Thirty years ago, I went to the University of Barcelona for my junior year of college. A brief four years after Franco’s death, people were trying to rebuild the Catalan heritage that he’d tried hard to extinguish. Forbidden to speak their native language (a completely different tongue than Spanish) throughout his 40+ years in power, scholars were trying to piece together a dictionary from old-timers who could still remember it. Fancy my surprise upon landing to discover that no one wanted to speak the Spanish I’d come to learn!
Cell phones and computers didn’t exist and phone calls were prohibitively expensive so it was the first time I was really all on my own. Perhaps the best year of my life, I met all kinds of new people from all over Europe, ate (and loved) exotic food like octopus and artichokes and paella and ugly-looking mushrooms, learned to conserve water and heat and electricity and gas, and so much more.
A highlight of the year was my family’s trip to visit at Christmas. I was thrilled to show them the splendor of ancient and beautiful Barcelona. My mom was so excited to go to Spain, she’d booked their airline tickets before I’d even been accepted into the program. Thirty years later, she treated me to a three-week visit back to Spain. THANKS MOM!!!
