"It was a memorable summer, possibly because I knew I would only be away for a year."

Barcelona"The best summers of my life were until I was 18," recalls Rafa Peña, co-owner of the Gresca restaurant and the Torpedo bar. Until then, he spent practically the entire summer, from late June until September, at the campsite in Camprodon, where they always had their caravan set up. They went all year round, but summer was the peak. "We were about twenty kids, then teenagers, kind of wild, having a great time, playing all day."

From the moment he came of age, his father warned him that he wouldn't give him a penny. This was the turning point for him to begin working, especially in the summer, in a profession like catering, which was especially busy during the vacation months.

After summers in Camprodon, he jumps forward in time and finds himself in the summer of 2001. He was living in Stockholm, helping Johan Jureskog start his restaurant Rolfs Kök. They had met the previous year as roommates when Rafa was doing a stage at the Palais Royal Restaurant in Paris. They remain friends; he recently attended her 50th birthday party.

What remains of that summer are the endless hours in Sweden: "It was memorable, hilarious, possibly because I knew I'd only be there for a year, from October to October." In the Nordic countries, winters are very harsh, and in summer they make the most of the endless hours of daylight. They stop living indoors, everyone wakes up, and they experience a kind of eternal spring. They miss the sun so much that they have countless outdoor activities of all kinds, in parks and gardens, with concerts, parties, clubs, swimming on the beach, in lakes...

He admits that it was very rewarding, nothing like the torrid summers of Barcelona. In Stockholm, temperatures are always around 22 degrees. "Plus, they have a different perspective on life than we do. We're more Mediterranean, calmer." They started work in the morning and stayed up past midnight, but they left every day: "We were young, we slept very little. In general, chefs live a lot at night, although that's changed now, this intensity has lessened."

The ideal vacation these days is different: they try to spend as much time as possible with their children and partner, and above all, they avoid having to work. The rest of the year they take short breaks, but in the summer they avoid flying to avoid the usual chaos of airports: "We never take a long trip; we choose to arrive by car to see other places and relax. It's more of a vacation about slowing down, about being and being."