"I waited all summer for the day I would put on my flamenco dress."

Barcelona— Mom, is today when we put on the dress?

— No, Ana, not yet.

"I waited all summer, and I'd say all year, for the day to come so I could put on my flamenco dress," says journalist and comedian Ana Polo, amused, as she recounts the childhood summers she remembers most fondly, in her town, Íllora, in Granada. Her predilection for the sevillana dress had an aesthetic reason. In fact, she was taken to flamenco classes and was deeply bored, probably because she didn't rehearse in the clothes. "I just wanted to get dressed, and wear flowers in my hair and those big earrings," she says. All so she could sit on a cart with her legs dangling and imagine herself dancing. The blackberry or going to Meteor shower Playing Gloria Estefan or Juan Luis Guerra, something he hasn't ruled out yet, he jokes. "Being on the street, sitting on a bench eating sunflower seeds, or occupying public space" is what stands out most from those summers of the nineties: "A habit we're losing and it seems you can only do it if you consume."

More than the village, surrounded by olive trees, what she liked was village life: chatting with the neighbors with chairs outdoors, the smell of jasmine and the pool – which, during a time when her uncle ran it, "she would enter as if she were a queen" –. She was also driven crazy by the sevenups with free tapa, the pinballs from the bars and goody bags with mini toys for 100 pesetas. For "the Catalan" – as the neighbors called her – who lived in Vilassar de Mar, this was a parallel reality, "a culture shock" that made her relax her way of speaking because she could hear "Mrs. Perfect". At the same time, there she connected with her lineage and her roots.

The whole family would gather at her grandmother's house and, with her cousins, they would sleep on mattresses in the dining room. "Every day was a pajama party," she explains enthusiastically. "Nights of confidences." was two years younger than her, and that she got her to do everything she wanted, such as hiding behind the sofa to watch the soap operas that her grandmother watched. Andalusian, she has a "climate denier" culinary taste, which consists of eating soups and stews in the middle of August. Her favorite dishes from her grandmother were a meatball soup with anchovies inside and crumbs. "It was amazing. I saw her with a giant bowl cutting dry bread with torreznillo"We ate them with melon. She was an excellent cook," she adds proudly.