An Incomplete List of Things I Want to Remember About Barcelona

I'm sitting at a hotel room desk in Barcelona, with 52 minutes before I need to head downstairs and hail a taxi to the airport. 18 minutes ago this seemed like an abundance of time, but now I write in haste, already feeling light and memory slipping away from me, and I want to pin them in place with what words I can while my mind teems with language and awe.

• I can hear common waxbills through the window. They're so unexpectedly tiny, little bandit finches that flock and flit so charmingly I think I spent more time gazing at them than at the Sagrada Familia. I didn't get to do much intentional birding while here but have added them, along with monk parakeets and Eurasian collared-doves, to my life list.
• The Sagrada Familia is one of the most joyful buildings I've ever seen. I'm not sure how much I might previously have thought of joy as a quality buildings possess, but there is a soaring, jubilant personality there, and I couldn't help but be aware of the fact that everyone who looked up at the building was smiling. Colour, and play, and the kind of awe that feels like a cup inside you brimming over and flooding your body with light. I didn't even get to go inside this trip – it was booked out for the next week – but I hope to next time.
• The light, even when it was grey out.
• Olive trees in public parks dropping fruit to the ground.
• The fact that unbrined olives smell like the stone fruit they literally are, like unripe plums if you bruise them with your fingers.
• The way the buildings gently glow.
• How often the combination of dark green shutters on pale gold stone buildings made me think of Beirut.
• The way people fluent in at least three languages would apologize to me for their English while I was a guest in their own country. I can't think about this without wanting to cry. There's so much in the world that's stupid and unfair but one of them is the heart-spitting double standard of anglophone exasperation towards immigrants and tourists coupled with the expectation of being understood abroad.
• The food!! All the paella I've had before this trip was just rice with stuff in it!
• The Catalan and Basque names that were all new to me, and the way it felt when someone came up in a signing line and I didn't need to ask them to write it down because someone else already had. Mireia. Montse. Núria. Neus. Aritz. Eulàlia.
• The utter astonishment of hearing an interpreter translating speech in real time, for my benefit. The sheer mind-breaking skill of it and what it makes possible.
• The way it felt to be on a stage with seven other authors, all women or non-binary, and hear the way our fears and desires and myths of origin overlapped and intersected with each other.
• The sheer relentless kindness of everyone I met and spoke with. The generosity and enthusiasm and curiosity.
• In sum, this post with photos that have alt text in them because I don't have the time to add photos to this letter!

I'll write more soon. A list for myself: to detail the highlights of the rest of this whole trip, from London to Brighton to New Haven to Dieppe to Rouen to Paris to Lunel to Montpellier to Barcelona; to say anything in depth about World Fantasy and Festival 42; how Florence + the Machine's Everybody Scream and Alix Harrow's The Everlasting kept me company in transit; how I finished a story I wrote and revised across three countries and where you can read it in a few days' time.

Wishing you all joy and ease as the year winds down,

Love,

Amal