was always something keeping me away from Barcelona. The tourists. The pickpocketing stories. The feeling that a city that beautiful might expect something in return — and I wasn't ready to give it.

But there is a particular kind of story that doesn't end just because you stop telling it. Some things circle back. Some cities wait.

Last year I passed through Barcelona twice — both times just for a few hours. And something shifted in a way I couldn't quite explain. The way Berlin once did: nothing at first, and then suddenly everything. A slow burn that had been burning quietly all along, without my permission.

I live now in Madrid. Last year, buried in paperwork and the patience it demands when you decide to stay in this country permanently, I came to understand the Catalan character again — a bit cold, a bit stiff at the beginning, but getting things done and providing a kind of quiet, supportive presence when everything else seems to fall apart. I found myself thinking again about Barcelona. About what it means to choose a city. About the things you think are finished that are simply... waiting.

Almodóvar understood this. His characters never really leave anything behind. They just carry it differently.

This magazine is not a tourist guide. It is not a list of tapas bars and rooftop pools. It is my attempt to understand a city I have been circling for sixteen years without ever truly landing. To find what is real and local and hidden in plain sight. To give Barcelona — finally — a proper chance.

Some stories begin and end cleanly. This is not one of those stories.

Somni. Dream, in Catalan. The kind you're not sure is over.

— Wiktoria