When Josep Maria Espinàs arrived in a town of the kind he portrayed in his walking tours, he would go straight to the square where people were sitting on a bench. He too would sit there without saying anything, looking in the same direction as them, and after a while he would make a simple observation, such as: “It looks like it might rain.” Then the bench companions, eager to train the stranger, would give him all sorts of explanations about the direction of the wind, the movement of the clouds, and the amount of rain in the area. And so began a conversation that would naturally delve into the most intimate corners of the local identity he had come to discover.