Despite being born and raised in Barcelona, I spent more than a decade of my life in London. My feelings about the British capital were, I think, similar to those of many European immigrants: a combination of gratitude, awe and bafflement. I lived in various Hackney flats whose quirks I loved dearly, and I worshipped the green of the city’s parks and the warmth of its pubs in equal measure.
Of course, I missed my friends and life back home – the bakeries, the weather – but I never looked to London to provide all of those things. I didn’t expect people to speak Catalan wherever I went, nor for Catalan food to pop up in Dalston, and frankly, when it eventually did – mediocre croquettes at £8 a pop, calçots served on (shudder) a plate – I wished it hadn’t. That sort of fetishisation of Mediterranean culture catered to bourgeois Londoners and their way of life, not mine.
Cut to last year. After several Big Life Changes, I spent some time in limbo, going back and forth physically and emotionally between the two cities I now considered “home”, before officially deciding to move back to Spain. I was shocked to find my old stomping grounds reduced to a backdrop for endless expats’ dreams.
Scandinavian-looking girls with ultra-expensive workout clothes now do yoga outdoors by the beach, and Gràcia is being referred to as “the Shoreditch of Barcelona”. In many neighbourhoods, I hear English spoken more than anything else, and I regularly listen to Americans.