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?"

"Since I was very young, I've listened to music at home, because my parents always loved it. It was also a constant presence on car trips. When I was about 15, they started dancing at the San Martín community center, my lifelong neighborhood in Barcelona. Ballroom dancing brought them together and they made a very friendly group of friends. Looking back now as an adult, I think dancing changed their lives. And one day they asked me if I wanted to go dancing with them," recalls Àlex Morales, who as a teenager couldn't imagine that invitation would end up shaping his life as well. A professional dance career wasn't in his plans back then, because he had wanted to be a soccer player since he was a kid. However, when the time came to choose university studies, he opted for the world of education, his other vocation. Restless by nature, one career wasn't enough. "I'd always loved teaching. When I was 16, I earned my leisure instructor qualification and worked in cafeterias and summer centers. I also worked as a soccer coach. When I decided to study, I chose teaching, but I also looked into social education, and I was very interested. That's why I decided to pursue both qualifications, despite the difficulties," the dancer explains.

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.

Mireia discovered the catastrophe three days after the book exploded in bookstores like an ink bomb. Three triumphant days, while sales soared and early readers devoured her words like starving dogs. Three days before the world collapsed.

Dear Marta,

"Mom! Barbie doesn't say hello to me. I said hello to her and she told me I pronounce the word wrong." to neutral." The mother sighs. The girl adds, looking traumatized: "I threw him against the sofa and... Then she told me to get my ADHD checked."

"I grew up in Gavà, in the Baix Llobregat region, in the 1990s. I wanted and needed to talk about that time and that context, about summers of friendship that seemed eternal, where time passed without anything to do," explains screenwriter and cartoonist Javi Rey. Those personal and family memories have inspired one of the best comics of the year, We called him Bebeto (Norma Editorial), a story about summers spent on asphalt in the suburbs and the transition from childhood to adolescence in a humble working-class environment. Its cartoons are populated by children who spent their holidays playing soccer and who seemed destined to work in the factories in the area's industrial estates. "There weren't, like there are now, so many screens and distractions, nor so many stimuli. I think that time was the end of an era. Then, starting in 2000, the smartphones And with cell phones, teenage summers have become something else. I think my generation, those of us who were between 8 and 12 years old in the 90s, were the last to experience those summers on the street. You watched the Tour de France to see Indurain, you played soccer, you went to a nearby beach... ", recalls the author, adding: "It was a seemingly boring world, but over time you look back and realize that you experienced many things and that they were very intense weeks and months on an emotional level."

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.

Although sitting on a terrace and drinking an ice-cold beer seems like an ideal way to cope with the stifling summer heat, it can actually be "counterproductive" if not done in moderation. This is the opinion of Emilio Salgado, the physician in charge of the Clinical Toxicology Unit at the Hospital Clínic in Barcelona. In fact, he recommends avoiding alcohol consumption when exposed to high temperatures.

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.