For a long time, Barcelona represented a form of creative ambition for me. I'm not just talking about success or the fantasy of being part of a more sophisticated scene than my own, but about a way of being in the world. There, I understood that projects could be built with rigor and, at the same time, with sensitivity. That aesthetics were not an embellishment, but a form of thought.

That's why some places stayed with me long after the visit. The Fundació Tàpies, for example, was always one of them. Returning now and realizing that its universe still holds the same intensity evoked something difficult to name in me: not exactly nostalgia, but a kind of inner continuity. As if certain references don't age, but simply wait for one to return, changed.

The same happens to me with Casa Bonay. I've never seen it as just a hotel, but as one of those spaces where things happen and where a project transforms into atmosphere, language, and identity. Over the years, I gradually explored its different layers, collecting materials, catalogs, images, and memories. In a way, it has also been a silent reference for the most ambitious part of The Collector, the one that imagines not just a space, but a world.

And then there are those scenes that don't quite fit into a chronology, but certainly into a memory. I remember seeing Bela Adler working inside Inmaculada Concepción, retouching photographs in her own space, and feeling that I was witnessing something much more important than a store or a beautiful project. It was a way of experiencing creative work from within, with a naturalness that then seemed almost unattainable to me and which I still consider valuable today.