"There was a connection between son, mother, friends, and the sea, which I believe has never been so profound."

BarcelonaAfter reviewing her travels around the world, editor and writer Iolanda Batallé discarded the earliest summer memories that came to mind and settled on a seemingly simple, yet magical one: a summer spent at the beach with her son Teo and visiting several friends in the Netherlands, who appear in the photograph. "We didn't realize it, but it was paradise. There was a connection between son, mother, friends, and the sea that I don't think has ever been so profound." That's why she goes back to this memory from 2005: "It was magical. The summer of discovering ourselves. That summer made us who we are."

It's clear that Batallé loves summers because she paints a picture of sensations. "It was a summer of lots of fruit, gazpacho, mother and son, and friends passing by. The sound of the sea, the taste of salt," she says with a smile. In this portrait, on the one hand, she's enthusiastic about the maritime landscape that, she says, "takes care of everything" and, on the other, about the friendship between women that has endured over time.

Batallé was 33 years old, and it was the first summer the little one was out of the womb. "Teo and I, the son and the mother, like two little savages, getting used to each other and creating those bonds that never break, that umbilical cord outside the womb." She made her debut in motherhood following the advice that surrounded her and that has been passed down from generation to generation. They said then that it was good to submerge children in salt water and let them walk if they were independent because, as she had read, at one point or another the child would turn around. Obviously, she always had to chase after him.

The writer then also discovered the difference between being a mother and not being one. Her friend missed the Batallé of before, who cooked every day and went out dancing, but she was no longer the same. Years later, some friends who later became mothers admitted it to her: "Now I understand those summer months." Her idyllic moment was when Teo took a nap and she had quiet time to read, until one day she heard footsteps and found the child beside her. Immensely surprised, she put him back in the travel crib and watched as her son climbed the net like Spiderman to get out of the crib. That summer also brought sacrifices: "The nap was over forever."