Where are you from and how did you end up in Aberdeen? I’m from Barcelona but not Barcelona city. When I go places I say Barcelona because that’s the first place people will think about. I’m from a really small village in the mountains. We only had one school, didn’t have a high school, it was that small. My parents separated when I was two years old and I was living with my mother for years. And then when I was nine, after all my siblings moved away, my mom had a boyfriend by then. He was from Valencia so we decided to move there. We stayed there for four years. We didn’t know anyone. Me and my mom are Catalan. We were in a place where they speak Spanish so everyone noticed we were from outside. Those people are quite xenophobic when it comes to Catalan people and I had some issues with bullying about that stuff in primary and even in high school at some point. It was a really Hispanic town in a way. Back in Catalonia my mom had three different jobs just to feed us. When we moved, my stepdad is a writer – he wrote and translated books. He studied Psychology, he had a degree. He did his masters on his own in Valencia. My mom never studied because she married young. She was working as a receptionist in Valencia but lost her job during the crisis. To be fair, nowadays not many people read books. So my stepdad stopped getting as many jobs from the translation place. When I was in third year of high school my mom came and said we’re moving to Edinburgh. And I was like “Okay? Why?” My mom was never happy where we lived. I was never happy up until that year when I became popular, -ish.
Why Edinburgh? My stepdad was in a hippie community between Aberdeen and Inverness. That’s where he met his English friend and while visiting Scotland fell in love with Edinburgh, Edinburgh University, loved the nature of the place. I was like “Let’s go to London” but my mom and he really liked going on hikes. My stepdad was trying to get a job in the university. They put everything in the car and drove up all the way to the UK. They were camping for three months over the summer. I was with my dad in Barcelona. They never spoke much English so it took them a lot of time to find a flat. When they eventually found it I moved here and started high school in Edinburgh. Later I applied to universities and got to Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.
Do you miss home? I don’t have a home. I have lived in so many different places, I made friends everywhere. I don’t miss the village. I lived there when I was nine years old. If I go back now, everyone will be completely different, my grandparents have died, my parents are not there. I miss it in a way but I don’t want to go back because there’s nothing left for me there. I do miss the friends I made along the way.
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