For the influencer Àlex Tous, the best summer night isn't just one, it's practically all the Sant Joan eves he has experienced in Cadaqués. It's a completely established family tradition: going up there with friends, celebrating his mother's birthday, and extending the party until sunrise. “It's a super nice day for the whole family and friends,” he assures.

The most fun summer night Charlie Pee remembers seemed, at first, doomed to disaster. She and a group of friends had taken the last flight of the day from Barcelona to Mallorca to start their vacation, but a breakdown put an end to their plans. “They changed the plane for another that had fewer seats and we were left out,” she explains. Result: she, two of her friends, and about twenty other people were left behind while most of the group of friends landed calmly in Mallorca.

When Ramon Cugat thinks of a great summer night, he doesn't hesitate for a second. He goes straight to July 17th, fifty years ago, the day of his wedding to Montse, whom he met when they were only ten and fifteen years old. The ceremony was prepared at the family estate in Polinyà del Vallès: tables in the garden, a swimming pool, a tennis court, and hundreds of guests ready to extend the party well into the night. The sky, however, had other plans.

For many years of her life, Laia Sanz has spent her summers racing. Being a fourteen-time world champion and ten-time European champion means training a lot and having few holidays. “I was doing something I really liked and I didn't feel like it was a sacrifice or that I was missing out on anything,” assures the rider, who as she has slowed down a bit, focusing more on the Dakar rally – which is held in January – has been able to make a little more of the summer days to “join family and friends’ plans”.

For Dídac Romagós, the alma mater of Ràdio Vilablareix, there are three ingredients that make a summer night unforgettable: “Being surrounded by the people I love, having health, and having peace of mind”. “I am a simple person, and as I get older, I become even more so. Our problems always come from wanting more,” reflects Romagós. In summer, he says, people allow themselves a break and “it is then that we become more aware of living”. “We live too busy lives, and many times it is in these moments of rest, of idleness and observation, when great ideas appear,” he asserts.

For the writer Martí Gironell, summer nights have a special appeal. “It feels like in summer everything goes at a different pace and the nights are longer. There are things that you only feel like doing on summer nights, they are nights protected by this kind of halo that we have all created and that makes everything seem possible. The temperature is good and there is a feeling of being free from obligations, free from everything. Summer nights are the most conducive to the feeling of freedom,” he reflects. 

There is a summer night that forever changed the life of Carme Ruscalleda: July 1, 1988. “It was the day the Sant Pau restaurant opened its doors, and my husband, Toni, and I made our debut as restaurateurs. It's a night etched in memory.” Over time, Carme Ruscalleda would become the woman with the most Michelin stars in the world – seven, no less – but on that July 1st, success still seemed far off.

In Gerard Quintana's life there have been many special nights, but none like the one in the summer of 1977 which, he assures, "changed his life and career forever".

When Ramon Madaula met Silvia Munt in the early 90s, she was a well-known actress and he was a budding actor. "She was a star, she had recently premiered The Diamond Square"He explains. It was in that context that a theater director summoned them both to a café to propose that they star in his play. It was the first time they had met in person. "Neither of us was entirely convinced by the project, and we exchanged home phone numbers to continue talking. That same afternoon, we called each other and confirmed that we didn't want to do it. We didn't work together, but it was the beginning of a relationship that has lasted thirty years."

Chef Sergi de Meià and his partner Sandra have been together for 29 years. "We are a rare elderly", he says. They met in Vilanova de Meià, in Noguera. "I was 19 years old. My sister came to spend a weekend and brought her friends from university. I really liked Sandra and I confessed to my sister. "Don't even think about it!" she told me, because I was from have more than one friend".

Zoya Naumov and Gabriel's first date was one Christmas Day at a bar in Madrid's Lavapiés neighborhood. They met through an app, an increasingly common story, although their first encounter was unconventional. As soon as they started, Zoya got up to go to the bathroom and ran into a good friend, with whom they'd only been at that bar for a week. "It turns out she was also on a first date, and we'd chosen the same bar!" explains Naumov.

