Drawing connections in Girona.

“We travel, some of us forever, to seek other states, other lives, other souls.”

– Anaïs Nin

It is one of the first sounds I hear in Girona—the strains of a plaintive accordion.

Like an audible fog, the music curls around the corners of this ancient city, unfurling with feeling and ease. It is a wistful refrain filling my first days here, always swept along the surface of the Onyar River to wherever I am. Soon the accordion becomes something I learn to listen for.

One day I decide to follow the respiring notes, so like air passing in and out of lungs, until I reach the Plaça de Sant Feliu and arrive at the source. He wears a thick black jacket and navy knit cap, the man with the melodious bellows between his hands. I run to my apartment down the street, throw back a quick lunch, and then return to the square, finding a seat on a small stone bollard near the musician.

When our eyes meet, I ask, “Puedo dibujarte?” Can I draw you?

He smiles his approval, and if my eyes aren’t deceiving me, sits up with his back a little straighter. He says his name is Pau, that he is from the island of Ibiza, and as if reading my mind and sensing the error that needs correcting, he explains, “This is not an accordion; it’s a bandoneón.”

“A bandon-what?” I ask, my tongue stumbling across such an unfamiliar set of syllables.

“A bandoneón. It’s the instrument used for tango.”

With that, he resumes playing—back straight, eyes closed—and at times, his right foot flexes unconsciously and stays suspended in the air.

I notice this, because mine often does the same when I draw.

* * *

When I arrived in Girona nearly two weeks ago, I didn’t know what to expect—both from the city itself, and from my experience here as an artist-in-residence.

I had deliberately limited the amount of research I’d done beforehand, waiting until the last moment to purchase books such as Catalonia: A Cultural History and the more candidly titled What’s Up with Catalonia?, so that my reading would enhance my observations, but not predict them.

I soon learned that Girona is a small, accessible city, with a historic center that can be easily surveyed on foot. The old quarter especially is a delight to explore, known in Catalan as the Barri Vell. The narrow streets are lined with even narrower houses that seem to rise up and slowly close in on themselves, the sky reduced to a silver wedge above you. When it rains, which it has done often these last few weeks, the cobblestoned streets glisten, lamplight reflecting in the water pooled between each stone.

Although the ocean is some thirty miles away, a surprising number of seagulls still make their home in Girona. Their childlike cries add to the soundtrack of church bells, boisterous students, and the click of furled umbrellas serving as canes on the sidewalks. And every now and then, as you cross one of the many bridges spanning the Onyar River, you do indeed get a briny scent of the sea.

I found it all very beautiful, and yet a sense of truly connecting with the place eluded me. I felt almost as if I were looking into Girona as one observes the miniature scene in a snow globe. I was looking at the city, though not yet a part of it.

But if growing as an artist has taught me anything, it’s that depth and texture cannot be rushed; and just as layers of paint slowly accumulate on the page, the colors gaining richness with time, so too did connections begin to appear for me here.

While sketching Girona’s signature colored houses from a bridge called the Pont d’en Gómez, I met a local student named Alba, who is nearly finished with a degree in Catalan language and literature. A few days later, we met for pancakes at a little café along the river, and discovered that for both of us, the first foreign country we visited had been the Dominican Republic, where we had each spent time volunteering at an orphanage and eating our weight in rice and beans.

At the city’s weekly market in the Parc de la Devesa, I wandered into one section of the stalls that suddenly had more of a Middle Eastern feeling to it than Mediterranean. I introduced myself to a man selling fragrant bunches of fresh cilantro, and learned that he is Abdel Tif from a small town near Tangier, Morocco. After we shook hands, he placed his own hand on his heart; and when a customer departed, he said shokran instead of gracias. As he told me about the community of Moroccans and Algerians living in Girona, I felt a new dimension of this city open up to me.

And on a rainy Sunday night, I was invited to the house of my good friend Jaume Marin (whom I mentioned in last week’s post as the inspiration for this project), for a most important, dare I say even sacred occasion. Jaume and his wife Charo served Estrella beer and bottomless bowls of green olives, before we all settled down in front of the TV to cheer on Barça as they took on Real Madrid.

Nails were bitten, breaths were held, and olives were nervously chewed, their pits discarded without thought. When Barça scored the winning second goal, there wasn’t an arm in the room that wasn’t punching the air—including my own.

A sense of connection had been slower to arrive in Girona than I’d anticipated, but what I felt in that moment was deep and real.

* * *

This week, I had the opportunity to visit an undergraduate class on new tourism at the University of Girona.

After a brief introduction, my time with the class evolved into an informal Q&A. The thirty or so students were a vibrant mix from all across Catalonia, as well as three female students from Sao Paulo, Brazil—each of them eager to see and experience the world. Many of their questions made me pause and think, and not only because we were speaking in Spanish; a language I love and have studied, but which my grasp of has grown far too rusty from infrequent use.

At one point, professor José Antonio Donaire asked what is the most important thing to me when I travel. Is it the history of a place? Key monuments? The people?

For the first time all day, I didn’t fumble for words; I immediately answered the people—la gente, la gente, la gente, I repeated—but between my nerves and humble knowledge of Spanish, I couldn’t fully express myself, and so I’m going to try and do so now.

For me, every connection—whether at home or in the world—is a tiny knot in the thousand fraying threads we carry with us. Every encounter is a part of the larger tapestry coming to life, slowly being woven into significance. A few days ago I learned that the root origin of connect literally means to ‘bind together.’ This discovery gave my abstract love for connection a new tangible quality; I could viscerally picture the purpose it serves.

Over the last two weeks, my path has crossed with many souls in Girona—I think of Pau the bandoneón player, Alba the budding novelist, Nieves and Alfonso, two retired friends visiting the Costa Brava from Andalucía. I think of Jane and Peter, an American couple from Massachusetts, whom I met while sketching a narrow passageway in the Jewish quarter; I remember a humanities student named Iris, who had spotted me drawing on the Pont d’en Gómez below her sister’s flat.

“I saw you from the window,” Iris said, her glittering blue eyes befitting such a name. “I thought I would come down, but now I don’t know what to say.”

I told her she didn’t have to say anything; that the fact that she’d taken the time to come downstairs and approach me at all was enough—because every time I learn someone’s name and hometown and receive a little glimpse into their world, life makes sense again. Whatever compelled me to sketch in that particular spot doesn’t feel so random. It finally feels like I’m a part of the scene, and not just an observer.

Each of these encounters has bound me to Girona’s ancient walls and quiet rivers, to its weekly market and sunlit courtyards.

Each name is another knot tying two threads together, leading to the promise of a fuller picture.

Disclosure: I’m incredibly grateful to be here in Costa Brava for six weeks as an artist-in-residence with the fantastic team at Visit Costa Brava. The tourism board is kindly assisting with accommodation and food costs along the way, allowing me to devote my stay here to bringing this region to life in words and sketches.