Barcelona (Chinese: 巴塞罗那) 🇪🇸

Barcelona feels like a dream drawn by hand—curved, tiled, sun-soaked, and always just a little bit unexpected. It’s a city that plays with form and color, where even the buildings seem to dance.

If you ask the average person what sets Barcelona apart from Madrid, they might say: football (or soccer, for my American friends ⚽). But for me? It’s the language. You heard me right. While Madrid—and most of Spain—speaks Spanish, in Barcelona, it’s Catalán. And no, it’s not just Spanish with a funny accent.

As a mediocre Spanish learner (I say that with love), Catalán felt like a secret code. I tried—really tried—to understand. But spoiler alert: I didn’t. And to make things more interesting, even when I asked in Spanish, many locals insisted on replying in Catalan. Was I crying inside? Yes. But do I respect it? Absolutely. There’s something powerful about how Catalans protect their language and culture—even within a country where not everyone agrees on what that country is. (Remember the 2017 independence referendum? Yeah… unforgettable.)

And then there’s Gaudí. Do we even need to talk about the architecture? The Sagrada Família, Casa Milà—each building feels like a living organism, still breathing, still becoming. He wasn’t just designing structures; he was sculpting a whole emotional language in stone and sky.

This journal is my humble attempt to trace that rhythm: of languages colliding, light bending across strange angles, and trying to find your place in a city that refuses to flatten itself into something simple.

Guadi’s Masterpieces