Back home, so forward in time

Hello, my dear friends!

This story comes with a lot of photos. I hope you like them as much as I do.

As you probably know from the title of this newsletter, I've been back to my homeland recently.

I've been back for the first time since we left. That was in the summer of 2021 when we moved to Sweden!

It will be exactly three years in August this year, isn't that insane??

I left Spain with a feeling of not belonging to the place where I was born and had spent my whole life until we decided to move. The time Silvia and I have spent in this new country and what we’ve been through here has made me grow and change so much.

I feel that the space I've created for myself in this new place, and the feeling of being so far away from what I knew as home have contributed tremendously to that.

But even if I feel so at home in Sweden, I started to feel homesick for the first time a few months ago...

The passing of a very dear person made me realize how far we have set our home, and I started to feel a bit restless and wanted to go back to hug my family and friends.

I didn't know what to expect after all this time.

I planned to stay for two weeks since I wanted to have time to spare and be able to go with the flow, to try to rediscover Granada as if it were my first time there.

I was wishing to see what people see when they visit the city for the first time.

But what I found there surprised me and moved me in a profound and special way.

Spoiler alert: it had nothing to do with what I just mentioned.

I didn’t think it would be so much about people

I have never resonated a lot with Granada and its people in general. That's one of the main reasons that pushed me to move far away. Things like the lifestyle and ideas about what you have to be that people tend to have in there didn’t allow for the space I needed to become the full version of myself.

New people, places, and enough distance from what I knew made me good.

Before this trip, I thought that losing the calm I enjoy at home in Sweden would drive me crazy, especially since I would be staying in town most of the time.

That would be a shock after experiencing how life looks in the peace the forest brings.

While it's true that I could really feel a difference in the speed of life and how never-ending the days feel down there, nothing else disturbed me otherwise.

I didn't set foot outside the city for the whole two weeks, and I felt so well.

I willingly accepted what would have been disturbing otherwise, maybe because I knew it would soon come to an end and I would be back at my home in the forest, so I tried to make the best out of each moment spent there.

My days started slow, doing some work, and having breakfast with my grandma, with whom I stayed.

Then I normally went out for a walk with my camera. This is something I never dared to do before while living there.

I had the feeling that everyone was paying so much attention to what I was doing and I felt so uncomfortable.

But that must have been me.

I didn't feel that now in the slightest. I felt like I had the whole city for myself. I could sit down anywhere in the sun for an hour or more. I watched people come and go. I overheard their conversations.

I have concluded that what made me feel so bad in there before was the fact that I felt trapped. 

I spent my early 20s feeling imprisoned

My life happened in Granada, and there was no possibility of escape on the horizon. 

That city is always crowded and that felt asphyxiating to me.

I saw the tourist, who came to visit and then left and felt so stuck.

The way I felt while being there now was so different for obvious reasons.

I am now free, like I ain't part of the place anymore, even if I know it by heart.

I knew I wouldn’t be there for so long and I wanted to savor it as much as I could.

So I didn’t care about people. I don’t know if they had their eyes on me or elsewhere. I did whatever I wanted to do and that felt so great.

Regarding my photography, I also came across surprises.

You know, when I started photography I wasn't at all interested in photographing people. I thought people were the most boring subjects... whenever I took out my camera I thought to myself: If only this scene were empty of people... it would be so much more beautiful and pleasant to photograph.

That has changed completely.

I went to Granada looking for the interaction between light and the city. 

I wanted to see how light touched it.

But this time it didn't make sense not to have people in the frame. I found myself wanting them in the scenes, cause they felt empty and nonsense otherwise.

It’s funny to notice this difference, more so now that I am building a business based on people’s portraits as well… 😄

We know nothing…

Life is always shaping us and we are in permanent evolution.

The more I live the more I realize this game of being alive is so much about surrendering to what life brings to us.

I also thought my time there would be relevant because of the impression the place would leave on me after such a long time. But that wasn't true at all.

It was all about the people I met, known and unknown.

The feeling of the passing of time

This might be the thing that has struck me the most and what became the leitmotiv of my trip: seeing how everyone is older, and how time has passed.

It has passed in a way that I could almost touch it.

I never thought about how I would find my people when I came back. I might have frozen them in my mind when thinking about them in the distance.

Time has passed for everyone I know. Everyone looks older.

I am not new to the idea that we will not be here forever.

In fact, I think that's one of the reasons that makes life be so beautiful. To me that gives it all its sense. It's what makes us have perspective and appreciate the time we've been given to live.

Seeing the passing of time in the people I love the most was a big reminder to stay awake, to be present, to pay attention to the details, and to enjoy. 

Part of this is an obsession and why I make photos and videos. I don’t know anything more beautiful than having tangible memories of the moments when you were happy in life.

This feeling became even more palpable one week after I came back home when our little cat Nej was hit by a car and didn't survive.

One minute we are here and all of a sudden, we’ve left.

Life is fragile and leaves us so quietly. Death is not that big of a deal. We simply aren't anymore.

At least not in this physical form.

The “problem” is the feeling of emptiness we leave behind to the ones who stay.

After this trip back to what I used to call home, as I get old and as the people I love the most get older too, I feel happy.

I feel so happy I was given this life exactly as it is. 

I am grateful for the people I was destined to share my time with.

This is something I almost didn't think about when Silvia and I decided to leave.

Life felt endless back then. But it is not.

I am just so happy that I could realize this now.

I was naive when I thought my visit to Granada would be about the relationship I had with the city itself, that I would rediscover it and make peace with it.

That city means not much to me really.

It is nothing if you empty it of my people.

🤎✨