Lo Pau de Ponts warns: his love story seems like "an example of Catalanism and Pujolism," but it's 100% real. He met his last partner last year at a sardana gathering in Collbató, at the foot of Montserrat. The sardana was playing. Maria of the braids with music by Josep Saderra i Puigferrer and lyrics by Ramon Ribera i Llobet, premiered for the first time during the San Martiriano Festival in 1949. "We had to dance side by side and I said to her: 'Watch out, my hands sweat a lot.' She looked at me and replied: 'suadores, it means you're hot.'" Pau de Ponts was so captivated by that answer that he thought: "This is the right one."

Economist Xavier Sala i Martín perfectly remembers the first day he saw his wife. "I was a Barça director, and Barça directors, even if they don't get paid, work like crazy and have official lunches all day. I started to gain weight and needed to exercise, so I joined a gym. The personal trainer sent me to a dietitian, and the dietitian called me Silvia. I thought she'd found me handsome. She didn't know me at all, and over time I learned that, in reality, what she'd been thinking was: "Who is that tacky guy wearing a fuchsia blazer?"

After the lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ramon Mirabet wanted to try new things, so he signed up for dance. "I was the only boy in the class and obviously the worst student of all. My ridiculousness invaded the room," he recalls. However, the energy he found in that class was exactly what he was looking for. "Whenever I've done sports, I've done it to compete. On the other hand, I was able to experience dance through constant learning: I went to class knowing that I would be the worst in the class and that I was going to be the worst in the class, but it made me happy."

"If I ask you to buy a book, could you do it today?" This is the message Juan sent to Laia Santís (@vidaentrelibros) when they met again on social media, a few years after meeting at a concert in the heart of Vilafranca. Santís answered with a resounding yes and ran to the bookstore in search of his first suggestion: Ice Brother, by Alicia Kopf (La Otra Editorial). For four months, everyone in her house read the same pages of the same book at the same time and then discussed them.

Musician Ferran Palau explains that he found the love of his life when he was 10 years old. She was three years older, English, and named Louise Samson. For him, there was no one cooler in the world than that girl from South London. "She wore long skirts and Dr. Martens, and always wore headphones, listening to her cassettes. On her first day of school, she kicked a rock and accidentally broke the glass in a door. I thought, 'This girl is cool.'" The three-year difference between them was unbridgeable, and Louise only approached him one Midsummer Night to tell him that a friend of hers liked him because he looked like a member of Take That. "I told her I liked another girl, but I didn't dare tell her it was her," the musician explains.

"What begins with dancing can only be remembered with a smile." Physiotherapist Mireia Grossmann says this, referring to one of the love stories that most influenced her. "He wasn't my first partner, nor my last, but I have very sweet memories." Grossmann was 25 years old and every Friday she went dancing traditional dances with live music in Plaça del Rei. There she met Manel, "one of those boys that mothers like." One day he accompanied her on the subway and, "like in a movie," as the doors were about to close, he gave her a quick kiss.

Dear Marta,

Sexologist Raquel Tulleuda has always found the chemistry she shares with her husband, Adrià, quite inexplicable. "After twenty-two years, I look at him and see those eyes, the color of which I still don't know. He smiles at me, and I melt," she says. They met because Tulleuda visited her restaurant in Sant Pere Pescador a couple of times, and even then "there were a few glances." On April 23rd, she received a text message from a number she didn't recognize: "I'm Adrià," and a rose emoji.

The writer Màrius Serra "deeply hated the esplais" and only went for a while because his parents sent him "to see if they would straighten him out." It's all a bit fuzzy for him, but he does remember an excursion to Cerdanyola where a girl kept coming up to him and tickling him. Five years later, one night while he was putting together the window display for his shoe store, he saw a "spectacular girl" walk by, and Serra didn't hesitate to approach her and suggest they go for a drink. He didn't remember, but she told him about it over a drink in a Hawaiian bar: it was the girl who had been tickling him. "We got into it with a phrase that Mercè has always remembered, and which was very unromantic: 'Do you want to mess things up?'" Mercè was keen, and now they've been "messing things up" for 40 years.