**The Geography of Belonging**

Barcelona, 09:05 AM

The morning smells of freshly baked ensaimadas and the metallic tang of the metro below. I’m at my usual café, the one with the chipped tile floor that reminds me of Lisbon, nursing a cortado that’s already gone lukewarm. Across the square, a group of schoolchildren laugh, their backpacks bouncing like overstuffed tortoises.

Yesterday’s workshop in El Raval left my hands smudged with developer fluid and my heart unexpectedly full. The teens—Syrian, Moroccan, Venezuelan—spoke in a mix of broken Catalan and shared silence, their photographs telling stories their vocabularies couldn’t yet shape. "Aquí," whispered Lina, 15, pointing to her blurry shot of a clothesline in Poble Sec. "Huele como la casa." It smells like home.

I didn’t correct her composition. Didn’t mention the overexposed corner. Just nodded and said, "Las líneas borrosas también cuentan la verdad." Blurred lines tell truths too.

Claudia would’ve raised an eyebrow at this version of me—the one who used to obsess over perfect apertures and ISO settings. But the woman who sat cross-legged on a stained darkroom floor yesterday, helping Jamal fix a double exposure of his grandmother’s hands and the Sagrada Família’s spires? She understands something new: belonging isn’t a pin on a map. It’s the way light bends through a shared moment.

A notification buzzes—Aylin sent a voice message. “Barcelona’s changing you,” she says, laughter in her voice. “Next you’ll start liking paella with peas.” (I won’t. Some boundaries remain.)

Marcos texts about a collaborative zine project with the teens. “Sin filtros,” he writes. No filters. My thumb hovers over the keyboard. The old Sofia would’ve drafted a five-point plan. The woman who’s learning to trust the blur types: “Díme cuándo.” Tell me when.

The barista refills my coffee without asking. I used to think roots were things you had to earn through years in one place. Now I see them in these tiny rituals—the way the old man at the frutería saves me bruised figs for jam, how the lavender seller in Boqueria winks when I pronounce "llavanda" wrong every single time.

Growth isn’t just about movement or stillness. It’s realizing you can be both the bird and the nest—that sometimes, the most radical act is letting a place soften you, one imperfect cortado at a time.

—Sofia