Txe Arana: "There was no urgency, just soaking in the water, the taste of peaches, and hours spent following a trail of ants."

BarcelonaWith a certain nostalgia, communicator and actress Txe Arana recalls the summers of her childhood, when she was six years old and played all day: "Playing wasn't a pastime, it was time itself. That time when I didn't even know what wasting time meant because time was ours." Being from a large family of six siblings, summer was a time to be together, with siblings and cousins. "Back then, there was no urgency about anything, just soaking in the pool, the taste of peaches, and spending hours and hours following a trail of ants." Ideal summers in which she was always accompanied, they couldn't get bored, and laughter was ever-present in the house.

They lived in the city of Lleida, where they had a tower that allowed them to be in the countryside. Their mother and I often took the bus to Balsas de Alpicat, a complex full of swimming pools where the people of Lleida went to cool off. They arrived in about twenty minutes, loaded down with pool equipment—they were carrying more and more—and all the children. It was a water paradise, crowded, with different pools of different shapes. They spent much of the summer there, soaking. They went into the water and didn't leave until the day was over. Everything that existed existed because it could be touched: the prickly grass, the coldness of the water... "There were no rules; once you arrived, you played and that was it, with stones, water, and shadows, without asking why," she recalls. They also swam in the Segre: "The river was a mess, full of mud, but we swam there too." It was very different, like the summer they closed off the neighborhood in Lleida where they were doing construction work. They tore up the streets and blocked them off: "It was brutal, full of dust all day. Being in the city, we had the neighborhood to ourselves; we made the streets our own, like time."

Other ideal summers were those spent in Andalusia, in their parents' village, and they would reunite with many cousins. "In the village, everyone was family," he says. Those were summers of family and beach. They would travel south in a van, spending countless hours without seatbelts, and when the door opened, a bunch of children and their parents would come out with beach mattresses.

Taking advantage of her self-employment, Che tries to avoid summer vacations to avoid the crowds. Although there's a lot to do, when she travels she gets to places and doesn't stay still, she does everything she can, and visits as much as she can. But lately, a kind of dream has been brewing inside her for a typical vacation: "Being on a paradise beach and doing nothing." She's thinking that maybe one day she'll treat herself to it.