Kris Ubach awaits us in the center of Mataró, where she lives. Not far from where she has a coffee, there is the memory of what her life as a lawyer, a career she studied, could have been. “I wanted to tell stories. I wanted to be a journalist. But you know those talks at the Institute to help you choose a career? Students from different careers came to explain their experience. And two guys who were studying journalism told us it wasn't a good idea. And they influenced me,” she admits, laughing. “So, I studied law. I thought choosing a career was a decision that would condition my whole life. When you're young, you think that way. Luckily, afterwards I've been able to make my own way,” she explains. “As a child, I had seen that film, TheGoonies, at the cinema. I saw it twice in a row. I wanted to have adventures. I read about pirates and adventurers. At 19 years old, I went to the United States with a boyfriend I had. At home we had always traveled, but of the four sisters we are, I was the one who became an adventurer,” she recalls.

Joan Riera doesn't stand still. The world is very large, as is his curiosity. When he speaks with ARA, he already has a trip to Equatorial Guinea ready to trace the steps of the Spanish colonial era and interact with the local population. Then he leaves for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This anthropologist from Vallès has specialized in studying and visiting isolated communities. "My father had a great interest in African art and its influence on contemporary art. And this led us to go to Cameroon when I was young. We established a relationship with those countries, to the point that my father would end up buying a house and staying there to live," he explains. It would be logical to think that it was during those periods in Africa that he decided he would be an anthropologist. But listening to himself, Joan has discovered that it is not exactly like that. "I believe that my love for anthropology, for other people and the worlds that end up being born thanks to my grandmother. A farmer's daughter who raised me as a child in a farmhouse in Cerdanyola, in Collserola. She used to tell me stories of a rural Catalonia that I no longer knew. I believe that those nights in her bed listening to what she told me, whether they were tales or lessons on how to know the land, were key." An umbilical cord connects a Catalan farmhouse with the rituals of populations living very isolated in southern Sudan, one of the trips Joan was most eager to take. And which he has finally been able to do and it has moved him.

Some people are born to sail. Like Alberto Mir (Barcelona, 1968). Although he studied economics, he couldn't stop thinking about the sea. “When we were little, we used to sail at the Real Club Nàutic de Barcelona, with some wooden optimists. My parents already sailed and my grandfather participated in the dragon class in the Rome Olympic Games of 1960 – he recalls–. I studied economics and had a job at La Caixa. But I wanted to sail around the world. I looked at the map and had a great desire to do it”. And so it was: sailing would be his life. He would look for jobs taking care of boats or moving them from port for many years. And now he is a ship captain and has sailed around the world a few times. Trained at the English Royal Yachting Association, he has helped many people sail around the world. He knows all the coasts, all the seas, and accumulates experiences and anecdotes. The most special, however, was sailing by sailboat to Antarctica, an experience he recounts in the book La Antártida a vela (Nova Casa Editorial, 2026).

It is hard to find someone who conveys as much passion when they speak as Irene Cordón. When she explains everything she has experienced in Egypt, the interlocutor needs to go there. "When I am in a special place, I cry," she says, recalling a trip to Ethiopia to visit the sources of the Nile. She has also cried in Egyptian burial chambers and when visiting the room where Alexander the Great died in Babylon. She cries when she arrives at places where history has been written. Her life has been like this for years, although for a good period of time it seemed it would be quite different.

When he was 7 years old, Carles Gel left the farmhouse near Vilassar de Mar where he lived and, without saying a word, decided he would climb the Creu de Montcabrer alone. Between climbing up and down, he stayed there all day. He was born to explore. Carles (Vilassar de Mar, 1963) still remembers that first peak and the escapades with his parents to Montseny. Or the trips to the Pyrenees with the Salesians of Mataró, where he forged his personality and his desire to travel the world. This man from the Maresme region, who has lived far from the sea for years, would put down roots in the Pyrenees, and currently lives in Andorra, in Pal. Although he studied to be a draughtsman, he ended up working as a mountain guide, as he is not a person destined to live confined in an office. “I could have been a good architect, but there came a point when I told myself that I had to pursue my dreams. We cannot live without dreams,” he explains. He has now been working in this profession for 40 years, which has allowed him to reach peaks on all continents and cross Greenland, a journey that changed him. When he remembers that white immensity, he gets emotional. He speaks of it with the same passion as that boy who, at 7 years old, climbed the Creu de Montcabrer.

Rapa Iti. A beautiful volcanic island, which can only be reached from time to time by crossing the Pacific Ocean from Tahiti. A dot on the map that Jaume Bartrolí wanted to set foot on. He wanted to put a face to it and meet its people. And he ended up living there for a few months, turning it into a place where every day, with his memories, he returns mentally. “I was looking for the most original, the best-preserved Polynesia. It was a craving I had. Islands have always attracted me and I was looking for a place where local culture was maintained. I looked at an island near Fiji, some in the Solomon Islands... in the end Rapa Iti seemed like the best option. It wasn't a flat island, here the landscape invited you to discover it. A place with a colder temperature because it is further south, halfway between Easter Island and Tahiti. I had to go”. No sooner said than done.