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.

Athlete Anna Comet met her husband twenty years ago, when they were both alpine ski coaches. Their love story began as a great friendship. "We were two people who understood each other very well from the start. We explained a lot of things to each other and went everywhere together. You're really good friends until one day you realize you want to be with that person more than with any of your other friends. When this happens to you repeatedly, you start to think that maybe there's something very beautiful about you," says Comet.

In October 1989, the actor Pep Antón Muñoz, the famous Peris deThe heart of the city, began rehearsals for the musical They are playing our song, which he starred in with Àngels Gonyalons. One day, the actor had a run-in with the assistant director, Julià Farràs. "I was quite heartbreaking, and after a while, I realized I might have made a nuisance of myself. I apologized, and he accepted," explains the actor and broadcaster. To put the matter to bed, he decided to invite him to dinner.

Designer Verónica Fuerte had been single for five years when she made match on Bumble with Ale. He chose the place for the date, Zim, a wine bar in the Gothic Quarter, small enough to allow for a great deal of intimacy. "I really liked the way he spoke, the small gestures... I pay a lot of attention to these things: if he's attentive, if he looks at me, if he asks me questions... I was fine on my own and had things very clear, so before meeting up I was honest with my expectations: I wanted a partner, nothing more than one night.

Eight years ago, during the time Sergi Carbonell was playing with Txarango, the Catalan group received an email from an NGO working with adolescents in Uganda, asking for permission to sing one of their songs from the heart. "They were working on psychological wounds and doing it through music," explains the musician. Txarango was delighted and replied that they wanted to know more about the project. They met with the NGO coordinator, Almudena, and it didn't take long for Carbonell to fall in love.

One night at Razzmatazz, the YouTuber Malbert noticed a gorgeous boy who was a great dancer. "Since I've always been thick-skinned when it comes to meeting new people, I approached her and introduced myself. If you feel like doing or saying something, do it, because tomorrow will be too late," she claims. The two boys liked each other and exchanged messages on social media. "Nothing else happened that day because he was with his friend. We continued talking online for months without seeing each other. Despite being Catalan, he was living in London, where he was studying musical theater. We were keen to see each other but weren't considering a relationship," explains the man. YouTuber.

The first time poet and singer-songwriter Ivette Nadal saw the father of her child, she was only eleven years old. "I went with my parents to a furniture store to choose my room, and he was the one who helped us. I remember he had dreadlocks, and my mother commented, 'Look, this boy is more your style.' At the time, I thought he was very old—he was eighteen—and, logically, he didn't even look at me, not even a glance," Nadal explains.

Architect Ignacio Morente Gemas had a very different adolescence than his high school classmates. He left home alone at 12, moving from the town of Antequera, in Málaga, to Cornellà de Llobregat. He was a tennis player and dedicated himself to elite sports, so in the afternoons he trained with the Catalan Tennis Federation and in the mornings he studied at high school. There he met Emma, his lifelong partner, with whom he and his wife have been together since they were 14. They are now 34. "She also liked tennis and taught young children. We started talking on Messenger one Christmas when I returned to Málaga for the holidays. Every night we connected and chatted. When Christmas was over, we met on a bench in front of the school and spent the whole afternoon." Since then, the couple hasn't been apart.

A few years ago, in her late 40s, writer Muriel Villanueva split up with the father of her children and discovered the dating world on Tinder. "I flirted a lot and it was a lot of fun, I had a great time," she recalls. In the midst of that frenetic pace, she met Isaac: they really liked each other, but things ended there. "I continued at full speed, and he made sure to keep in touch, very slowly, very calmly, in friend mode. We maybe saw each other once a month," says the writer. In 2024, tired of Tinder and so many messes, Villanueva saw it clearly: Isaac was the one she wanted by her side.