Barcelona

My first time abroad was in my late twenties. I had spent years saying I wanted to go without ever actually going, and I grew sick of myself for it. With no money and no language, I went ahead and made that first trip abroad alone.

A one-way ticket. Only the first night’s lodging booked, and no plan past that. That was where my relationship with travelling abroad began.

The first place I went was Paris. I still don’t know why it had to be Paris, but in all that longing for something unlike Japan, at the time Paris was what it was for me.

Barcelona came next. I liked football, so the thought of one day seeing it played where it belonged had always been there. It happened to be during the World Cup, and unfortunately I couldn’t get to a match. I considered the stadium tour, but I felt that if I were going for the first time it ought to be for a match, so I didn’t go to the stadium then.

More than ten years have passed since, and the stadium is being made new. Time moves quickly. And things change.

In the summer of 2025 I visited Barcelona again after a long absence. I remembered La Rambla being full of shady characters the last time; this time the work of cleaning it up had gone ahead, and there was no trace of them.

What will it be like if I go again ten years from now? That is the sort of thing I find myself thinking.

And then, the Sagrada Família. When I first went it was of course still under construction, and I wondered when it would ever be done. This year the Tower of Jesus Christ was finally completed.

Something I had assumed would never be finished was finished sooner than I expected, and I feel glad about it and, somewhere, a little sad. Of course the work will go on from here. It will keep changing. But the word “complete” leaves nothing lingering behind. That, I suppose, is what feels sad.

I went to see it last year as well, but I want to visit again at a different hour of the day. It is a place I would go back to any number of times.