Luthea Salom: "I always find her changed, and always for the better. I like her more each time"

Luthea Salom, despite being born in Barcelona, has not lived there since she was eighteen, and from the ages of two to eight, they emigrated to Canada. The singer and children's fashion designer for Lillies Dream, who returns here every year, for Christmas and in the summer, to be with family, admits that she has an emotional connection with the Catalan capital, and surely for this reason it is her favorite place in Catalonia: “It is small and welcoming, nothing like Manhattan, in New York, where I usually live. That place is like a jungle, more dangerous, always on alert, watching who approaches you”. She says that in Barcelona she is more relaxed and has the feeling of being on vacation, which she already is when she comes, but it has more to do with a way of feeling life here.

She explains that in the thirty-two years she has been visiting Barcelona uninterruptedly, the city has changed a lot: “I always find it changed, and always for the better. I like it more and more”. She argues that she finds it more cosmopolitan and much more attractive than when she lived there, when everyone was white and very much the same. On the other hand, now different cultures coexist, as happens in London or New York, and it is a more open city.

For her, it is cheerful, clean, and noisy even though a kind of relaxation can be felt, and she always compares it to Manhattan: “There, no one sits in a square to have something to drink with friends. If you have a free hour, you have to fill it with whatever, you have to be always producing, otherwise you feel like you are wasting time”. She likes that relaxation is part of life and is valued. She believes it is healthier to rest to enjoy and also to be able to work better afterwards. She notices this way of perceiving time a lot in the rhythm of walking. “It’s one of the things that strikes me the most, here people walk much slower, you can tell you take things more calmly”, confesses Salom.

When he arrives in the city, he likes to be faithful to a couple of gastronomic rituals. In winter it's the churros from Avinyó street, "which must be in some guide because lately there are endless queues". "The churro maker is getting rich, I'm happy for him". And in summer, it's the horchata from Orxateria Torroneria Verdú, in the Eixample neighborhood, close to his parents' house, where people keep coming in: "It's the typical one with three tables, a fan, and two benches outside where the ladies sit, and my mother and I with the dogs". He also takes advantage of his stays to meet up with old friends. "I went to school here, to high school, and to university, and I keep friends from that time," he says. He moves mainly around Eixample, the Gothic Quarter, goes towards the sea, and likes to walk through Gràcia, get lost in its streets, "and discover some charming corner, there are still some left," he assures.