I hadn’t slept in 3 days. Not properly. The entire city was vibrating. You couldn’t walk five minutes without some kid lighting a petardo and setting off a car alarm. One went off inside the building. Inside.
It’s a thing here — fireworks in the street, no real pattern, just bangs and booms and more bangs. Some festival. I don’t even know which one. Ask five locals, get five answers. San Juan? Santa Marta? Firework Day? Maybe it’s just Barcelona.
My room faces the alley. At night, the noise funnels upward like rage in a lift shaft. People shout-singing, dogs barking, motorbikes doing laps around nothing. At some point a bin burned, but no one seemed bothered. Just another warm Tuesday.
The hostel was starting to unravel. One guy, some Australian with a ukulele and a superiority complex, accused another guest of stealing shampoo. That somehow escalated into a full shouting match over “respecting space” and “emotional labour.”
I sat in the corridor with a slice of ham and a yoghurt, trying not to pick sides. Then the ukulele guy threw a shoe and hit the vending machine. Lights went out on the second floor.
By morning, the Australian was gone. So was the shampoo thief. So was the yoghurt.
I honestly considered booking a train and just leaving. Going to Valencia. Or somewhere quieter. Or just home. Not because anything was truly wrong — but because the noise and the language and the sweaty bedsheets had hollowed me out.
And then Lucía came back.
Like nothing happened. Same ponytail, same hoodie tied around her waist, same voice that sounds like she’s been laughing at a joke you’re not in on.
I was halfway through boiling eggs in the shared kitchen. She walked in with a giant laundry bag, looked at the scorch marks on the vending machine, then at me.
“You still here?” she said.
I couldn’t tell if it was a question or an accusation.
“Yeah,” I said. “Sink’s still leaking.”
She smiled, didn’t say anything. Just kept unloading sheets and towels like she hadn’t vanished for two weeks. Like she hadn’t disappeared the night after that rooftop conversation about her ex and her cat and her job that she maybe didn’t really have.
I wanted to ask where she’d been. I didn’t. I just stood there holding an egg and feeling like the dumbest man in Catalunya.
That night, I sat on the rooftop with no music and no wine and no company. Just the occasional boom from the street and a faint smell of suncream and old fire.
Somewhere below, Lucía was changing bed sheets or folding towels or maybe slipping out the back again. Who knows.
The fireworks didn’t stop. The city didn’t sleep. I didn’t either. But it felt different.
Not better. Not worse. Just… different.